Thank you Aaron Rodgers! The Green Bay QB gave a great answer to a question he was asked on his weekly radio show a few days ago during a “mailbag answer” segment. Here’s the exchange:
(Radio Host) Jason Wilde: Melissa says: I always find it a little off-putting when athletes, actors, and anybody says, “This is what God wanted” or “I want to thank God for helping us win today” — anything along those lines when a game or award is won. I’m paraphrasing here, but you get the gist. Personally, with all the chaos in the world, I’m not sure God really cares about the outcome of a game or an awards show. What do you think of statements such as these? You’ve obviously got your faith. Does what happens on Sunday impact your relationship with God or your faith at all?
Aaron Rodgers: I agree with her. I don’t think God cares a whole lot about the outcome. He cares about the people involved, but I don’t think he’s a big football fan.
I’m hesitant to guess how much God feels personally invested in a final score, but if I was asked to, I’d have to agree with Rodgers. The question likely came in response to Seattle QB Russell Wilson’s recent interview with MMQB.com, following his team’s improbable but successful comeback against Rodger’s Packers this past Sunday. “That’s God setting it up, to make it so dramatic, so rewarding, so special,” Wilson said. To be fair, if Wilson were asked point blank if God cares who wins football games, he’d say “of course not”. At the heart of his comments is perhaps the simple notion that God is the author of dramatic, special, and good things.
This is not a new conversation. Football players were Tebowing in the end zone long before Tim Tebow was born. Players have been inferring that God influences game outcomes for years, but I’ve never sensed that any player (if pressed) would stick by the inference. To a man, they clarify “well, I’m not saying that God wanted us to win and them to lose, obviously He helps players on both teams”. So what are they saying? They’re likely just expressing a “#blessed” out loud in all of the well-meaning but misguided ways that Sarah Condon so perfectly pointed out here. Admittedly, I cringed at Wilson’s statement, but I didn’t take it to mean that he thinks that the Almighty is a Seahawks’ fan (He’s gotta like those shoes though!).
That said, the Melissas out there are so much more interesting to me than the Russell Wilsons. We’ve heard Melissa’s words before, “Personally, with all the chaos in the world, I’m not sure God really cares about the outcome of a game”. So apparently, God’s so busy putting out fires that He couldn’t possibly delight in watching us play? Did Russell Wilson’s ‘God shout-out’ result in Melissa coming to an unhealthy conclusion about who God is?
Is this why I find myself often so quick to react with frustration to an athlete’s “playing the God card”? Because it does bug me. I suppose there’s a part of me that thinks that I need to leap to God’s defense. God’s too busy with all the chaos in the world to have to come in behind Russell Wilson and clean up the silly things he just said. Hang on. Did I just sound like Melissa?
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14 responses to “Aaron Rodgers – “God Doesn’t Care About Football Game Outcomes””
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Very pithy, Howie. Like you, my frustrations are triggered when athletes (or any other celebrity) play the ‘God card’ after a victorious/winning/mission accomplished moment. I don’t question their heart as we all think and even say these things from time to time but this is the mission statement of consumerist theology. It’s simply brand loyalty. Like the shoes they wear, they verbally advertise their god so #3 Seahawk jerseys will fly off the shelves purchased by the kiddos in Mars Hill Youth Groups. (Too much?)
My mom does the same thing with a good parking space at Target and it drives me nuts. Uuuugh.
Thanks BS – ironically, Wilson was on a Mars Hill “Seahawks Christian Player Panel Discussion” last year (worth Googling). I don’t think he’s intentionally spouting consumerist Christian theology, He’s been through enough in the last year, including a divorce, that I think he’s speaking from a genuine place, even if he sounds cheesy. If my mom did that at Target, I think I would walk to the back of the lot before walking into the store, just to drive HER nuts too.
I’ll buy the first jersey of the first athlete that finds divine purpose in a loss.* “I think we lost this game because I’ve been a jack-wagon all year and God wanted to humble us and bring us down a few notches.” Has that ever happened ever?
Though, as a Redskins fan, I do sometimes wonder if our past two decades of failure are in any way divinely linked to our racist team name.
*hyperbole
The sports related version of “God wants me to be ‘successful’ ” is , I think, more understandable considering it is usually right after a very emotional/physical game.
I do want to offer Bryan J the suggested nickname of the ‘Washington Jack-Wagons’ as a possible option, for no other reason than saying ‘jack-wagon’ is totally fun.
Suggestion noted. I’ll add it to the list of Washington Philibusters and Washington Pork as excellent alternatives. 😉
I, in fact, do think God takes a great deal of pleasure in watching us play – games, musical instruments, jokes (that aren’t mean). I also think He has a purpose for us in winning and in losing that goes just beyond the pure pleasure or heartbreak of the moment.
