“What is the point of sport?”
A pastor interrupted me during a seminar with a simple yet profound question: What even is the point of sport? Why do you care about it so much?
If you turn to most systematic theologies or books on cultural engagement, you might be left with the same question. Music, drama, and literature are frequently acknowledged as legitimate areas of Christian reflection, but sport is often overlooked.
Sport though is deeply embedded in our society. Over nine million people actively participate in the UK alone, with millions more watching. Globally, its influence is undeniable. Australian commentator Stephen McAlpine observes:
“Sport in the West has taken on an almost teaching role, an almost religious instruction role, promoting values and viewpoints that have arisen in the Western world…and it’s telling wider society what human flourishing is all about.”
Is it maybe because the world of sport, what it values, how it behaves and the stories it tells, seems to clash in many areas with the world of the Bible?
The world of sport
Consider the slogans of major sports brands, which reveal the values that underpin athletic culture (and a number of what I’d call, half-truths):
- Nike recently told us that ‘Winning Isn’t For Everyone’ whilst making it clear that was the primary purpose for all athletes.
- Adidas’ ‘Impossible is Nothing’ tells its customers that with determination and hard work you can do anything.
- New Balance recently encouraged athletes to ‘Run Your Way’ – dressing how you want, running where you want.
It can be complex to talk about one ‘world’ of sport. Even in the slogans above you can see a divide: between team sports and individual sports; elite athletes for whom sport is a career and competitive or leisurely athletes for whom sport is less about victory and more about health and wellbeing.
These values raise questions for Christians: How do we pursue victory while loving our opponents? How can we dedicate ourselves to sport without compromising our faith?
So how should we think biblically about sport?
As part of Crosslands Cultivate we’ve been looking at Biblical Critical Theory by Chris Watkin. In it he reminds us, “Among the cornucopia of deities the God of the Bible is unique and therefore the Bible offers a unique understanding of society and culture, one that reflects who that God really is.” [1]
So whilst there are a number of ways to answer this (and you can read about them in a new book soon) the answer starts with understanding the nature of God.
Sport helps us meet God
Having studied Islamic theology, I’ve found that Islamic scholars struggle to identify a Quranic or Hadith-based perspective on culture in a positive light. Islam emphasises Allah’s transcendence and distance, leaving little room for a personal relationship with God in daily activities.
The God of the Bible, by contrast, is both transcendent and immanent—He reigns sovereignly but is also intimately involved in our lives. This truth gives all of our lives purpose. Nothing is outside of His will, including the talents, gifts, and passions of athletes and the games they play.
Many Christian athletes use the hashtag #AO1—Audience of One—as a reminder that God’s opinion matters most. However, the phrase could unintentionally suggest that God is merely an observer, watching from the stands. Some sports people can have a problematic image of God that sees him like a coach. Someone watching from afar and deciding if their performance is good enough to bless. It’s an image which emphasises his absoluteness.
God though is not only in the stands as we play. He is in us, by his Spirit, like the air we breathe, enabling us every step of the way. God sustains us. God empowers us. God is with us, alongside us, in all the highs and lows of our sport. Incredibly the good news of the gospel is not that God stayed ‘up there’ but that he ‘came down’ to dwell amongst us and within us by his spirit.
Sport, then, can be a means through which we encounter God and draw closer to Him. This could be when he reminds us of his sovereignty and his ultimate purpose for us when we get too obsessed with winning or too low when we lose. It could be when he draws us to our knees in prayer as injury strikes again, dashing our season’s goals into pieces. It could be in those moments of deep relationship with a team-mate, when we realise this is why God placed us in this team.
Sport helps us know the trinitarian God
While sport often reflects human-centered values—self-improvement, competition, and success—ultimate reality is God-centered and Trinitarian in nature.
It’s dangerous to try to come up with analogies or pictures to explain the trinity. Sport, though, potentially offers us one way to understand the unexplainable. God is both one and three. All sports are team sports in some form and they offer us a picture of the Trinity’s unity and diversity.
