The Green Bay Packers defeated the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday, 27-17. This was a rematch of last season's NFC Championship game, in which Seattle won to get to the Super Bowl. After that game Russell Wilson, quarterback of the Seahawks, apparently engaged in a fairly typical bit of "jock theology" by attributing the Seahawks' victory to God.
It's pretty common to hear such utterances, and not just in sports. I didn't watch the Emmys Sunday night, but I would not be shocked if something similar were uttered once or twice there, as happens during other awards shows or ceremonies. Not every athlete does so, by any means, but plenty do.
What was unusual in this case was that another player, Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers, offered a dissent to that theology. On a radio show he does in Milwaukee, a few days after that game, Rodgers took issue with Wilson's quote, and offered his own opinion: God really didn't care about the outcome of a football game. God would certainly care about the players on the field, but didn't choose sides. Wilson later doubled down on his claim, saying "I believe God cares about football. I believe God cares about everything he [sic] created." On which day of creation was that, I wonder?
Presumably the dust settled afterwards, after Wilson had to deal with the notion that apparently God wanted the New England Patriots to win the Super Bowl. Then, after Sunday's rematch, Rodgers pulled out the needle. During his mandatory press availability after the game, Rodgers answered a question and then tacked on this: "And then getting help from God. I think God was a Packers fan tonight, so he [sic] was taking care of us."
Zing.
There's really no other possibility here: Rodgers, no atheist himself, was needling Wilson. I've not heard any word of a response from Wilson. Perhaps Rodgers was also nursing a reaction to the preseason injury to Packers receiver Jordy Nelson, which was declared an act of God by the Detroit Lion who delivered the hit. (Full disclosure: this blog has cited Rodgers as a sports good guy before.)
You're probably not surprised my position, though not exactly aligned with either, falls a lot closer to Rodgers's than Wilson's. God certainly cares about the players on the field, and grieves any injuries on the field as much as God grieves a cancer diagnosis or casualties of war. But God rooting for one team or the other? Seems highly unlikely. Something similar was once expressed by columnist Rick Reilly (quite possibly the only thing he ever got right), in a column framed around an unexpected return by Jesus to serve as a closer for the Cincinnati Reds. In the fictional press conference after, Jesus offers the advice what we, fans or athletes, should "please stop praying for wins. Put yourself in my position. If your kids were playing each other, who would you root for?"
But Rodgers's position--God cares about the players, not about the score--does raise some questions itself. If God really doesn't care about results, the idea of playing football (or any other sport, to be clear) for a living gets a little weird (and the whole business of collegiate athletics even stranger). Clearly we humans care, an awful lot, about who wins and who loses. We care to a degree that ginormous sums of money are spent on watching the games, either live in person or on television; millions upon millions of dollars are spent on identifying ourselves with our chosen teams by clothing or furniture or car flags or what not; millions are spent (legally or otherwise) betting on who will win or lose; billions are spent on facilities in which to play the games, billions on the rights to televise the games, billions on the right to advertise during the games.
Needless to say, those billions could do a lot of good applied elsewhere.
Add in the degree to which these games inflict harm on the human body, that thing that was (unlike football, Russell Wilson) created by God and created in the image of God, and after a certain point it's hard not to wonder: is playing sports really a good vocation?
Having introduced that word, "vocation," I now turn to an unlikely source: novelist and essayist (and Presbyterian pastor) Frederick Buechner. Buechner is one of those rare theologically-inclined writers that both evangelicals and mainliners can both appreciate, and is eminently quotable. In fact, one of his most widely quoted essays touches on the very concept of vocation, and what constitutes a real vocation, a "work a person is called to by God."* One sentence is most commonly cited, but I'd like to invoke the larger passage for the context it provides:
There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of society, say, or the superego, or self-interest.By and large a good rule for finding out is this: The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need to do and (b) that the world needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you've presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing cigarette ads, the chances are you've missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you're bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a), but probably aren't helping your patients much either.Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet. (Originally published in Buechner's Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC)
There's a lot to unpack in this, to be sure. That last, bolded sentence is the one most people quote, and it's stellar to be sure. But taken without the previous context, I fear it loses a bit of its punch. One can talk about meeting the world's "deep hunger," but not all hungers fall into the category of need, as Buechner describes in the previous paragraph.
Where does the role of athlete fall vocationally by such a description? One presumes the athletes who participate in their respective sports take joy in doing so, or hopefully are able to walk away if not. We know, of course, that not everybody finds themselves in work that brings anything close to that kind of fulfillment, and even the most joyful vocations are also royal pains on occasion. But presumably, the athlete on some level plays for the joy of doing so.
But what about the other half of that equation? I don't believe it's all that hard to argue that there is a deep hunger for what the athlete offers. But does hunger truly equal need here? Does the world really need football, or soccer, or baseball or basketball or rugby or lacrosse or curling?
It certainly can offer good things. I still maintain there is a particular thrill, the thrill of truly not knowing how the particular drama before you will end, whether the Hail Mary pass or the long fly ball will be caught, that doesn't truly have an equal in other fields of human endeavor. Reading a new book provides the uncertainty, but it is a singular endeavor, not a communal one. A new play or a new musical work may provide that communal thrill, but frankly those don't come along that often (and after a few times you know how Henry V or Beethoven's Ninth end). Every game is new. Just because Team A has won all their games and Team B has lost all theirs doesn't prevent Team B from beating Team A. The slap-hitting shortstop can drive the ball out of the park; the backup quarterback can lead the game-winning drive.
But does this hunger rise to the level of need? And does the increasing baggage of the destruction of human bodies weigh against sports (football in particular to be sure, but all sports to some degree) as a vocation, as a meeting of the world's need?
We don't get to skirt the question.
Do we need sports?
*Of course Buechner's is not the only possible description of vocation, but other such definitions will likely raise similar questions.
Now be nice, boys...
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