"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play…it is war minus the shooting."
Integrity
You are to use accurate scales, an accurate ephah and an accurate bath. Ezekiel 45:10Ezekiel may not seem the most likely place to look for inspiration for your sporting life but this little verse in a section of instructions for Israel communicated an important truth to me. We are to take our Christian integrity into the sportsworld with us.
The practical outworkings of this principle will vary from sport to sport and you must apply it in your own situation. There are so many examples: here are a few
• World cricket has been dealing with allegations of bribery, match-fixing and betting scandals;
• Diving (pretending you have been tripped) to con the referee into giving a foul is a big issue in football;
• False ages is a problem in some parts of the world, with players claiming to be younger than they are in order to compete in a lower age-group;
• Some sports like golf rely on the player to call the penalty on themselves if they move their ball without anyone else seeing it.
• Then there is the issue of setting up the variables for the competition to suit your team.
God is a God of justice and we need to represent that aspect of his character in our sport.
How can you do that today?
PS James Naismith, the inventor of basketball said: “Few college men would take money or valuables from another. Yet they are taught in the practices of our sports that it is not dishonourable to take illegal advantage of another, if there is little prospect of being caught”.