Storied Theology

Before I digressed, I was talking about “Sports Fanatics: How Christians have succumbed to the sports culture–and what might be done about it” from the latest Christianity Today.

The article makes some very good points about the dilemmas posed by professional sports. Of course, none of the data or incidents pointed up in the article will surprise us.

In the U.S. we glory most in a sport (football) notorious for leaving its competitors in chronic pain for the rest of their lives, and for the lingering brain damage left by hard hits leading to concussions.

The business demands victory at any cost, such that the baseball doping scandals and video taping of opponents’ sidelines are little more than the assumed consequences of sport. (Did you notice how the SF Giants held onto Barry Bonds just long enough to milk his historic run, then dropped him like a hot potato–and how MLB did nothing about his obvious dependence on performance enhancing drugs while he was making it money hand over fist? This from the sanctimonious people who won’t have anything to do with Pete Rose?!)

Whether it’s violence, money, or the debaucherous lifestyles of athletes that we fund not only by our consumption of their talents but also through our hanging on every aspect of their lives through sports journalism, sports culture creates a counter-narrative to the gospel that we too often simply consume rather than subjecting to redemption or rereading in light of the gospel. This is the point that the article makes with great clarity.

Here’s the paragraph I’m thinking of:

Variously described by those inside and outside as narcissistic, materialistic, violent, sensationalist, coarse, racist, sexist, brazen, raunchy, hedonistic, body-destroying, and militaristic, big-time sports culture lifts up values in sharp contrast with what Christians for centuries have understood as the embodiment of the gospel. There are simply no easy, straight-faced, intellectually respectable answers for how evangelicals can model the Christian narrative—with its emphases on servanthood, generosity, and self-subordination—while immersed in a culture that thrives on cut-throat competition, partisanship, and Darwinian struggle.

I don’t think that there are easy answers here. I’m not in favor of withdrawing from society simply because society offers a powerful counter-narrative to the gospel of Christ crucified.

But neither do I buy the arguments of the rejoinders. One rejoinder indicated that the article was in danger of gnosticism in its denial of the body and its participation in sport. I think that the danger is actually quite the opposite: we  show a gnostic tendency in our willing participation in body (and soul!) destroying sports because we evangelicals tend to think that the body is inconsequential to a person’s relationship with God (so long as you’re not having sex with anyone other than your spouse).

What might it look like to renarrate the story of sports such that it participates in the narrative of the world turned upside down by the saving work of Jesus (rather than renarrating what it means to be a Christian so that we can consume what our neighbors are consuming without thinking twice about it)? That’s a real question. I’d love any thoughts you have. Or maybe you don’t think that such a retelling of the culture’s sports story is necessary at all?

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