Kids Sports and Competition: A Christian View of Sports, Part 1

Somehow, we got the idea that following Jesus is just a Sunday morning thing.

That God only cares about the spiritual, but what if God wants so much more?

Welcome to Not Just Sunday.

The podcast will equit part-time Christianity and ask what it looks like to give Jesus

every square inch of our lives.

We want to give Jesus every day of the week, not just Sunday, because Jesus is more than

everything in the world, and everything is brighter with Him.

I'm Keith Simon, and I'm Patrick Miller, and we want to invite you on a journey with

us to become Not Just Sunday Christians.

Keith, we announced a few weeks ago our book club winner, Trust by Hernan Diaz.

Have you started the book again?

Well, no, but I did recently lead a book discussion with my wife's book club.

You're cheating on us?

Middle-aged women.

You already did a book club without us?

Yes.

They called it the doctor's book club.

You cheated on me with your wife.

Yeah.

I had more for dinner.

It was Christine's time to lead the book club, and I said, if you guys would pick a book

that I'd like to read, I'd make steaks, and they went for it.

So they ate steaks, and we just just tried to-

Well, of course they did.

You offered to lead the book club.

You offered to make them fit.

Yeah, it was fun.

Have you finished?

You haven't even finished it.

No, no.

I have not picked it back up.

I want to pick it up.

According to this, probably two months out from when the actual book episode will be released.

So I want to read it closer to when we're actually going to be discussing it, because I want

it to be fresh.

Okay.

I want to know more than you, right?

You're a private school kid.

I'm a public school kid, so I'm just going to be trying to keep up.

But I think it's a great book.

We had a great discussion.

I think we've already said this, but it is unique in that trust, one appeal with surprise,

and as a part of Oprah's book club.

So it's obviously interesting and got some depth to it.

Some ideas worth discussing, but it's not so difficult and weird that you can't read

it, right?

Because some novels that are famous are just really hard to read, but this isn't one

of those.

Yeah.

I feel like a lot of Pulitzer's are very readable.

I'm actually reading a Pulitzer-winning biography of J. Edgar Hoover, G-Man.

I don't know if you've ever read that.

I tried.

Oh, I've been loving it.

Really?

I was trying to listen to it.

I just didn't give it enough time, maybe.

If you need maybe another incentive for reading trust during our book discussion, the

Epstein files came up.

Where is this going?

Well, I mean, it's not because of what's in trust, right?

There's no sex power money type thing in trust, no Epstein island, nothing like that.

But the issues, the ideas you're talking about in trust led us down a road that we ended

up talking about the Epstein files.

Are you saying that we are going to end up talking about the Epstein files?

I don't know.

I'm just trying to throw it out there that the ideas that this book talks about are contemporary

and they deal with pressing issues today.

So I think it's a fun discussion.

Yeah.

I've kind of stayed away from the Epstein files because there's forms of darkness.

I don't want to touch or know about.

And maybe that's naivety.

Maybe it's other things.

Although I think there might be wisdom sometimes.

Oh, no.

You can follow the Epstein files and not get anything dark because I'm not.

Yeah.

The vague like, oh, this person, then this person, but anyway, this is nothing to do

with what we're talking about today.

Let's hop into today's episode and get going because we are doing our series, not just

sacred.

And we're talking about the stuff that you and your friends discuss at the water cooler,

if people still do that.

The things that you don't necessarily think you would read about in the Bible or you wouldn't

expect a Christian book on, but are a part of your normal life.

And for a lot of us, a huge part of our lives is sports.

In fact, right now as we're recording this, the winter Olympics are on.

They'll be off by the time I'm sure you're listening to this.

But sports are a huge part of American culture.

There's something that everybody talks about, thinks about.

So it's something we as Christians, I think, should engage with Christianly.

The fact that sports are so popular makes it interesting that we have a hard time defying

it.

Oh, yeah.

Like, what is a sport?

So let me throw out some things to you and you tell me if they're a sport, okay?

Is poker a sport?

No, I just want to set this up by saying that the world poker series, I forget what's

called is on ESPN, which we all know is the sports network.

So is poker a sport?

I'm not going to answer your question.

What do you mean you're not going to answer my question because I have more coming.

So you are going to answer the question is poker a sport?

Well, to answer the question, we have to define what a sport is.

Well, that's how we're going to define it is by you answering the question and telling

me why, why not?

Is it a sport?

I would rather answer the question.

How do I define a sport than whether or not something is a sport?

No, no, because you're so boring.

This is far more interesting.

Doof is bad.

You're so deductive.

Okay, I'll answer your questions so long as afterwards I get to say this is the definition

that I think I'm using.

Absolutely, we're going to finish this with the definition of sport.

Poker is definitely on the fence.

I think I could go to, I'm going to say yes.

So why is it on the fence?

Because typically I would say that there is a physical component built into a sport.

So some sort of physicality to it and obviously everything we do in life has physicality but

doesn't require high reflexes.

For example, to play poker, I don't think.

Maybe I'm...

So you're arguing that it is a sport by saying that it doesn't require...

I'm saying that I think sports are a constellation of things and poker has almost everything

else I would include in a sport which doesn't have this physicality element in it.

So that's why I said it's really on the fence.

I think physicality is really important for sports.

So maybe it's not...

Okay, let's try another one.

Bowling.

Yes.

And why?

Because it requires physical and it requires skill and strategy.

It requires competitiveness.

There's rules that are built into it.

What about NASCAR?

So this is another really interesting one.

I would say yes.

I don't know that I would have said yes until I actually got to meet some NASCAR racers

and understand what went into it because it's a highly, highly physical sport.

Even though the car is providing the motor, it requires skill.

It's competitive.

It requires strategy.

It requires physicality.

It's institutionalized.

There's lots of things I would say this is clearly a sport.

Okay, a couple more questions on that one.

A couple more fishing.

Yes.

Like, oh, let me be clear.

I'm just assuming we're talking about the sports version of anything you say.

So if you're saying like me by myself going out on my boat fishing.

Okay.

I would say no, that's probably maybe not a sport.

It might be an athletic activity.

So what I hear you saying is sometimes?

Yes, sometimes.

A cheerleading.

I would say sometimes.

Competitive eating.

Competitive eating might be a sin.

I'm not sure.

Might be gluttony.

There's a whole different dimension there.

Okay.

Okay, maybe just one more.

I don't know.

I thought about this way too much.

E gaming.

I thought about this one.

You're going to ask me this one.

So I'm going to say yes.

I do think that there is a physical component to E gaming.

There is a physical component.

Yeah.

I mean, if you like, look at it.

There's a massive component.

Are we talking about the same thing?

Like you?

Yeah, computer gaming.

Right?

Yeah.

Because to be like a high, high level, like the best in the world E gamers.

Other levels of like fast twitch muscles and reflexivity in their brains and their hands

is much higher than the average person.

So I'm going to say there is an important physical component that's related to their hands

and their hand-eye coordination, obviously.

