The popularity of football and “the most infallible sign of the presence of God”

NOTE: A video depicting the Obamas as primates dominated headlines over the weekend. For a biblical and personal response, please see my latest website article.

The Seattle Seahawks won yesterday’s Super Bowl LX over the New England Patriots with a dominant defensive performance. If you’re like the vast majority of us, you don’t live in either team’s media market and thus likely don’t have a personal interest in what I just wrote. But if you’re like more than two hundred million other Americans, you watched the game (or at least part of it) anyway, as did people in over 180 countries in nearly 25 languages.

Perhaps it was the party you attended for which the game was more or less an excuse to go. Perhaps it was gathering with family and friends for this now-annual tradition. Perhaps it was the commercials that interested you more than the game. Those who made them certainly hope you watched, since they spent $8 million on a single thirty-second ad.

Nonetheless, you probably knew the result of the Super Bowl before you read it in my article this morning. I would not necessarily expect the same if I were writing about the World Series, the Kentucky Derby, the Masters, or any other headline sports event. But NFL football and its championship game hold an unrivaled place in our culture.

As I am reflecting on this fact today, I am also wondering why it is so.

And I am wondering if the explanation matters for the rest of the year.

It turns out, the answer to my first question answers the second as well.

“Sentiment, emotion, passion, and allegiance”

Reasons for the popularity of professional football are well known and unsurprising: among other factors, watching the game fosters relationships, tailgating is fun, league parity keeps things interesting, the game is fast-paced, and fantasy football has real stakes.

A game with roots in antiquity, as I noted in my recent website article on the history of the Super Bowl, has become one of the most dominant parts of contemporary culture. Nothing rivals it for viewership, ad revenue, or any other audience metric.

But I think there is another factor at work here, one that is less obvious but even more significant.

The British political philosopher Edmund Burke (1729–1797) is widely considered to be the founder of conservatism. A biographer summarizes his worldview this way:

Human passions are guided by empathy and imagination. Human well-being is grounded in a social order whose values are given by divine providence. Human reason is limited in scope, and insufficient as a basis for public morality. . . .

People cannot reason themselves into a good society, for a good society is rooted not merely in reason but in the sentiments and the emotions.

Burke asserted that “politics ought to be adjusted, not to human reasonings, but to human nature; of which the reason is but a part, and by no means the greatest part.” His biographer therefore notes:

Human reason is a wonderful thing, but Burke insists we are above all creatures of sentiment, emotion, passion, and allegiance, for good or ill. What matters and should matter to us is not abstract liberties, but the liberty to live our lives well alongside others and in our communities.

Burkean philosophy and football

What does Burkean political philosophy have to do with the popularity of the Super Bowl?

“Sentiment, emotion, [and] passion” aptly describe a typical fan’s experience. We feel the highs and lows of the game. We cringe at the physical collisions and marvel at the athletic exploits. None of this is a rational choice or the product of a rational process.

In addition, almost nothing regarding our “allegiance” to our preferred team is the product of reason. I cannot imagine that many fans examine a team’s roster in detail, explore its finances, scrutinize its leadership structure, and then make a rational decision to support it. Our allegiance is the product of where we live and/or other emotional factors that tie us to our team “for good or ill.”

All of this points to the transformational heart of biblical Christianity, a fact that explains its explosive early growth and that compels us to embrace it for ourselves.

“The life was made manifest”

Six decades after he left his father’s fishing boat to follow Jesus (Matthew 4:21–22), John was still not over the experience. He described his relationship with his Lord in these intimate terms:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us (1 John 1:1–2).

After teaching world religions with four seminaries and writing numerous books and articles in the area, I can report that no other religion offers such a personal engagement with the deity it worships. But the living Lord Jesus, God “made manifest to us,” could be “looked upon” and “touched with our hands.” His followers heard his omniscient wisdom, experienced his omnipotent power, and felt his omnibenevolent grace.

Then, when they were “filled with the Holy Spirit” at Pentecost, they were so transformed and empowered that they had to tell “the mighty works of God” and Peter had to preach the glorious gospel of redemption in Christ (Acts 2:4, 11, 14). The movement that resulted worked out its worldview with reasoned brilliance, to be sure, as any reading of the book of Romans will show.

But it was birthed in an intimate engagement with the personal, living Lord Jesus, and never lost its fervor for him.

“The most infallible sign of the presence of God”

The Christians who have made the greatest impact on my life were the believers who were the most passionate about their Lord. Their joy in Jesus was contagious and appealing. Their commitment to Christ, often in the face of great challenges and suffering, made me want what they had.

How can we experience Jesus in such a passionate way?

David said to God, “In your presence there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11; note the present tense). If we make time today to meet with the living Lord Jesus, to kneel before him in adoration, hear his voice, feel his touch, and give him our lives in profound gratitude for his astounding grace, how can we be the same?

The brilliant philosopher and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin claimed, “Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.” Julian of Norwich was therefore right to say,

“The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.”

Will you experience such joy today?

Quote for the day:

“No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.” —C. S. Lewis

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Denison Forum