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Sports Gods Can't Compete with Real Thing
What is our God if not - as Richard Niebuhr described him - the source from which we derive our value as human beings and to whom we and others turn as the ultimate object of our loyalty? I thought of this not long ago when I attended a Sunday evening event in a cathedral-esque setting where tens of thousands of faithful had gathered, many dressed in ceremonial garb and, for three hours engaged in a kind of rapturous, ritualized idol worship complete with ceremonies, prayers, supplications, tears, chants, hymns and lots of emotional catharsis.
As Super Bowls go, it was a heck of a game.
It may be kind of a cheap shot - let alone a cliché - to liken sport to religion (indeed the sense of personal value some of us derive from our devotion to sports others derive from other secular icons such as status, reputation, power, or perhaps fealty to a given ideology), but it is not wholly without merit to say that the dedication, loyalty and ecstasy that are on display at events like this one have all the trappings of a religious revival.
What this points to is not misplaced faith per se (indeed a good many people who follow their teams with slavish devotion no doubt also count themselves members of one "traditional" faith community or another) but, at the very least, a tacit, prevalent worship of a kind of secular religion. In sports we see this most vividly on display in our vicarious identification with the fortunes of our team, our overriding belief in the greatness of the heroes that comprise that team, our elevation of those heroes to a kind of demigod status, the emotional investment we make in their successes and failures, the mighty temples we build to house their games, and the sacred space we regularly carve out for those games so that we can be witnesses and worshipers. They truly are, in Niebuhr's words, sources of value and objects of loyalty.
The problem with this is that we're asking these gods to deliver more than they're capacity will allow. Some star players get busted when it's discovered that their superhuman performance is the product of native skills, hard work, and illicit drugs. Others simply get old and move on. Owners repay fans' loyalty by raising ticket prices or moving the team to a bigger market with more attractive revenue streams. Habitual winners become inveterate losers. As Isaiah put it, "the grass withers the flower fades..." (Is 40:8a) Our loyalty is steadfast but our gods are not, and all we are left with is a reminder that, to complete Isaiah's sentiment, only "...the word of God stands forever." (Is 40:8b).
Put another way, the exuberance is all well and good, but it's also well and good to keep in mind that there is only one eternally durable source of meaning and value, only one being deserving of our worship. There is only one font whence flows all of creation, only one immutably, irrevocably, unconditionally loving being, the same yesterday, today and forever.
More to the point, there is only one companion sure to be in the foxhole or the prison cell or the cancer ward or the lonely house through the long and sleepless night. The thief on the cross found only one voice of consolation and promise as his lidded eyes closed and the world around him went black forever, for there is only one God even if, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, that God goes by one hundred different names.
If belief in that God does not now stir in us the same passions bestirred by the good team in the big game, let's not hold God responsible. Perhaps it is not God who is boring but we who are lazy. Perhaps we who idolize, say, our football players, would do well to search our souls to find the enthusiasm for Sunday morning that many of us reserve for Sunday afternoon. After all what is enthusiasm but en theus, to be "with God?
Erik Kolbell is a United Church of Christ minister, formerly on the staff at The Riverside Church in New York City. He is a licensed and practicing psychotherapist. He is the author of three books: "What Jesus Meant," "Were You There," and "The God of Second Chances." All three are published by Westminster Press.
By Erik Kolbell |
February 23, 2009; 4:40 AM ET
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Posted by: Paganplace | February 23, 2009 1:17 PM
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"As Super Bowls go, it was a heck of a game.
"It may be kind of a cheap shot - let alone a cliché - to liken sport to religion (indeed the sense of personal value some of us derive from our devotion to sports others derive from other secular icons such as status, reputation, power, or perhaps fealty to a given ideology), but it is not wholly without merit to say that the dedication, loyalty and ecstasy that are on display at events like this one have all the trappings of a religious revival."
Actually, it's a cheap shot, indeed... At other forms of *religion,* to liken them to your own sporting events, and then say everything that's wrong with it comes from its similarities to your own defamations of other religions, as though those defamations were true.
People feel *quite* free to turn these spectacles toward some supremacy of Christian religion, don't they? Then push the commercialism and 'demigod' status supposedly accorded to athletes off onto some influence of some 'other.'
Frankly, I'd be more inclined to liken *big churches,* to *big sporting events.* ...not so much the other way around.
Cause, frankly, sporting events really haven't changed that much since Classical times.
Religion sure has, though. Who's emulating who?