a christian defense of limited competition: part three

Superficial and Arbitrary versus Pure and Arbitrary Competition: Thoughts on Sports and Fanaticism

To my own surprise, I have come to believe that playing sports—and to a lesser degree, watching sports—can aid in Christian discipleship. However, to make sports a useful tool it must always be kept within the confines of superficial and arbitrary competition. Whenever games and sports are played or vicariously enjoyed for the primary purpose of finding a winner over a loser—pure and arbitrary competition—they forfeit the good that competitive activities have to offer discipleship.      

There are plenty of examples of how competitive activities have benefited followers of Jesus. First of all, it takes incredible discipline to accomplish some of the feats in sports. As a high school teacher, I had the opportunity to watch students work with unmatched resolve to accomplish the goals they had set for themselves or their teams. Usually, though not always, that discipline carried over into other areas of their lives.

Also, sports or games can teach us the art of building community—collaborative hard work aimed towards a common goal is incredibly effective to this end. Teams learning to work together, to appreciate the role of every individual, to compensate for the weaknesses of some and make room for the strengths of others, all of this is training in the kind of body that Jesus instructs us to be.

Finally, competitive activities can create a new avenue for us to acquire particular goods that would otherwise be very difficult to attain. For example, some may find it difficult to incorporate healthy physical activity into their lives, but find that playing racquetball with a friend is both easier to gain motivation and still allows time for fellowship. Thus, competitive games can generate a more interesting and structured way to accomplish a good.

There are many more examples, I am sure, but one thing must be kept in mind—when competition is ultimately about finding a single victor, these goods are polluted. Community, self-discipline, joy, health—these  goods, and others like them,  can be shared by all who participate and must always be the primary purpose for which one engages in games or sports. When these goods are eclipsed by the desire to win, that competitive activity has ceased to be an instrument for discipleship and becomes an indulgence in pride. When establishing a winner over a loser becomes the primary reason for sports or games, one discovers that fellowship becomes rivalry, virtuous discipline becomes vicious conceit, health is turned to injury, and love becomes a strange concept that has no context.            

Keeping competitive activities within the confines of superficial arbitrary competition and making sure everyone wins at the end of the day is incredibly difficult. There are very strong currents that move against this task. Cultural pressure says that winning must be the point, anything else is absurd. Personally we feel our pride resisting the humility of seeking the good of others first. But this is precisely why competitive activities like sports can be such a good tool for discipleship. These forces, in society and in ourselves, are exposed. They can be resisted and they can be overcome. Yet, we must not neglect the responsibility to resist them, for many have already justified their surrender to social norms and human nature.    

  

Can we say, “It is just a game” without our insides aching? We need to be rid of the desires that well up and resist that possibility. We must be able to set aside pride, selfish ambition, and conceit. We must let it be just a game, just a tool for the goods that we all can share. And it is hard to do this when playing a competitive game, but surprisingly, it seems our culture has made it even more difficult to say “it is just a game” when watching it.

Fanaticism versus Spectatorship

In this section I want to consider what it means to be both a follower of Jesus and one who enjoys sports vicariously through sports teams in which they do not directly participate. To be a fan, shortened from the word fanatic, is to have an uncritical, arbitrary enthusiasm or zeal for something. In our current context, I assume that thing to be a sports team. While location or some other arbitrary personal connection, like a childhood memory or alma mater, seems to be the most common reason for allegiance, there is generally no principled reason for one’s fanaticism. Thus, the most common expression of sports fanaticism is a vicarious form of pure and arbitrary competition. Again, I believe that pure and arbitrary competition is the least likely kind of competition to resemble the way of Jesus and, therefore, believe that there must be an alternative to sports fanaticism if Christians are going to continue to vicariously engage in sports. I believe the alternative is spectatorship, allowing sports to be superficial and arbitrary, allowing all who watch to be edified.

In defense of sports fanaticism—swearing allegiance to one team—one might say that fanaticism serves the purpose of fellowship, or unity building. That is, the purpose for choosing one team is to deepen the connection one has to fellow fanatics. While unity and fellowship are definitely goods to be desired, and fanaticism has historically proven to offer this, building unity by choosing an arbitrary opponent or enemy is the worst kind of unity. Creating fellowship by arbitrarily alienating others is certainly not the way of Jesus. Unfortunately, my experience verifies the dangers of this kind of behavior. It is much too often the case that friendships and marriages, brotherhood and communities, are strained because of an arbitrary allegiance to teams. I wish this were an overstatement.