But you know, like is shooting a sport?

I would say yes.

I lied to more.

Chess.

See, I knew you're going to bring this one up.

I think if you want to call poker a sport, you have to call Chess a sport.

It has the exact same problem poker has because I do think one of some important parts

of a sport is some sort of physical skill or physicality and I just don't know what that

is in poker.

I don't know what that is in chess.

Okay.

Last one.

I promised this time.

Professional wrestling, like WWE.

Uh, no, although it requires incredible athleticism and skill on the parts of the people,

but there's no actual competition I would say in it because it's kind of scripted and

pre-decided to one degree or another.

Yeah, I think I agree with all of your assessments.

I think fishing sometimes, I think cheerleading sometimes and they succeed sometimes for

the same reason that WWE fails all the time in that there's competition in it.

Yeah, like competitive cheerleading.

You go to the cheerleading competition and you have people competing against one another

and there's a set of rules for how you're evaluating the cheerleaders and there's a standard

eyes.

There's an institution.

Then yeah, like that's clearly a sport.

Now does cheerleading on the sideline?

Is it athletic?

Yes, absolutely.

Is it a sport?

Well, no.

It lacks the competitive part.

It lacks the institutionalized rules-based part.

So I've already kind of said, I think a sport is a constellation of features and you don't

have to have all of them to be a sport, but you need to have a few of them to be a sport.

So it has to have some sort of physical skill and that's why I think I would say that poker

and chess are not sports.

And you probably would have said gaming too, except I just made an argument that maybe

there is something.

Well, right.

Maybe there is if you're going to talk about your reflex, that'd be quick to push the

button.

You know, maybe.

I mean, this is on a continuum.

Well, would you say shooting is a sport?

Because like I would say that requires incredible hand-eye coordination, there's a physicality

to it.

It's probably wouldn't because I think it requires skill and some sort of physical exertion.

Like it's selling a sport.

It requires a certain physical skill and using the needle and the thread.

But there's no rule set.

There's no competitive nature to sew it.

Well, could you have competitive sewing?

And then you say, yes, I mean, we're going to...

Yeah, I guess.

I guess so.

So I think...

I would love to see a competitive...

competitive crochet.

There have to be like rules in an institution, right?

Like there's things that come with sports, right?

It requires competition, agreed upon rules, all that kind of stuff, physical exertion,

and some sort of skill.

Yeah.

Any of those things can be a little bit fuzzy.

Well, yeah, I guess so.

I think competition is maybe the fundamental center for me.

If there is no competition, I'm going to have a hard time calling it a sport.

And if there is no physicality to it, I'm going to have a hard time calling it a sport.

Those feel like two things.

If I get really fuzzy on those, not a sport to me.

Okay.

Right.

I thought you were just going to end with the competition part.

And there's lots of things we compete in in the world that aren't sports.

We compete in the job market.

Exactly.

But that's not a sport.

But I think the rules, the institutionalization, all the other things that they're in there.

So it is fuzzy just to name it, but some things are obviously sports.

And sports are wildly, wildly popular in the United States.

In 2025, 92 of the top 100 television programs were football.

Football is the number one thing watched in American TV.

Do you think that's because of streaming?

Like more people are streaming TV shows.

Like I will watch a football game live.

I will never watch TV show live.

Well, maybe that's included.

I think that this has been the case for a long, long time.

The only four non-sport telecasts in 2025 were Trump's speech to Congress.

Right after he was elected, the Trump inauguration, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in the Oscars.

Sports are wildly popular.

People are watching them on TV on all these other episodes in the not just sacred series.

We've been kind of doing this creation fall redemption and kind of a biblical theological approach.

But by now, you've probably kind of got that figured out.

Creation, you go back and you say, how did God design the world in Genesis 1 and 2?

How did the fall corrupt what God had originally designed?

How is Jesus redeeming it?

And then lastly, when we look at the new heaven and the new earth,

how will our world be restored?

And what does that have to say about the particular topic,

whether it's finances or sports or whatever?

But you've probably got that pattern down by now.

So I thought maybe we just have a little bit more fun by just asking questions

about sports.

And the first question that I want to consider is,

why are athletes more vocal about their faith than other groups of people?

Like you'll find athletes who will speak up about their faith really boldly,

but you won't find like lawyers that do that.

Like for example, there's this guy named UL Romero

and he wins the UFC fight.

And Joe Rogan is up interviewing him afterwards, like in the ring.

And he's up there going on and on about Jesus.

He's got this headband on, John 316.

I mean, it was kind of controversial so much so that Dana White,

who's the head of UFC, he came out and he was like,

gosh, I wish you guys would stop talking about Jesus all the time.

You know, just talk about your fight.

Nobody wants to hear about Jesus.

And Dana White says, you can keep that private.

That's fine. I'm glad you believe in Jesus, but talk about the fight.

That's how often UFC fighters talk about Jesus in the ring.

But now, imagine a lawyer gets done with a court case.

Like he wins the court case.

And he just says, I just want to thank my Lord Jesus Christ right now.

That would be so weird.

A doctor gets done with a successful surgery or a teacher gets done

teaching a successful class.

And they just start going on about Jesus.

But athletes do it and we're like totally normal.

Well, this feels a little silly to me.

But I'm just going to be honest with you.

Let's set aside the Christianity thing.

Do lawyers get up after they win a case and give a victory speech?

Do teachers get up after they're done teaching and give a victory speech?

Do doctors do it after they're done with their surgeries?

So you're saying it's not the content, but it's the like that.

Somebody's sticking a microphone in front of you.

They part of sports is you win and then you have the victory speech.

I think this is part of the pattern that you see.

But do you think that athletes are more

I think up to be people of faith than non athletes?

I think when it comes to public personalities, yes.

So if you compare athletes to, let's say, musicians or you compare athletes

to movie stores or you compare athletes to authors or influencers

or self-help gurus, I think by and large, you are totally correct.

Politicians may get a little bit close to it,

although for very ulterior reasons, possibly.

So yes, I agree with you.

I think on the whole, as far as public personalities go,

it's very acceptable in athletic circles to talk about your faith.

And part of me wonders if that's what it is.

It's part of it just cultures of places.

Like it would not be cool as a musician to talk about your faith in Jesus,

but in athletic circles, this is more normal.

So it's more natural.

And yeah, I don't know.

Why is that?

Like clearly in athletics, a person is comfortable talking about faith.

There's no penalty.

There's no negative consequences for doing it.

Can you give some examples?

Yeah, recently the National Championship game was just played.

And last year's National Championship,

it was between Notre Dame and Ohio State.

And both teams were very, very into their faith.

Notre Dame players often went to mass together.

The quarterback for Notre Dame was an outspoken Christian.

He said in a post-game interview, after they lost to Ohio State,

he said, us in Ohio State were the two teams that praised Jesus Christ the most.

And I think we strengthened each other in our faith.

The Ohio State football team was out talking to students on campus about Jesus.

And was baptizing them.

