More on Sports and Idolatry: Another Response to Max
Prior to the last couple weeks of blogging hiatus, I had been engaged in an exchange with Max Goss, editor of Right Reason, about idolatry, specifically about how sports have become idolatrous for many people in American culture.
Now that travel and writing obligations have been satisfied, I’d like to return to that conversation. If you haven’t been following along, I’d suggest you read the posts here, and here before continuing with this one.
In his most recent response to my charge, Max writes:
Literally worshiping an earthly pleasure is obviously idolatry (by definition), and perhaps so is demanding that an earthly pleasure somehow enable one to rise above his earthly limits. Now, the hard part. Under what circumstances does a love of sports qualify? You don't need to write a book--just give a plausible, concrete example, real or invented. I, for one, have never met anyone who has demanded of a sport something that only Christ can supply, such as the remission of sins, communion with the Father, or eternal life. To be sure, people do seek from sports some things associated with religion, such as a feeling of solidarity with their fellow men, a sense of being part of a meaningful narrative, the satisfaction of achieving something so decisively as to make a difference in the world, and so on. But I don't see what is idolatrous about such things, even if they can only be most fully enjoyed through union with Christ.
Max says he’s never met anyone who has demanded something of a sport only Christ can supply like remission of sins etc. If that is the criteria by which we determine what activities are idolatrous, then even the worship of Ba’al is ruled out. When God’s people turn to idol worship in the Old Testament, they are not looking for forgiveness for their sins or communion with the Father, yet God clearly counted their actions as idolatry.
The issue I have been driving at is not merely that people derive from sports “some things associated with religion,” but that people look to all sorts of created entities as substitutes God. We have an inborn tendency to look everywhere else for an answer to our dilemma, for some other god than God. It is the condition of being human to look for Life from everything but its author. This inclination of ours is why the first and second commandments are necessary.
Max asks for a concrete example of when love of sports becomes idolatrous. Given my understanding of idolatry as looking for true, inward life from a created thing, this is an easy task. Consider the man who does not think of God at all, but occupies himself and distracts himself with games and statistics and mulling over strategies. For this man, sports are an idol. For the man who does not love God, everything he loves in His stead is an idol.
Max makes some substantive points in his final paragraph which I will respond to individually.
First, he writes:
Many Christians, apparently unable to differentiate degrees of sinfulness, condemn everything they disapprove of in the sternest possible terms. And this takes the oomph out of their condemnations of the stuff that is really bad, like easy divorce, for instance.
No doubt. I’ve noticed that myself. I don’t think, however, that my pointing out that we live in an idolatrous culture whose idolatry manifests in multiple ways sometimes including its zeal for sports indicates I am failing to differentiate between degrees of sinfulness.
Max goes on:
Second, suspicion of innocent, constructive, universal pleasures makes me wonder about one's theology. After all, as C. Hays cogently points out, there is no neat dichotomy between religious life and the rest of life--sport itself can be an avenue for Christian virtue.
Again, no argument here. I enjoy innocent pleasures as much as the next guy.
Finally, it makes me wonder about one's motives, though I am naturally reluctant to make any hasty judgments here. Is it an accident that single people rant about the idol of marriage and unathletic people rant about the idol of sports? (For the record, I have no idea how inclined you are towards sports--I am making a generalization based on other people's rantings.) It is comparatively rare to hear people condemn as idols the things that they themselves spend a lot of time, money, and energy on.
What elevates any created thing to idol status is not the amount of time; money or energy one spends on it. I have said previously that fervent enjoyment of sports is not idolatry. Idolatry is an inward condition of the heart. The issue is not how much of one’s time or effort is devoted to a thing, but how that thing either impedes or enhances one’s love for God.
I’d like to ask Max to take his turn answering a few questions.
It might help to clarify our disagreement (if there is one) if he would elaborate on his own definition of idolatry. It seems to me our whole discussion turns on this issue.
I’d like to know if he disagrees with me that any created thing can be an idol if pursued without reference to God ?
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