Friends: There are winners and there are losers and I wonder if there will be sports in heaven.  No, seriously.  Meanwhile, I pray your Easter was blessed and Christ’s resurrection continues to resonate in your soul.  Have a great week!  Bob

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Spirituality Column #907

April 2, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Sporting Spirit

By Bob Walters

“I hate losing even more than I love winning.” – Jimmy Connors, 1970s tennis champ

“God loves to see his kids play.” Russ Blowers (1924-2007), preacher of the Gospel

Please don’t blow this off just because it seems like a dumb question: Will there be sports in heaven? This coming from a once-upon-a-time sportswriter … me.

This is something I’ve been thinking about, theologically and unsatisfactorily, for the past several months.  We’ll talk about eternal heaven in a minute, but first let’s start with sports, today’s 24/7/365 here-and-now-and-always presence of God’s kids at play.

Sports, overall, is as prominent a cultural idol as currently exists.  And we’re lucky.  We have time for sports because we have conquered most elements of human survival.  We can afford to worry about stuff that doesn’t really matter and oh, how we expend emotional energy on contests that neither affect us nor that we can control.

Note the pro-football jerseys in church on game days.  How’s your NCAA basketball bracket doing?  Is this finally Purdue’s year? (Breathe deeply, Boiler faithful.)  Baseball’s opening day last week marked the initiation of spring melding into the boys of summer.  It’s Easter, so the Master’s golf tournament, yea verily, draws nigh.

Closer to home, what’s up with your kids’ travel sports schedules? Or even the local, no-tryouts, everybody-gets-a-trophy, two-or-three-times-a- week rec leagues for baseball, softball, basketball, soccer, etc.?  How about … swim team! … sunrise practices and steamy hours in poolside bleachers? God loves to see his kids play; we’re just waiting for practice to be over. Breakfast is a pop tart; dinner likely a drive-through.

Sports breeds, and needs, a competitive spirit which I don’t really think we’ll need beyond the pearly gates.  It also develops confidence, strength, courage, character, and perseverance, all exceptional and needed virtues in this life; love dominates the next.

My central negative issue with sports comes to a point at the notion of “identity.”  I’ve never liked being call a “fan” of anything, although my own young life and well into adulthood was filled with tennis. I played, taught, officiated, and was a fan of the 1970s era pro tennis tour, most players of which (men and women) I called lines for at their tournaments in Indy.

So, I was a “tennis guy.”  Hence, I quote feisty champion Jimmy Connors above. 

My problem with our tenacious current cultural idolatry of sports, in the eternal view, is that our sports passions – you know, the “We’re Number One!” “Wait ‘til next year!” “We was robbed!” passions – don’t translate well into heavenly grace and love.

A few weeks ago, that “grace and love” part popped into perspective. Ah ha! If we want to examine the eternal worth of sports in our lives, it is not in the win-loss metric to be better than the other guy (or gal). In heaven – once we’re there – we’re all even-steven. We will play and not only enjoy ourselves; we’ll cheer the skills, grace, and passion of others. Beyond winning and losing is God – with a smile – watching us play,

I possess a “new heaven and new earth” view of the eternal (Revelation 21); i.e., heaven as a perfect, busy, sin-free earth as opposed to a vaporous, floating praise-fest.

Rewards? Yeah, but who knows what that means? Friend and pastor Dave Faust says of rewards, “Whatever they are, we won’t be disappointed.”

And there it is.

Sports with joy … without being disappointed?  How heavenly that would be.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) was yelled at by most pro tennis players of the 70s.