That was a crazy story as one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

So after they won the game,

you have the ESPN commentators talking about how central faith was to the Ohio State team.

And this is Reese Davis and Scott Vampell.

And they were talking about their faith really respectfully.

Here's what they said.

The future is really bright.

He's a faith-based guy.

So it's so small-powered, so is the Ohio State team.

I was glad you asked about that because they talked so much about that

and how much they leaned into faith.

But then ultimately, because I had a coach who used to say the other team praise too.

Yeah, right.

It comes down to being able to do it on the field.

And I think that's what impressed me most about Ohio State.

Is they had a bunch of guys who could hold up, right?

The poor and the allows you to stay.

And they're going to be one reward.

They're going to be drafted high.

But it seems that both faith and above and faith in one another

is what got on Ohio State through.

I should talk to them.

What did they share?

That was something I met with Boomer and I talked about this

when I went to this with Brian Day in terms of the players before the Tennessee game.

Two days before that.

And we hear a lot of times people talk about their faith and people dismiss it.

These guys were sharing their faith and reaching out and baptizing guys on campus.

You know, not just football teammates.

And it became something powerful.

And not because they thought it was going to be handed to them to win a game.

But it developed, it changed their relationships.

And it changed selfishness and made it go away.

It was impactful for them.

It didn't mean they were going to guarantee they were going to win.

And no, they've had a lot of that going on.

It's well, you're smart.

Let's talk about that a lot this year that it made guys selfless.

And I think that's the power in it.

It's not, you know, it's a magical being.

They're going to go down and head you to Sophie to do it.

It just helps you make you relate to teammates differently.

And isn't that interesting now?

In this era where there's a ton of money out there.

By the way, the players are off to participate in it because I get really in.

You and I have always agreed about that.

But in an hour, you think, oh, this guy's just going there for money.

Oh, these guys went there and they tore the quarterbacks.

Okay, they got there, no.

But I think that there's the, to hear about the relationships that they have with one another.

And how that is for is and then how you ultimately see it on the field.

I think that's really a wonderful story to go to kind of offset the idea that I know

and just go somewhere because the money because I've been, I've been guilty of just saying,

you only go there for the dough.

I go, how to stay, they kind of get it both ways because you get your money with your

earn.

But then you get a whole lot more than that, which lasts far more than the dough.

When I hear stuff like this, it's magnetizing because it shows how living your faith out

in public, it draws people to Christ and even going back to the quote that you read earlier

from Notre Dame's quarterback, he didn't say, hey, we ended up in the national championship

because we're the teams that love Jesus.

He just said, we're both here and this happens to be true.

And we sharpened each other because it's really easying the sports world to turn this into

like I won because of Jesus.

And I love this kind of reframing that you're seeing there, which is like, no, like we love

Jesus and what happened happened.

But it's of course pointing people towards Christ.

Think about this example.

One reason why maybe sports has more public figures that are Christian is because sports

polls from a different or more varied demographic than let's say your public personas in business,

finance, academia.

You mean they come from a different socioeconomic background?

Like they've come up from poverty or you have different ethnicities?

It's just the fact.

There's like East Coast, West Coast waspiness.

People living in these very wealthy upper middle class almost exclusively white neighborhoods

who are hyper progressive and they want nothing to do with Christianity.

And they tend to dominate our upper tiers of society, right?

And this is again, and finance, business, music, all these areas, all the celebrities.

And when you look at sports, you look at people who are pulled from across the spectrum.

You have people who were just as waspies that but you have people who are coming from the

poorest neighborhoods and the poorest cities in America.

And it turns out that faith is something that at least in America, you don't tend to

see it at the tippy tippy top of our social economics, but you see it throughout the rest.

You see it in the middle class, you see it in the lower class.

So maybe that's part of it.

You're asking the question.

I'm trying to give an answer.

Well, I appreciate the attempt because I haven't been able to come up with an answer myself.

Like I've been reading what other people say and one person suggested that perhaps it

was because they have achieved success in money and then realized that those didn't

really satisfy.

This doesn't make sense to me because there's a lot of people who have achieved success

in money that aren't athletes and they don't necessarily come to the same conclusion or

speak about it as boldly as athletes do.

I think one thing I just kind of tossed around in my mind, it doesn't quite make sense.

I can't even quite pull it through, but sometimes people who are farmers are more people

of faith because they're close to the land.

Like they depend on God, they've been on rain, they depend on things outside of their

control.

And I've wondered is there's some parallel to that in athletics like you are in touch with

your body, you're in touch with maybe that you need health or that you were given this

as a gift.

I don't know, I feel like I'm stretching, but clearly athletes are more apt to be people

of faith than non-athletes.

Yeah, I think it must be true.

Obviously athletics require a tremendous amount of skill.

So it's not as though your skill has nothing to do with the results that you have in a football

game, a basketball game, whatever it is that you're playing.

However, there is always an element of chance and luck and things that are outside of your

control, whether that's injuries or calls by the ref or things that just happen on your

team.

And so that does create this probability of I'm not in control and maybe there is an element

of like when you know you're not in control, that's always going to push you towards trusting

God.

Again, I could look at any of these other fields I would say like if you're an entrepreneur,

it's not like you feel like you're in control.

No, I agree.

But sports teams, they have chaplains.

Yeah.

It's very common.

Let's go back to the cultural point.

Like maybe this is just a holdover from, you know, a time where Christianity was more

a part of our common culture and it has never really left sports.

We have these large state universities that have chaplains on their football team, basketball

team.

And a lot of times they're volunteer positions.

It's not like they're a paid staff member, does that make sense?

But you don't have that in other departments at the university.

I mean, does the anthropology department have a chaplain?

Does the band have a chaplain?

No.

No.

And then you take it outside the university system and you don't have like a elementary

school with a chaplain.

It's just foreign.

You would never even think about it.

Are you the chaplain of the Missouri football team or not?

No.

Because I know you do like a Bible study.

Well, they don't have chaplain, but my friend and I, we co-lead a voluntary coach Bible

study during the season.

And then I've been asked to speak to the team at different times and take a bunch of

players down to Jamaica for like a mission trip, right?

Yeah.

So our church has a partnership with a ministry in Jamaica and built homes and do a lot

of public service stuff.

And then depending on the group, you do more or less faith depending on what the group

is there.

So, you know, the players who went are all over the places where their faith not interested

to other faiths to being very committed Christians.

And so we went down and served together in this community.

And the organization we're with is a very Christian organization, but like I said, you

could participate more or less in that part of it depending on what you wanted to do.

But you don't find that in other areas.

And so I think it's undeniable that athletics is open to Christianity and faith in a way

that other fields aren't.

Okay.

But from your experience, you know, working with coaches and spending time with players,

like, is there anything you would add that you would say, like, here's why I think the

people I'm around seem to be more spiritually open.

Like you said, then you might expect that the anthropology department or the band or wherever

else.

No, I don't really have the answer.

That's why I asked the question.

