Contact sports

In this clip, David Platt makes some good points:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve9jPfJeT2k

1. He can get away with it because he's such a likable guy. But as a rule, I think it's a mistake for pastors to scold parishioners about sports. They're talking to the wrong audience. They should be grateful that people do attend their church, given all the competition for their attention. 

2. A danger with invidious comparisons is that it cuts both ways. What if someone replies that he'd find church more exciting if the pastor didn't make it so boring. Are there things pastors can do to make church legitimately more interesting and engaging? 

3. Another issue is recognition that there are things we can change and things we can't. Scolding sports fans won't change minds. It's not likely to make them less fond of sports. Rather, it alienates the from the church.

A better strategy is to take advantage of popular interest in sports. Use that as a vehicle to reach the lost. Don't wait for sports fans to come to church; rather bring church to them! For instance:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/02/mounting-up-with-wings-like-eagles.html

Douglas Groothuis

Abstract: I argue that football is morally objectionable because it is intrinsically violent and thus is conducive to vice in both its players and its fans. By way of contrast, I argue that baseball is only contingently violent, that it is not based on violence, and that it is, as such, a morally superior sport. 

1. Football is intrinsically violent. It cannot be played without heavy padding and physical punishment. Professional players typically undergo multiple surgeries for repeated injuries. Many of these injuries are permanently debilitating. The nature of the sport encourages a toleration for, and even promotion of, violence. Players attempt to injure each other to take them out of the game. Many young men are seriously injured while playing football. Why risk the damage to a growing body? If the body is “fearfully and wonderfully made” and the temple of the Holy Spirit for the Christian, why should anyone treat one’s own body and other’s bodies to so much physical abuse? We were not designed for this kind of punishment.

http://www.epsociety.org/userfiles/DiscussionOnAustinSports.pdf

He raises some valid questions and concerns. That said:

i) There's the danger of elitism. Groothuis is a philosophy prof. The fact that football is unappealing to him isn't the benchmark for boys and men who have a passion for football.

ii) Overshadowing all of life is the inexorable specter of human mortality. That prompts us take risks we'd otherwise avoid, because sooner or later we're going to die anyway. Due, moreover, to the aging process, there's an unrepeatable window of opportunity to do certain things. If you wait too long, that's a lost opportunity you never get back. You can be health nut and still die of Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. 

iii) There's lots of talk about "racial reconciliation", but few venues are better than a ball field to achieve that objective.

iv) We live in a society where the cultural elites are making every effort to suppress masculinity. But the predictable result is to make many young men recoil against feminism. It creates a backlash. 

If we don't have contact sports with rules and protective equipment, boys will resort to aggressive behavior without the safeguards. The alternative won't be less violence but more violence.

v) Speaking of which, I'm bemused by social commentators who say football is violent. In a very tame, domesticated way that's true, but we've become so spoiled by contact sports that we've forgotten what real male violence looks like. Left to their own devices, males have a propensity for extreme violence. Consider the Iroquois. That was a heathen warrior culture. Here's an example of what men are capable of doing when they lack any cultural Christian restraint:

As they went they saw the Iroquois braves slaughtering the remaining Indians [Hurons] in the village, setting the wigwams afire, and throwing the wounded people and little children into the flames. Both priests were tied to stakes. Mocking baptism, the Iroquois poured boiling water over their heads to scald them. They then cut off the nose, ears, lips, and other body parts of de Brebeuf, smashed his teeth with a club, put red hot hatchet blades on his shoulders, put hot coals on top of his head, and then smashed his skull with a tomahawk. They pulled out the eyes of Lalemont and forced hot coals into the sockets, they sliced open his thighs in the form of a cross and then burned him at the stake. Both priests prayed as long as they could and proclaimed their love and forgiveness for their torturers. (The account of their martyrdom was made public by some of the Indians who had witnessed it and later were converted to the Catholic Faith.) Because de Brebeuf died so stoically without crying out, something the Indians greatly admired, they cut out his heart and liver after his death and ate them raw, so they could, in their belief, obtain his kind of courage and ability to endure pain.

https://catholicexchange.com/the-martyrdom-of-st-john-de-brebeuf

That capacity is always lurking just under the surface. Remove Christian ethics, then watch men revert to unmitigated savagery. Instead of whining about the "violence" of contact sports, we should we grateful for outlets that channel and curb male aggression.