Introducing TWIST

"It is... reasonable to consider sport the newest and fastest-growing religion, far outdistancing whatever is in second place."

That is a quote from Charles Prebish from his book Religion and Sport: The Meeting of Sacred and Profane. Even more profound than the quote itself is that it was written in 1993. Before the rise of the internet. Before smartphones. Before the recent meteoric rise of fantasy sports.

Before blogging.

Ok, I don't know about that last one, but at the very least before THIS blog helped prepare you to engage sports and theology in a new and combined away.

Can sports and theology truly be twisted together to make sense? And make sense of each other?

I believe they can. I believe they are.

The problem with the discussion around theology and sports is that there isn't much of one that happens. There are two main problems. The first is that the religious often file sports under the label of "idol" or "sin." For example:

"Can you believe he skipped church for a round of golf?"
"There's too much greed in sports, I won't watch it."
"I won't root for (guys like) Michael Vick." (I'll blog on this one in a future post)

The second problem is that, religious or not, we have solely become consumers and addicts. For example:

The billion dollar industries of fantasy sports.
"Don't talk to me on the day after my team loses."
The striking intersection between athletes, advertising, Hollywood and pop culture in recent history.
The undertow of influence sports has on ALL of us as I wrote about here at The High Calling.

These problems, however, shouldn't become our definition of sports. If we see problems in something, I believe it's because we long for the good in it. We sense a deeper quality about sports, though we can't often put our finger on it.

Well let's put our finger on it!

The solution is out there, and sports, despite all of the problems and shortcomings, is good. And God loves sports.

More than we do.

Better than we do.

And that is a twist on sports.