It seems obvious that it's true, but I don't know exactly why other than this theory that

maybe they're just in touch with their bodies like farmers in touch with nature.

Yeah.

We just got sovereignty.

There's just a reality where God does want in any public space, in any public arena,

there to be voices that are representing Christ.

And that can be a really hard thing to be called into.

And in our culture and our time and our place, one of the places where that actually does

happen is in sports.

And of course, the Christians in sports aren't perfect and they're not going to live

perfect lives and they're not going to do perfect things.

But maybe just in God's providence and sovereignty, that's where he said, look, I'm going to put

people who follow me here and they're going to be a witness for my kingdom in this space.

These are so comfortable talking about Jesus that sometimes they talk about Jesus and

you're not even quite sure they know Jesus, right?

Because their lives are so inconsistent.

But yeah, after a game or an oppressed conference or something, they'll just immediately

default to thinking Jesus.

And I'm not saying they are Christians, how would I know?

Like I'm not judging other people.

I'm just saying that it's become the way athletes talk.

And I don't know how genuine or disingenuous it is.

But we were talking earlier about the definition of sport and we said it requires competition.

You can't have a sport if there's not a winner and a loser.

But then that begs the question, which is the second one I want to talk about.

And that is, is it sinful to be competitive?

Like, can Christians following Jesus try to beat the other team?

Or is there something inherently sinful about trying to win?

I think that in history, there have been times in which teammates have questioned the

competitiveness of Christian teammates.

Because, well, like there's a super clear example of this hockey player and I'm mispronouncing

it now.

I think it's quite French.

It's this guy.

Say with a French accent at least.

No, I'm not.

It's Laurie.

Laurie.

Like L-A-U-R-I-E, Laurie.

But I know that's not how he said it.

Got his name.

But I'm just going to call him next.

I don't know what to call me.

Laurie, that get.

Keep going.

Laurie Bosch.

I'm sorry.

I thought he said it was French.

But he was with the Maple Leafs.

And the owner of the Maple Leafs, the Toronto Maple Leafs, said that his Christian commitments

made him soft.

And it led to this kind of disagreement between him and the team.

Now, he eventually gets traded from the Maple Leafs and has a really successful hockey career.

There's no evidence that his Christian and he made him a soft hockey player.

And I think in hockey, being called soft is probably the worst thing you can be called, right?

Yeah, hockey's a lot like football.

And this guy was very committed to Christ and went into ministry with other NHL players after he's retired.

But there's this kind of suspicion, does your Christian faith make you less competitive?

What do you think is it sinful to try to win?

Oh, that is such a fascinating question.

So let me start with what I am convinced is sin.

The Bible does continually warrant against rivalry.

You can find multiple passages that I think make this point.

But there's this idea that there's someone who I want to beat, someone who I want to be better than,

someone who I want to see lose in my personal life.

And the Bible I do think is critical of that kind of mindset.

Now, I think the question I have is when you're in a sporting situation,

like sports is a different context than being at the office with my fellow employees, right?

So if I have a rivalry and I'm a developer with a developer who's two cubicles down from me

and I want to prove that they're a bad developer and I'm a good developer and I'm faster and I'm stronger and I'm better,

I think that might be an unhealthy competitive drive, right?

You're trying to perform, you're trying to prove yourself,

you're not looking to Christ to give you your worth and value,

you're only looking to your own performance and you want to see someone else lose, which is envy.

That's rivalry, right?

But sports is different, I think.

Well, I think when people hear you say rivalry in sports,

they're thinking like Duke versus North Carolina.

Oh, that's clearly not what I mean.

I'm not talking about like team versus team rivalries, right?

Like, yes, okay, whatever.

Although there probably is something to be said in that context.

So, you know, Mizzou is a very famous rivalry with Kansas, although it's not as big as I suppose it used to be.

It's kind of coming back because we're playing each other more.

I had a friend in college.

He lived in Colorado, I'm not making this up.

He would drive from Columbia, north into Iowa,

then west into Nebraska, all the way to the north of Colorado and drive back down south

to avoid driving the Kansas.

He added three or four hours to every drive,

to avoid going through the state of Kansas because of the rivalry.

Similar story, North Carolina.

I think that's stupid.

I think that was a good coach for a long time at Mizzou when they had a lot of success.

When they would go to play Kansas,

he would get the bus.

They're on a team bus because it's not that far of a drive, maybe three hours.

And before he left the state of Missouri and Kansas City,

he would gas the bus up.

People get snacks or whatever.

They'd go to Lawrence, play Kansas,

and then drive back across the border before they stopped again.

He said, we will never spend a nickel in the state of Kansas.

Oh, that's so bad.

So, that's the rivalry.

And you're not saying that that's sinful.

Or maybe you are.

Well, my friend actually had like,

I would say it was almost like a hatred towards Kansas.

Like, it started as kind of like a funny thing,

which I'm fine with.

Like, okay, this is just kind of comical.

And then it became, you know, sincere.

Like, no, I don't think people from Kansas are good people.

I don't like them.

And I thought he was joking.

And eventually, it was like, no, like,

I remember someone from Kansas came over.

He didn't talk to him.

And I was like, okay, this is ridiculous.

Okay, sports is a context in which competition is part of the institution.

I want you to lose.

My value is only in me defeating you,

which kind of like the Harold Abramson.

Like, I have to prove myself in six seconds.

Or you can view competition as a sharpening.

Right? Like, there can be a form of competition,

which is, hey, I'm for you.

I want to see you succeed.

But I'm going to work as hard as I can to, you know,

sharpen against you, to press against you.

You know, just like who is the other runner?

Eric Liddell.

You know, like, when I run, I feel the glory.

Like, was he wrong to be in a competition?

No. But when he was running, he was feeling the glory of God.

And the motivation was not necessarily to destroy the other person on the other side.

Does that make sense? Like, I think the killer instinct thing in sports might be a problem.

So in order to have a competition like for us to compete and have a winner and loser,

we have to have like agreed upon rules.

We play within a certain framework that we've agreed to.

Yes, this is the context thing I was talking about.

And therefore, to have a competition requires some sense of cooperation.

That we are not really against each other.

We are sharpening one another.

We're trying to win, but within an agreed upon set of rules or framework for the competition.

That seems different than, you know, if you're a coder and you're trying to defeat or beat out another coder in your office.

Because you have an agreed upon a set of rules on which you're playing inside that framework to see who's better.

But in sports, you are.

So I don't know if killer instinct is bad in sports.

What we mean by that is that I'm going to do everything within the rule of law to try to win this game.

What you're describing is a kind of like mutually agreed upon quest for excellence.

That's much better said than I.

That is beautiful and powerful.

But how cool is that?

Like, if you start thinking about it from like an adenic perspective,

like God gave us these bodies to do incredible things.

And by pushing our bodies against one another, and pressing ourselves to our physical limits,

we're going to accomplish and do things that we couldn't do otherwise.

And what a glorification that is of the God who made the body.