In sport we also have “singularity and plurality, uniqueness and community”[2] as the team is made up of its individual parts. There is Bayern Munich and Harry Kane who plays for Bayern Munich. The trinitarian God then also allows us to agree with a coach who exhorts his winger to “express yourself” and at the same time iterates “there is no I in team.” He allows there to be both a Ballon d’or winner and a Premier League team champion.
The doctrine of the trinity also challenges the notion that our worth is based on performance. Unlike other gods who demand appeasement, the triune God needs nothing from us. He creates not because he needs to, but out of an overflow of love.
American hurdler Sydney Mclaughlin-Levrone narrated a common story of all sportspeople:
“If I won, that was my worth, my value. If I was loved, that was my worth, my value.” [3]
Sport though is created within a trinitarian world and therefore it cannot be a means to earn God’s favour. God did not create us because he needed us to offer him anything. Sport then, and all of culture, used rightly, is a gift to be enjoyed – a reflection of a Creator who delights in His creation.
Sport is challenged by a God of love
Chris Watkin notes that before creation, the relationships within the Trinity were not marked by rivalry or competition, but by love. Reality does not begin with power, but with love. This raises a fundamental challenge to much of elite sport: What does it look like to love while competing?
Tim Keller said that our culture is dominated by career advancement and power and so relationships are hard and poor. [4] Sport reflects this culture.
Competition, by its nature, involves comparison. If it is used to elevate ourselves at the expense of others, it contradicts the character of God, where the three are described in comparison to each other, but not in a way which leads to division or jealousy. In the trinity there is unity and a clarity of roles. There is ultimately love.
Many of the problems found in sport come from an elevated view of self; a desire to win at all costs and to prove yourself. Competition though can be redeemed. It can be where we can discover our strengths and weaknesses, refine our character, and learn about our place in creation. When viewed in this way, competition becomes a tool for growth rather than self-glorification.
It can also become a way to love our neighbour as we do this together.
In sport we often ‘other’ opponents:
- “They’re all cheats”
- “West Ham fans are all thugs”
- “The referee is useless.”
But as Watkin says: “the love relationships of the Trinity help us think about sameness and difference in a way that provides for distinctness, distance and honouring, as well as intimacy, knowledge and mutuality.” [5]
Maybe here there is a new way to view an opponent. Not just as the ‘other’ to be violently defeated but as someone in mutual relationship with us, also known and loved by God, uniquely created to image him and to help bring out the best in us as we do this creative activity of sport together.
Sport is a gift
Maybe competition redeemed, in the image of the trinitarian God could teach the world something better than it often sees when it looks at sport. Sport like this would show the world more of what human flourishing is all about – a life marked by a security, not needing to prove ourselves and an outward focus on serving those we play with and against.
When sport and competition is spoken about in this way, it is attractive to the watching world. Rafa Nadal famously spoke of his rivalry with Roger Federer as one which made him better. Rory McIlroy has narrated his love for the team side of golf, recognising it’s a more fulfilling way to compete, helping and serving others and not just yourself.
Here then we begin to see why sport might hold such a prominent place in God’s creation. It is not a mere human invention or a cultural distraction, but a good gift—one that, like all good things, can be distorted but also be redeemed. It has been given to help us grasp more of his Fatherly sovereignty and to reflect him in relationships of love. And when we inevitably get it wrong, it can be a tool to help direct us back to God.
Sport, then, is not just something we do. It is something God, in His grace, has given us—to enjoy, to grow through, and ultimately, to know Him, our trinitarian God, better.
References
- Chris Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2022) 34.
- Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory, 42.
- Sydney McLaughlin Levrone, Far Beyond Gold: Running from Fear to Faith, (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson: 2024)
- Timothy Keller, “Before the Beginning,” sermon on Genesis 1:1-3, preached at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 16, 2008, available at http://www.gospelinlife.com/before-the-beginning-6078.htm
- Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory, 47.