Still another objection might be that fanaticism is fun, it is the most pleasurable way to vicariously engage in sports. Even if that were true, though I am certain it is not, fun and pleasure alone can never serve as a justification. If we allow the fact that something is simply more pleasurable to justify our behavior, we can justify any indulgent and despicable action. However, I believe the alternative to fanaticism, what I am calling spectatorship, will open up a deeper level of enjoyment in vicariously engaging in sports.  

One of the flaws of fanaticism is that it undermines the virtue of the game. By virtue of the game I mean the best possible expression of the rules, best use of strategy within those rules, and highest potential of the specific skills needed in the players (for example, the virtue of a knife is sharpness, durability, etc.;  the virtue of a baseball is roundness, proper density and size, etc.).  The most obvious reason for cheering during a game is when it is virtuous—when a player makes a skillful maneuver, when an effective strategy is employed, when rules are accurately enforced, and so on. Rather, fanatics prefer to demonize every action of the “opposing” team, refusing to acknowledge the virtue that has been displayed. Thus, one who truly loves the game, as opposed to a team, and is willing to cheer for virtue is even “worse” than the opposition, deserving of the most violent derision.  To be a team fanatic means one must swear an uncritical allegiance to a team, even when the team lacks all the virtues of the game, undermining the very thing that the players have trained to accomplish. (It should not surprise us then, given this kind of conditioning from childhood, that people find it so natural, and so necessary, to swear uncritical allegiance to a nation or a political party or a religious group, no matter how virtuous.)

I do not mean to say that one cannot follow a team, have a preferred winner, or feel a connection to a particular team or player. Rather, I want to make a case for a slightly more detached, more critical approach than fanaticism, what I have been calling spectatorship. To cheer for the virtuous elements of the game, to appreciate excellence no matter who displays it, to be critical of even one’s preferred team would create a unity in spectatorship that fanaticism could never offer. Kansas and Missouri fanatics should let go of their arbitrary allegiances and find unity in an appreciation of the game. This would completely disarm the vicarious pure and arbitrary competition that is dissonant with discipleship and turn it into something mutually beneficial to all who engage in it. Even though the preferred team lost, everyone still wins—a good and virtuous game was played and enjoyed.

Recently, a friend of mine invited me to watch a basketball game with him. This man was older and wiser than me, so I decided that, though I saw little value in the game, I might benefit from the time spent with him. It turns out I learned quite a bit. I was pleasantly surprised to see that, though he had a preference that one team win over the other, he was equally impressed by the skill of each and every player, regardless of the team. Many times throughout the game he reminded me of the hours of hard work that must be invested into the few seconds it took to execute a play. He spoke critically about the character of the players, appreciating the patience and concentration of some, but disappointed in the egotistical, rash, or hostile behavior of others. When the game had concluded, the team that he preferred lost, but he was not angry or sad, rather he expressed gratitude that he had the opportunity to see such skill and hard work portrayed on his television—he said it was a good game. I suppose true fanatics will cringe, but this is how I imagine a follower of Jesus would enjoy a sports game.     

This experience opened my mind to a possibility that I had unfairly ruled out early on in life—watching sports can be beneficial. I believe if fanaticism can be transformed into spectatorship, then watching sports is much like engaging good music, paintings, literature, or film. A friend of mine once told me that Michael Jordan was “poetry in motion”—I am not quite the romantic he is, but I think I am closer to understanding his statement. The skill and discipline of an athlete, the excellent strategy of a coach, the flawless unity of a team, can inspire a person in the same way great works of literature can inspire a person.     

Of course, we have kept this discussion somewhat romanticized, pretending that sports and spectatorship are always purely about the game, though we know that it is—or has become—something much less attractive. It is not always only a game, but often it is also a business, bringing with it a much deeper complexity of competition. To support a group of athletes is one thing, but to support the business practices of administrative sports millionaires requires a very different critical approach.