You know, like when you look at Olympic sprinters and how much faster we've gotten.

Well, it's not because, you know, we almost ended up better genes that are now allowing us to run faster.

It's because of the nature of competition over time and learning over time, how to train better,

has allowed us to push the bodies, God has given us to the limits.

And those limits aren't limits that are beyond what God said.

There's still more limits to break.

And I think that's a really powerful picture of the beauty of competition in sports.

I just saw the high school kid ran a 3.48 mile.

And for a long time, we're not even sure that you could break four minutes.

And now a high school kid is 3.48 mile.

I didn't hear that.

But the only way those Olympic sprinters that you're talking about get better

is if they compete against one another.

Yeah. Because you always do better when you're racing at someone else,

as opposed to just racing yourself.

And it reminds me of like something like, you know, as iron sharpens, iron.

So one person sharpens another.

Yeah.

That you sharpen one another when you bump into each other,

when you're competing for something.

So I think one of the things competition does is it produces excellence in us.

It brings out the best in us.

And you know, sometimes what competition does, it shows me I'm not good at something,

which unfortunately, that's happened a lot.

And so then I redirect my efforts to something I'm better at.

So it's a way to discern, is this something I should pursue more?

Or should I find something else to put my time into?

Can I give a kind of silly example?

This is not from the role of sports.

My son started taking him to violin lessons this year.

So he's new to competitive violating competitive violating.

No, but there are competitions.

I don't know how frequently.

So two months ago, his violin teacher said, hey, do you want to do a competition?

And you know, I was unsure how he was going to respond or, you know, what that means.

And he's like, I don't know.

He thought, okay, I want to do it.

Here's what's been so fascinating.

And the two-month interlude between us saying yes to the competition.

And then it's probably about a month away now.

He has had this energy to practice hard, to work hard, to get better.

I haven't seen it before.

And it's because he's going to a competition.

I promise you, my seven-year-olds are like, I'm going to beat the other violin player.

My son does not have that kind of killer instinct.

It's one reason he doesn't particularly love sports, I think, in general.

But still, that desire to compete, to do well, to work with excellence.

I see in him.

And he's not being motivated by, I'm on this treadmill.

If I had to perform and make my dad proud, he's just excited because he's so young.

And so it isn't like, no, I get to go and do a good job.

This is going to be fun. Let's work hard.

And I think if you could take that youthful innocence in his sense of competition,

and then you apply that to sports, you could end up in a really healthy place.

It kind of goes the thing we talked about a while back,

like how they used to have Olympic coaches who would basically use shame to get their people to become better.

Like, you're awful, you're terrible, work harder, and then you'll get better.

Is that wrong?

Well, and then they discovered that they started having these coaches who would take a more positive approach

of affirming and encouraging and helping them develop.

And those coaches over time outperformed the shame-based coaches.

In other words, when they got their heads out of the shame-based competition mode

and into the excellence-based competition mode, those became the best athletes,

which I just find fascinating, because it kind of goes against the approach of the maple leaves guys

like, you're going to be soft. I think that's like, I'm not being soft,

because I don't say I want to destroy my opponents.

It doesn't mean that I'm going to be poor. In fact, I might be better.

Which my high school football coach would have heard your positive coaching stories.

But he missed out on those. I mean, you're right.

That competition can go awry.

Like that killer instinct can get unchained, unmoored, untethered from morality,

and then do a lot of damage.

Are you old enough to remember the anti-karigan and Tanya Harding thing in 1994 Olympics?

No, I mean, I would have been seven years old.

Seven years old. So for some of us out there, it's just this classic story.

So these are both US figure skaters, and they're going for the Olympics.

And they're both very, very good.

And then before the United States National Championship to see who's going to represent the United States in the Olympics,

all of a sudden some men come up to Nancy Kerrigan.

She's probably the best US figure skater.

She's in the hallway after a competition, and they use a baseball bat, and they beat her knee.

And so she's like down on the ground, crying, screaming.

They're hitting her several men, and then they just take off.

Well, it turns out her rival on the US team, Tanya Harding, had hired these men to attack and injure her rival, Nancy Kerrigan.

In fact, one of the men was Tanya Harding's ex-husband, who was participating in this.

So as this big national scandal, Nancy Kerrigan came back and was in the Olympics.

She overcame her injuries and got a silver medal. She might have very well gotten a gold that she not been injured.

The competitive spirit is driving you to do things that are outside of, you know, the law or that are immoral.

Then you know it's gone too far.

So I think competition is good and godly, but sin corrupts it just like it does everything else.

One last thought, and I think we'll come back to this at some point.

It is interesting to me. Paul was very clearly familiar with sports.

Multiple times he's athletic metaphors.

Does that mean that he went to the gymnasium where he participated in these games or watched them?

We don't know for certain, but he does seem to be familiar enough to suggest that Paul may very well have been a sports fan.

And the fact that he uses athletes as models for faith, and in fact he uses competition as a model for faith, doesn't mean that he's affirming those things necessarily.

But typically when you see biblical authors use someone as a model, that's a sign that that's not a bad behavior.

And so I do think there is a way to do competition, to strive to be the victor, as he says in 1 Corinthians 9, that is godly.

And it's good.

In 1 Corinthians 9 he says, everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training.

They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.

So he seems to be saying that if they put all this effort in training to get a crown that just is here and gone, that isn't really eternal,

then how much more should we go into training to produce a crown of righteousness that lasts forever?

I do think he's commending to us, competition, to drive us to pursue Jesus more.

Let's move on to another question. This one is one that I hear a lot.

It's, does God care who wins the game? And related to that, is it okay to pray for your team to win?

And I think people ask that because-

Have you ever prayed for your team to win?

I have.

Or at least I don't recall.

You've never prayed for your team to win.

I don't think so.

Not because it turns out I think it's wrong, but because I think if I was going to start praying for things, I should probably pray for other things.

Have you ever prayed for a play?

Like you just got so into the moment. Come on, God, let's go.

Let's go.

Well, I might have said something like that. I don't know if that's prayer.

That's for sure a prayer.

Please, God, let us win this game.

But I'm more saying it while I'm laughing.

I have most certainly prayed for the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl.

You have?

I for sure have.

Not like in my morning, quiet time.

But like watching the game, like thinking like, okay, God, this would be awesome if we won, right?

Well, okay.

Then I think everybody's probably done that.

Do you think that that's good? Okay.

Does God smile on that prayer?

Or do you think it's silly and stupid to think that God cares who wins a football game?

I think that if your personal sense of happiness and contentment and satisfaction in life is contingent upon

a sporting event, God does care, but probably not in the way you want him to.

What that means is God cares about you, as opposed to the point.

But I'm asking does God care who wins a baseball game?

If I was a business owner and I was trying to decide whether to make a deal or a partnership with another business.

And someone said, look, God doesn't care about that.

You'd be like, okay, but maybe he does.

Maybe he cares about the ethics of it or maybe he cares about the kind of people that were.

Or maybe he actually just cares about my business and what I'm doing.