I have thanked Him for a parking space and I’ve thanked Him for helping me get an interview I needed to get for my job as a journalist. I really do believe God cares about me succeeding in my job as a magazine writer, so why wouldn’t He care about a football player succeeding in His job?
I revel in the fact that at the moment of someone sticking a microphone in his face after playing an amazing game that his team had almost lost, Russell Wilson had the presence of mind to even acknowledge God. Sometimes it takes me a couple hours to remember, “hey, I asked God to help me get that interview and He did!”
Go Seahawks, by the way.
Wilson’s comments and your article raise an even broader issue:
Football, in addition to being a game, is a business. The NFL sells a brand and, and the individual “products” are the teams and their games “services.”
What the NFL’s customers buy is entertainment and an aesthetic experience. Like renting a cabin on a mountain to watch the beautiful sunsets. But this is sports – a very different form of beauty.
Part of the service fans (customers) hope to “buy” are team victories.
If God doesn’t care about football, much less which team wins (i.e. which business products & services are successful), then we may surmise that He neither cares for nor enters into the affairs of mankind for any other business. Because, for example, if someone buys an HP laptop instead of a Dell, HP has “won” that competition and Dell has “lost.” At least with that one customer. (With customer purchases and product/service results, there are always winners & losers.)
So when customers flock to Frank’s Auto Shop and make Frank (a Christian) a business success, he might be motivated in gratefulness to offer thanks to God for its success. Frank, after all, applied biblical practices to his business and they were effective. God honored his adherence to the use of biblical wisdom. Perhaps God even intervened in ways Frank will never be able to comprehend. But He somehow got some of those customers into his shop. Those many customers came to Frank (big winner) rather than to Tony’s Auto Shop two blocks away (perhaps small winner; perhaps loser).
Given Frank’s proclamation (like Russell Wilson), would we then also conclude God doesn’t care about business in general, much less who buys which automotive products & services from whom?
If God cares about – and even intervenes in some way(s) into – little ol’ Frank’s business, then is it too far-fetched to suggest that perhaps God does care about football as well, PERHAPS does intervene in the game in ways we’ll never know, and does care about the outcome?
Or conversely, is it too much of a stretch to say that if God does NOT care about the NFL’s “products,” its many “services” (i.e. the team games), and the outcomes or success of those services, then we should also be able to extrapolate that He has little (if any) regard for any other businesses and their successes either?
Those are interesting thoughts Mike. I supposed I’d say that professional sports teams differ somewhat from your examples is that they can “win” as businesses even if they don’t win on the field, court, etc. When I tune in to watch my favorite team, they’ve already won because I’ve tuned in (as you point out) and even if they lose, I and most fans are not likely to stop watching. We embrace the disappointment of losing as part of the overall experience.
As for whether or not God intervenes in specific games – I’d agree that He certainly can and probably does, but my guess would be not in the way would expect. I still think its presumptuous of Wilson to proclaim that God had a “comeback” in mind for them last Sunday. Such presumptions are harmless, but I do think they can lead to a misunderstanding about what Christians really believe. For this reason, I think that the post game interview is just not the platform for faith proclamation, unless it’s done with some clear intentionality and with context in mind. That’s rarely the case.
Your point is well taken. Many professional teams continue to “win” with ticket & merchandise sales (and local radio & TV packages) regardless of success or failure on the field. But others do not.
For example, the Atlanta Hawks are a 2014-15 sensation. They’re selling out now, even against teams with poor records. In Atlanta, however, that ticket purchase success will likely end shortly after losing returns – whether this year or 5 years from now.
Teams that “fail” in the stands eventually move to more promising locations. (The Oakland A’s remaining in Oakland for decades is itself an unexplainable miracle of God…)
“God doesn’t care about football game outcomes.” Really? I think maybe that even stupid football is not out of His reach. If I didn’t believe that I would compound my daily anxiety about a lot of simple mundane stuff. Hey, God already knows who is going to win the Superbowl.
Well, now one is left to wonder if God punished the Seahawks by dealing them a last-second, gut-wrenching loss.
I keed, I keed.
In all seriousness, God is in the details. He knows the number of the hairs on our heads and feeds the birds. All is under His domain. But trying to parse out the events of life and assigning where God blesses, curses and is sometimes silent can be futile, especially when we are analyzing someone else’s life.
So I guess I put comments like Wilson’s into the category of either “religious speak” or of using the wrong words.
Y’all have a good day,
Handiwork
For all this discussion, I will say that the last two minutes of the Super Bowl last night had more of an eerily providential feel than any game I’ve watched in a long time.
It was like if Grace and Karma had a love child.
When asked if God cares about the small things in our lives, someone once said..Do you know anything that is not small to God?
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