[I tried to add a good picture here but this just updated version of WordPress for some reason will not allow me to do that.]
Donald Miller in his excellent book Searching for God Knows What? wonders what would happen in an alien came over to our house to watch some of our television shows.
[The alien] would sit there watching basketball but not understanding why we play the game. Why do they do that? the alien might say. It’s a game, a competition, we would answer. But why? Why do they play the game? What are they trying to decide?
They are trying to decide who is the better basketball team, we would say. The better basketball team? the alien might question, wondering out loud why twenty thousand people would show up to find out which basketball team was better than the other. (93)
Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints for their victory in Super Bowl XLIV! And to the city of New Orleans and the people of Louisiana.
Who Dat???
I like most sports. Do not follow baseball basketball or football as most other Americans. Maybe because I do not play any of them well. (So what? How many avid fans play the sport well?) At least partly because we lived in Great Britain for five years when I was a teenager. My favorite sport is football aka soccer. Also enjoy golf badminton volleyball and even field hockey. And yes have played them and fairly well.
(Quick interesting anecdote. At the American school in England was asked to play with the girls’ field hockey team. No kidding. That’s how good I was. Of course I said thanks but no. Idiot.)
And it is not like I am not competitive. Just ask the family. I have to be the best. And I could get pretty ugly when my girls did soccer and basketball.
I tend to watch only the big games. Playoffs and bowls. And only the games in which a local team plays. Tigers or Saints.
Or – pay attention now – the Tennessee Vols or Boston Red Sox or even Buffalo Bills.
(Used to cheer for the New England Patriots but Belichick makes it hard.)
The morning after was listening to the Jim Engster show on local National Public Radio station. He called the Saints’ victory a “momentous event in the history of New Orleans”. I thought Are you kidding me?!? It’s a football game!?! When we beat the bloody British at the town of New Orleans now that is a momentous event!
Now stop and think about it. Why do we care so much? When how and why did sports become so important to us that when our team wins a game or especially a championship we call it a “momentous event”?
My wife thinks I do not get it.
I understand partly why this is a big deal. It somehow represents hope. How often did members of the New Orleans Saints say something along the lines of “this is not just for us – this is for the people of New Orleans and the people of Louisiana”? Somehow when our team wins it represents pride. We do not say “the team won”. We say “we won”.
And in the case of New Orleans and Louisiana the Super Bowl victory also represents hope. We say “we are back”. We have come back from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. At the least are coming back.
We can also talk about this in economic terms. How many millions of dollars have been generated because of all the excitement? People are making money. We certainly celebrate that.
To some extent sports represents “excelling at something we can do”. Hence the famous motto of the Olympic games is “Faster Higher Stronger” (Latin citius altius fortius). We have an ability that involves our physical bodies. (As well as our minds. How much of athletic competition is mental?) We work hard and train and practice. We do not just celebrate the victory. We celebrate the excellence.
“They lost but at least they played well”.
Back to the Donald Miller quote.
Why sports?
To what extent do sports give us a sense of importance? a sense of security? a sense that we are worth something?
Miller also writes:
The Fall has made monkeys of us, for crying out loud. Some of us are athletes and others of us are physicists, and some of us are good-looking and some of us are rich, and we all are running around, in a way, trying to get a bunch of people to clap for us, trying to get a bunch of people to say we are normal, we are healthy, we are good. And there is nothing wrong with being beautiful or being athletic or being smart, but those are some of the pleasures of life, not life’s redemption. (175)
“These are some of the pleasures of life, not life’s redemption”.
I am in the process of preparing for a series of Sunday evening Bible studies on the book of Ecclesiastes. A severely underappreciated book that might say two things to us that we hold in tension.
The New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl?
This too is vanity…
This is what I have seen to be good: it is fitting to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the work with which one works under the sun… this is the gift of God.
These are the pleasures of life. But they are not the salvation of our life – or of the state of Louisiana.
Nevertheless…
Who Dat???
(Oh yeah – shout out and love to Opinionated Catholic.)