And so I think he does care.

So if I was talking to a pro athlete and I told that pro athlete, hey, God doesn't care about this game that you have coming up.

I think I'd really be diminishing what that athlete did.

Now, is God only pleased if you win?

No. Does God have intentions whether or not you win or lose?

Yes, like he might do good things in your life because you lose.

Just like with that business person, like you don't know whether or not that deal is going to go well.

And whatever happens, you can't be separated from God's love.

God is sovereign over that. He's going to work through you.

Does God care more about how you go about doing your sport and how you go about caring for your team or how you treat the other team?

I think probably yes, like the ethics of what you do really matter.

So this is where I'm going to say, yes, I think God cares.

But it might not be in the simple way we want him to care.

Like he's on this team side and he's not on that team side.

I think it's for sure okay to pray for wins.

I mean, I think you have to have the same attitude Jesus did when he was in the garden of guess how many.

Not my will, but I will be done.

Sorry, I'm just laughing.

It is true. It's an analogy.

It's just such a silly analogy.

Jesus not wanting to go to the cross and me wanting the chiefs to win.

Well, I was thinking more of God, I want your will more than I want my will to be done here.

But as soon as you start saying no, there's something in your life you can't pray for like that business dinner talking about.

There's something you shouldn't pray for.

Then that saying that God doesn't care about that and that God isn't sovereign over that.

And what we're saying is that God is sovereign over all things and cares about all things.

But you have to want what he wants.

And I think what's kind of ironic is that a lot of times athletes use that verse.

Philippians 413, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me to say I can win this game.

I can, you know, score this goal.

I can do whatever through Christ who strengthens me.

But if you read that in context, what it's talking about is that Paul can endure suffering or have a lot of success.

He can have failure and he can have hardship and he can deal with wealth and he can deal with poverty and he can deal with all things through Christ who strengthens me.

So I think it's probably after a loss would be the time to say I can deal with this because Christ gives me the strength.

Christ gives me the wisdom. Christ is my righteousness. Christ is my satisfaction.

I can have wins and I can have losses.

Let me say the thing. I definitely think that we need to avoid.

And I just can't imagine anybody listening to this really thinks this but maybe we're tempted to believe it.

There's a few research study that found that many Americans believe that God rewards the faith of athletes with health and success.

And I think one of the risks of praying for your team to win is this notion that if, excuse my example, if the cheese fans are the better, more moral, more upright fans and their team will win or if the

cheese football team is the better, more moral, more upright, more whatever, then they'll be the ones who win.

That is like a form of treating God like a vending machine.

If you do good things, you get good things out and it's certainly not how God organizes the world.

God's never promised that those who are more faithful get better results or success in their life than those who don't.

Jesus' life being example number one, he ended up on a cross.

And so I think if you're praying in that sense or if you're celebrating in that sense, thinking that your victory means that you're better than other people,

I think that's something really to avoid. I don't think that honors God.

I just want to end with this. If my wife can pray for a parking spot, I can pray for my team to win, although I don't.

Okay. Your wife's prayed for teams to win more than you have.

She for sure has. She's more sports oriented than I am at this point in my life.

So what do we think about kid support?

Let's do the next question.

You know, I just move on from this one. We don't need people angry at us.

You don't want to talk about kid support?

No, we probably should. I'm just going to acknowledge the fact of front that this is one that gets people really fired up.

Yeah, people are sensitive about it. And did you play sports growing up? You seem more like a band guy.

You seem more like a big old nerd growing up.

Or were you studying Latin?

I was studying Latin verbs.

It did not play team sports growing up.

You didn't. No.

My parents briefly tried to put me into soccer and according to them, I said, no, thank you.

You were playing in the dirt for me. I don't want to do this.

Well, see, I did play a lot of sports growing up. Now I wasn't very good at them, but I played them.

And they were phenomenally good to me. I mean, I learned so much. I made great friends.

I learned teamwork. I learned how to sacrifice delayed gratification.

You know, you would work hard in practice looking forward to a goal.

How to do a beer bong?

How to deal with disappointment?

Okay.

That's that because I had a lot of disappointment.

Sports were really, really good to me.

But I played sports when you kind of played.

You were in a different era.

Right. Well, you played for your school, like it would be football season.

And then sure you would train in the off season, but it wasn't overwhelming.

Or you would play basketball with the basketball team.

And you'd play basketball in the off season, but it wasn't like these travel teams, competitive teams,

where kids are focusing on one sport at a younger, younger age.

They're spending a lot of weekends traveling.

Parents are spending tons and tons of money to invest in the league and the travel

and the uniforms and the tournaments and all that stuff.

So your point of like me not playing sports.

I mean, that is part of the context though for me was I played sports in a sense of like at recess.

I would play soccer or I'd play flag football or I'd play, you know, basketball or whatever it was.

The kids were playing out on the playground.

But my family was very clear.

And hindsight, I appreciate this that they were not going to put me in competitive sports leagues

where we're going to be traveling every weekend.

And the reality was, you know, by the time you hit middle school and especially high school,

the only kids that were playing the sports.

Because I went to big public schools.

I probably went to a bigger public school than you.

The only kids who were playing sports were those who were in competitive sports leagues

excluding like cross country or track or those kinds of like there were exceptions to that.

But basketball, baseball and football, soccer, all competitive.

Right. So in other words, if you didn't do the year round programming.

If you weren't in those year round programs, you were not on the JV or the varsity squad

and you might not even be making the C squad.

And so you have to have parents who are willing to invest time, money,

and dedicate themselves to you doing this.

And of course, it's not just those kind of sports that's dancing, it's cheerleading.

Oh, yeah. No one was on the cheerleading team or the dance team.

All that kind of stuff has become this year round thing.

And I can't help but connect. I'm not sure this is absolutely true.

But you see the rise of kids sports like we've described it more recently.

At the same time, you see that there's kind of this fear of kids being abducted.

And so kids having free play, playing in the backyard, playing down the street at the park.

That people are scared of their kids safety.

And so kids are always being monitored.

We program all of our kids by adults.

I had tons of free times a kid. I went down to the creek.

I was out and about until it was dinner time.

Right. My parents didn't know where I was.

It's not either to be old. Now we have cell phones.

And as an extended freedom, it has restricted freedom even more for some reason.

And so I think the idea that, you know, Johnny's going to go down and play baseball with his buddies at the park,

went away. And instead, Johnny's going to be on this little league team

who's being supervised by an adult.

And I'm not sure that that kind of kid sports where it's always supervised.

Kids don't figure out how to solve problems on their own.

That it requires lots of money, lots of travel.

I don't think that's particularly healthy for kids.

I'm not saying you can't do it healthily.

I think you can. I have some friends who I think do it about as wisely as you can do it.

But I think there are a lot of red flags, a lot of problems, a lot of traps along the way.

And one of those is it just distracts from other important things in your life.

Like families don't have meals together because somebody's a sporting thing, right?

