Is Football a Sin? (Author says "yes" because Christians shouldn't try to triumph over others)

DALLAS--In the wake of Superbowl XXXVII, there’s the pain of loss, the agony of post-game quarterbacking But the toughest fact to confront on Superbowl Monday may be that the whole business of sport is really a sin, from the Christian point of view, says Kevin Orlin Johnson, Ph.D., author of many best-selling books on Christian beliefs and practices.

In his Rosary: Mysteries, Meditations, and the Telling of the Beads--hailed by National Review’s literary editor Michael Potemra as "the best book I have yet seen on this subject"--Johnson reveals the surprising history of sport to clarify the story of Christ’s "Agony in the Garden" before the Crucifixion, an episode traditionally meditated on as part of the Rosary’s prayers.

The term "agony" is from the Greek word for sport, Johnson says; it’s applied to the internal struggle that Jesus felt before going to his suffering and death. That’s the essential struggle, the "good fight" of every Christian, but struggling with other people in sport is something else entirely. "I hate to be the one to say it, but the Church has always taught, from the Gospels, that any sport--any contention in which you try to triumph over somebody else--is completely opposed to everything that Christ teaches," he says.

It seems obvious when you put it that way, but it’s still a shocker. Sports fans always ask, "Are you serious?" and come up with all kinds of excuses about sportsmanship and teamwork and the like. Sorry, it won’t work, Johnson says, because sport is what it is--obviously--and there’s also a huge body of Christian literature that knocks down every pretext you can think of.

That’s because the Church worked so hard to remind Christians that they’re not supposed to go around hitting, fighting or tackling other people ("Turn the other cheek," remember?) and certainly not to try proving themselves better than others. St. Paul himself used the image of an athlete in his first letter to the Corinthians (9:24-27) when he catalogued everything that a Christian is not supposed to do. All of the Fathers of the Church preached fervently about the sinfulness of sport, and some even wrote whole books about it. Eventually the point got across and the stadiums fell into ruin, but it had taken 600 years. "Evidently the early Christians were even denser about it than we are now," Johnson says.

Of course, those games were often fights to the death, with hundreds of human beings slaughtered in gladiatorial combats or even footraces. But it wasn’t just the bloody murders that the Church objected to. Long before anybody gets killed, the Fathers of the Church said, sport always involves the sins of strife, superstition, sedition, pride, vainglory, contention--"how many ways do we need to prove that not one of the things associated with these sports is pleasing to God?" the 2nd-century convert Tertullian asked. No sport, he said, fails to inflict spiritual damage, because in sport there is always "eagerness, which adds spice to pleasure. Where there’s eagerness there’s the taking of sides. Where there’s the taking of sides, there’s rage, and bile and anger and pain and all the other things that follow from them, which like them are incompatible with spiritual discipline."

After the stadia closed down, sport still erupted informally among the less-educated classes, but the Church was always there to remind them. By the time St. Thomas Aquinas catalogued the vices that sport expresses in his 13th-century Summa, sport was widely understood as a violation of Christian principles of life, and in fact as sin.

The root problem is theological. How unfair that you go to heaven, while some other guy goes to hell? They're mad at God because He rewards virtue, and punishes evil -- they'd rather have a world, and a universe, free from responsibility. They're also mad at God for differentially distributing innate talents, as it hurts their pride when someone else is better than themselves. Since ALL human competitions reward either virtue, or talent, or both, these people can't stand competition. It implicitly reminds them of Someone they'd rather forget.

Agreed, I didn't want to make this a theological argument as I am not suited to do so. But I appreciate the chime in.

Thank you for sharing an interesting article. Although I do not completely see the logic or spirit of it, I do wholeheartedly agree that American football is sinful (doing something that is against God). I do not need to argue my point, because I will let the facts speak for themselves.

Here are some quotes from God's "playbook":

1 Timothy 2:24-25 "And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves..."

James 3:17-18 "But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace."

Galations 5:22-23 "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law."

Here are some quotes about American football:

[1] "The attitude that our program must be and will be tougher than anyone we face is now a trademark of our team. In the mind of a football player, one of the most rewarding moments in a game is when you hit a player so hard that he can barely get up for the next play. It is this exact emotion that our seniors have held in front of our noses and that we have strived for and will continue to pursue."

[2] "As he nears the blocker, the defensive lineman drives the heels of his hands forward and up, punching them into the armpits of the blocker. ... Keeping his back straight and the top of his helmet under the chin of the blocker, the defensive lineman drives the blocker straight into the quarterback. ... Instead of punching out with his hands, he now grabs the front of the blocker's jersey, and, using the blocker's own momentum, jerks him either to his right or left. ... Instead of slipping with the inside hand and arm, the pass rusher drives his inside forearm and hand into the rib cage of the blocker."

[3] "15 high school football players died during regular season and playoff games in 1999, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. Another 11 athletes have died in high school games and practices since late August of this year -- and that number is expected to rise during playoffs. In addition, another 29 players this year have suffered 'catastrophic injuries' on the field, leaving them paralyzed or seriously disabled."

Sources:

[1] http://www.yaleherald.com/archive/xxx/2000.12.01/sports/p28.html
Jason Lange, JE '03, a defensive tackle on the Yale football team

[2] http://www.nflhs.com/TipsDrills/features/features_03022000a_db.asp
Tips and Drills for high school football

[3] http://www.lp.org/press/archive.php?function=view&record=162
Football kills as many students as school shootings (Oct 2000)

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