"Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing."
In the arena
Return to the book list for titles beginning with 'i'.
David E Prince, Nashville, B&H, 2016 ISBN 978-1-4336-9025-9
The author, a pastor and father of eight sporty children, states his twofold purpose in writing the book: “First, I will examine sport from a Biblical theological perspective. Second I will practically examine how sports provide a limited but genuine window that can help us apply our lives to the gospel story revealed in scripture”.
There are many things I liked in the book, that sport is an opportunity to worship God, delighting in God and loving our neighbor, that Christians are “uniquely in a position to enjoy athletic competition as a good gift from God.” I liked his challenge to delight in God with thanksgiving when one loses. The chapter on helping kids to play sport Christianly is excellent.
I found his theological perspective weak, not in the top ten books published on theology of sport – and from the footnotes, there is no evidence that he has read any of them. Twice he refers to sport “as a tool” – for discipleship. I always feel calling sport a tool diminishes its intrinsic value as part of God’s creation.
He addresses the important issue of balancing Sunday sport with church attendance, writing : “Some Christians make the mistake of prioritizing sports over church … Clearly teaching children that sports provide a valid reason to neglect God is disastrous”. Speaking from his own experience he writes: “when my children have played youth sports, we have told the leagues when we sign up that we do not play or practice on Sundays. With that information in mind, a coach is free to decide whether or not he wants our children on his or her team”.
That approach hardly seems fair to the children or the team. And if, like England, most youth sport is on Sunday, it rules Christian young people out of sport completely.
There are a number of strange inclusions in the book like a chapter on safety issues in baseball and football and a long account of the first black professional baseball player. Similarly his suggestion that the church should recruit more ministers of the gospel who had served in the military, played football, or sweated in the fields of a farm.
Some of his comments baffled me: “Scripture makes no attempt to sever the connection between the lesser and nonessential agony and conflict of sports and the ultimate and eternally significant agony and conflict of spiritual war…The scriptures make a clear and positive connection between sports, warfare, spiritual warfare and the pursuit of victory”. And I found I disagreed strongly with “This is similar to the way Paul persistently calls followers of Christ and link their interest in athletic competition the ultimate calling, the battle to live for Christ in their daily lives”. Surely Paul is just making an allusion to sport to illustrate a spiritual point.
A disappointing book.