So it's also spiritual things, you know, kids don't make it to church.

They can't be involved in a small group.

Parents drop out of small groups as their kids start traveling more

because they're busier running the kids around or being gone most weekends,

at tournaments, especially during the particular season of the year that their sports active.

And I just wonder, is that worth it when you get finished with that part of your life?

Do you look back and go? That was a wise move.

We have less friends. Our kids aren't solid in their church life.

My faith is weaker, but Johnny got to play in the all-star game.

I don't know.

Can I play Devils Advocate?

There is a lot of sports still available, at least in elementary and a little bit in the middle school for kids

that they're not doing the competitive thing.

This is like, you know, you're going to have one practice or maybe two practices at most a week

and they're not long and a game and it's all in town, right?

That's a very different ballgame than I think what you're talking about.

Sure.

I think the pushback would be they say, well, you know, we do have friends.

You have friends, right?

They want to travel with the team.

They'd say, look, like we travel together.

We go on these trips together.

My kids have great friends because they're, you know, with these kids all the time.

They would say, and a lot of these people, some of them are Christian, some of them are.

But I have an incredible evangelistic opportunity, right?

Because I'm with these families all the time and I can talk about Jesus

and I can show Jesus to them.

So I totally disagree with you, Keith, saying I don't have friends

and I don't have opportunities to do Christian things like that.

That's not right.

I think this is one of those areas of wisdom.

I don't think there's some Bible verse that's going to say you can practice this match

or travel this match or play in this many games.

So I think each person has to assess this for themselves and ask,

is this sport leading me to have healthier family, healthier friendships,

healthier relationship with God, healthier connection to the church?

You know, we're pastors.

So maybe we are biased.

But I think that regularly being in church on Sunday morning is incredibly important.

And when you're gone every week because you're in a tournament or every other week

or a lot of weekends of the year and then you add that to when people are sick

or they have vacations and they're making church 25 to 50% of the time,

I think that's a problem.

I mean, the scriptures tell us to not give up meeting in Hebrews chapter 10.

Don't give up meeting together on Sunday in worship service

because our faith is designed to be at a community project.

It's not something you can do out on the road in the hotel room.

It's not something to watch online regularly as a habit.

You need to be in the room with other Christians worshiping together.

And when something pulls you away, maybe it's sports, maybe it's work.

Maybe it's a hobby you have.

Maybe it's something else.

I'm not trying to pick on sports.

I'm saying anything that pulls you away from being in a small group

because now I can't, I would, but I can't.

I know it's good for me.

You can't be a Christian community.

Because I'm traveling all the time.

I don't know.

I mean, if it's working for you, great.

But I don't think that's the normal pattern that most Christians should follow.

Do you think that regularly missing church

and regularly not being connected to a Christian community?

Like I'm consistently going into a small group, some sort of fellowship.

Do you think that's disobedience?

I think the harder one is there are small groups.

Because it's not like that's in the Bible, right?

Okay, so church.

I think not being consistently regularly involved in church.

In prioritizing other things ahead of that, I think that's wrong.

I rule in to call that sin.

And you would say that because of Hebrews 10.

You would say that because of various passages and Ephesians, for example,

it talks about singing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to one another.

Like I'm trying to get you to say, here's my biblical case for why you think that's disobedience.

I think that if you go back to the New Testament,

what you find is that the people gathered regularly together

and then you find that in the book of Acts.

That's true.

And then as that church develops,

you find that they met together on the Lord's Day, the first day of the week.

And that has been the pattern and the habit for Christians since that time

to gather weekly to share in communion, to hear the word preached, to sing songs,

to be in Christian community, to serve.

That is built in there for our faith that every seven days we set aside a date of worship.

And when you say, well, I'm not going to do that because I'm going to be on the travel team.

But I listen to worship music.

I hear what you're saying.

And there's not going to be some verse that tells you that listening to worship music

instead of attending church is a bad thing.

There's no verse that says that.

Because there was no such thing as worship music.

There's not going to be a verse that answers that question as clearly as people want.

But I just want you to know what it sounds like to me as it sounds like a lot of justification

because I don't think any Christian from church history would look at that pattern

and go, oh, sure, we never really met for you to gather together.

We just met for you to pray in the woods by yourself.

The Christian life is a community project.

We need each other.

We need the body of Christ.

We need to serve.

We need to be served.

We don't have all the spiritual gifts.

So we need to be a part of community in which people are teachers and people

have all these different spiritual gifts that encourage our faith.

And it's so easy to be a consumer when it comes to the church.

So it's like, I need this.

My kids need this.

This is good for my soul.

I want to tell people, your refusal to be a part of a church or your decision to be very infrequent means you can't serve in a church.

And that means that you are neglecting your duty as a member of the body to love your brothers and sisters in Christ.

And so there is this other element of like you've been given to the church.

And part of your life is going to be fuller.

Yes, if you do that, like that's part of your calling.

This is a really difficult topic because people feel really, really strongly.

And I get it probably about a year ago.

I was sitting in a circle with a number of guys, multiple of whom were professional athletes.

I'm not going to name who they were.

But if I said this person in the NFL, everybody would know who this person was.

Like, oh, yeah, I know who that person is.

I guess.

No, actually, you'd guess wrong.

I don't think I've told you.

And we're sitting in this circle and there's some older guys there, Sages, who someone asked them,

like, hey, what are some of your biggest regrets as like a father and as a husband in the younger years with your kids?

That's going to be clear.

No one was talking about kids sports.

It was not like some natural segue into talking about kids sports, but several of these guys,

some of them who had been professional athletes in the past said that their biggest regret as parents was kids sports.

Even though they had made a successful career out of it.

Some of them had made a successful career out of it.

Others of them were incredibly successful in business, right?

These were very, very successful people and they said our biggest regret was kids sports.

And when they went on to explain why it's everything you just said.

It was we gave up family time and we made our family time gravitate around athletics.

We didn't make it gravitate around Jesus.

We didn't make it gravitate around God.

It goes, we gave up Sundays and we gave up being connected to a church.

And that had repercussions for many of them for their kids and their walk with Jesus.

This is a statistical fact.

If you wanted to say, hey, what are going to increase the odds of my kids having an eternal life with Jesus?

If that's an important thing to you, it's an important thing to me.

Two things.

Number one, you talk about God with your kids on a regular basis.

Number two, you attend church.

Those are the two things.

You do those two things.

Your odds go tremendously up of your kids having a lifelong relationship with Jesus.

You cut either of those two things out and it goes down.

And that was kind of their point with how like, man, we gave up so much for sports.

And even though these were people, again, some of them being professional athletes,

who could expect that their kid might be the 0.02% that end up going on to professional sports, right?

Like two out of 10,000 kids will be a professional athlete.

They had a higher shot.

Like they had the gene pool, right?

None of their kids went on to be professional athletes.

And so I say all that to say, all the reasons we give, all the excuses we give,

if you just go find an older wiser person in you who had maybe even better reason than you

to go down the path of doing the kid sports thing.

