A reflection on Super Bowl LIX and life’s ultimate purpose
Trey Howard, age ten, shielded his toddler sister when a medical jet crashed in northeast Philadelphia on January 31, killing seven and injuring twenty-four others. His bravery landed him in the hospital with a severe head injury.
When he woke up after emergency brain surgery, the die-hard Eagles fan’s first words were, “We didn’t play yesterday, did we?” When he was assured that he had not missed the Super Bowl, he then asked, “Daddy, did I save my sister?”
Eagles star wide receiver A. J. Brown, when he heard about Trey’s bravery, responded: “Speedy recovery! You are a Hero young man! I’m going to come see you when I get back. Hopefully with some hardware. Playing for you on Sunday my man.” Two Philadelphia Eagles cheerleaders also visited him in his hospital room to bring him team paraphernalia for the big game.
Trey must be a happy young man this morning after Brown and his teammates scored a decisive victory in last night’s Super Bowl. His love for the Eagles and their support for him will hopefully expedite his quick and full recovery.
Watching the game with fifty friends
More than 119 million people were expected to watch last night’s contest. In a listing of the one hundred most-watched primetime television shows in 2024, the top eleven are all NFL games. By a wide margin, Americans say football is “America’s sport.”
Cognitive psychologists at Cornell University would not be surprised. They explain the continuing popularity of the league by noting that professional football is engrained in popular culture, the league’s parity keeps things interesting, and fantasy football and betting on games make the outcomes highly personal for fans.
Their explanation that most resonated with me, however, was the fact that “relationships are built through the love of the NFL.” Families and friends gather to watch games; fans rejoice or grieve together with their teams as they win or lose.
My wife and I witnessed this personally last night as we watched the game along with fifty friends from our Sunday school class. I cannot think of another event that would have brought so many of us together.
Eating what our friends are eating
There’s another aspect to the popularity of the Super Bowl that the Cornell psychologists did not note. For this, we turn to one of history’s most influential philosophers.
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche identified the “will to power” as an innate drive in all humans. He was right: from Satan’s appeal to the first humans to “be like God” (Genesis 3:5) to today, each temptation and decision we face is a variation on the same theme (cf. James 1:14–15).
Even now, I am tempted to exercise my “will to power” by impressing you with what I am writing. You are perhaps hoping that what I write will somehow empower you as you go about your day.
In Nietzsche’s view, this is as things should be. He wanted us to strive to be an Ũbermensch, an “overcomer” in life. But he lamented that most choose to be what he called the “last man”—passive nihilists who are tired of life, take no risks, and seek only security and comfort. Such a way of life brings humanity’s progress to a grinding halt, making us the “last” of the race.
Imagining Nietzsche watching last night’s game, I think he would identify the players on the field as “overcomers” and the fans in the stands and on their couches at home as the “last men.” We express our innate “will to power” vicariously by watching athletes do what we cannot do, but this brings us no closer to being an Übermensch in reality. Nietzsche would add that the community by which we experienced the game together only adds to our largesse as it endorses and encourages conformity to the collective.
For example, studies show that we consume more food when we eat with overweight people as we conform to the dietary norms around us. You can try this for yourself: If you watched the Super Bowl with friends, did you tend to eat and drink what they ate and drank, even if you wouldn’t do so on your own?
Is there a third option?
Where does this leave us?
It would seem we have a binary choice between being a self-driven “overcomer” and a passive “last man.” There were only two kinds of people in the New Orleans Superdome last night: the world-class athletes who played in the game and those who watched them.
But perhaps there’s a third option.
Perhaps there’s a larger purpose behind our existence, a cause so great that no human, not even an “overcomer,” can achieve it. This higher calling would necessarily require an Übermensch greater than humans who calls us to submit our lives to him (Romans 12:1) and then to “toil . . . with all his energy that he powerfully works within [us]” (Colossians 1:29).
Perhaps this “energy” is given to us in community with others as we labor collectively to accomplish a larger purpose than any individual can fulfill (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:27). Perhaps this larger purpose is so eternally significant that it is worth all temporal sacrifice.
If we commit ourselves to this purpose by loving our Lord and our neighbor unconditionally (Matthew 22:37–39), we will serve others as sacrificially as Trey Howard protected his little sister. And long after the Eagles’ historic win last night, our lives will make an impact that changes souls and echoes in eternity.
Rick Warren observed,
“You were made by God and for God, and until you understand that, life will never make sense.”
Will your life “make sense” today?
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“There is no one insignificant in the purposes of God.” —Alistair Begg
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