And you said, what's their biggest regret?

And they said doing kid sports.

Like I think that would be enough for most of us to say, huh, maybe this is something

I don't want to invest my life in.

Because that is what you're doing.

It's your life.

If it's your time and it's your money and it's your family and it's your children,

I cannot think about higher investment than if you're giving them away to sports.

When my kids were growing up and they were involved in sports, I was trying to figure out

how much time should we give this?

How should we think about this?

And I had a friend who's just a couple years older than me,

but his kids are a little bit older as well.

And he was his kids baseball coach and they were really successful.

They went in the Little Bleed World Series.

They never made it all the way to Omaha, but they made it close with a couple different local teams.

And so I just asked him, you know, how can you tell who's going to be the good players?

Like, how do you get the right players on your team to go that far?

And I was going to ask him for personal reasons too, just kind of wondering about my own kids.

And he said, well, I just got to look at the parents.

He goes, you know, what I've noticed is that German shepherds have German shepherds and poodles have poodles.

And I'll never forget that story because it was the most enlightening moment.

Oh, okay.

So I went home and told my kids kids study hard, like have fun in sports and meet friends and learn some good life skills,

but study hard because your dad's a chihuahua.

Right?

You don't have a poodle.

You have a chihuahua as a mother and a father.

So you got no game out there at the best.

At the best case scenario, you'll play high school sports and then that'll be it.

And that's what my kids did.

They were good enough to play up through high school.

We didn't do all the crazy travel stuff, but they were good enough that they played through high school.

And then that was the end.

I have a friend who I just left a Bible study with before we started this conversation.

And he said he was going to miss church this weekend because of sports.

And I said, man, he spent a lot of time and money to produce a great intermural college athlete.

Well, that's what most people are doing, right?

Please tell me you said that too.

Oh, I did.

So at most of these kids who are involved in sports and missing family dinners and missing church and missing birthday parties and on the road,

they're going to be intermural athletes.

They're going to play for beta theta pie or their dorm in the campus rec center.

And that's going to be it because the statistics you mentioned earlier, but let's make sure that we really get this.

The odds of a high school player, a high school athlete going to a D1 school is 2%.

2% that's 2 out of every 100 kids.

So hardly any are going to do it.

And I'll tell you that some sports are more accessible than others.

So picking up popular sport is probably much lower in some.

Some girl sports are more accessible than boy sports for obvious reasons.

Look, I love sports.

I love sports.

I love kids being involved in sports, but our culture has done something crazy.

And you don't have to take the crazy pill.

Now, you say why is it hard?

I think it's hard because your kids, you know, seven, eight, nine, ten, twelve, whatever.

And their friends are doing it.

And so they want to do it.

It's so hard.

And so you convince yourself that you're doing what is best for your kid because your kid wants to do this.

Your kid likes these other kids.

And then you start going down this road.

I just think that kids can't be in charge of much.

Kids were given parents for parents to have more wisdom and to look down the road and to be able to assess all these different values and say sports are good.

But they have to be kept in their place.

Isn't there a proverb?

Was it foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child?

It is hard.

I've got friends who have children who are incredibly athletic.

I'm sure they are.

And they have competitive teams coming and saying, hey, your kid would be really good.

And you know what they're kids saying?

I want to do it.

I really want to do it.

Dad, please.

You got to be the kind of parent that doesn't let your kid have these great opportunities.

Please let me go do it.

And I've been so proud of a number of friends of mine who have sat down with their kids.

And I'm not saying their kids get it.

Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child.

They kind of get it.

And some adults too.

And handsome adults.

But especially children.

But they've sat down with them and said, this is not going to be our priority in life.

You, me, no one in our family is going to go on to be a professional athlete.

I know that you want to go and be Patrick Mahomes wherever it is.

I love you son.

It's not going to happen.

It's just good.

Like it's good to sober your kids up.

I know crushing children's dreams.

Like I'm sorry.

Give your kids some realistic dreams.

He's not going to be Patrick Mahomes.

There's only one.

And he should win the next Super Bowl.

And the thing about all of this is like, I've been so impressed.

I have other friends who they've got it into the competitive stuff a little bit.

And depending on the sport, you can dabble.

So like wrestling is a great example.

You can kind of be on a competitive wrestling team.

But you can pick which tournaments you go because it's an independent sport.

And so I have friends who've done it.

And they've said, okay, we're going to set limits.

We never go to tournaments on Sunday.

We always prioritize our small group.

These are things that we will not break on.

But because of the nature of the sport, they've been able to do a little bit.

So maybe that's part of it is telling your kid like, hey, you can't do maybe basketball

or football where you're going to be taken away from church and from us doing these things.

But here's a few options.

If you want to go to the competitive route, that we can still pull off as a family tennis.

Like there's other things out there that you could do.

Yeah.

And I'm not saying that Christine, I did this perfectly at all.

We learned some of this the hard way.

And I'm not saying that you could ever miss a Sunday to go to a tournament.

I'm not saying that.

It's fine.

I think here and there.

But when it becomes normal, when it becomes a habit, when it becomes a pattern,

what your kid's notice is that sports are more important than faith.

And I know you don't think you're communicating that, but they notice.

They look around and they go, yeah, we go to church unless...

And then, you know, we fill in the gap for you.

Unless the chiefs are on it because that's who Patrick's in my way.

Unless there's a tournament that we can.

We go to church unless.

So the church is always a thing we do if there's nothing else to do.

And sports get our priority, our time.

I will say this though, I mean, I think if you're going to pick a sport

because you're talking about the different ones you could choose,

I would pick a lifetime sport like tennis or golf or something.

Because like I played football.

You can't play football once you graduate from high school, right?

I mean, unless you're going to be a professional athlete,

but like golf or tennis or something like that.

You can go out and just do it on your own.

Right.

So swimming, I wish I was a swimmer.

My wife was a swimmer and she still swims.

Yeah, that's awesome.

I drown.

I can't even do the dog paddle.

Here's the deal, Keith.

We have a lot to go on in this sports episode.

Because apparently we care a lot more about sports than other topics

that we've been talking about.

So we've been talking for a while.

Oh, we've been talking for a long time.

And our listeners know it.

So here's what we're going to do.

Let's press pause on this episode.

And we will pick this back up in a second episode.

We're going to do sports part two.

And I think to just elicit your interest.

And I don't think this will be nearly as long as an episode.

But just to elicit your interest.

What will we be talking about?

Probably the most interesting one.

We are going to talk about sports betting.

And I think that's a topic, at least all of my guy friends.

You know, we're all in our late 30s, early 40s.

Everybody's talking about this.

It's been a very lively debate, I would say.

And so I think that's a really important discussion.

We'll talk about that.

But we'll also talk a bit more about what does the Bible say about sports maybe?

And what does sports reveal in us?

So a few other topics.

But we can't keep going on this episode.

So hopefully you don't hate us after we talked about kids sports.

We'll check you next week.

Bye.

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