My New Sports Analogy

Image credit: Jason Antony

Lately, I've been thinking about a movie that my bishop had the youth in my ward watch a few years back. (I have to mention my bishop because he said he was worried that I would mention him in my blog, and then I told him I'd be sure to include him at some point.) The movie was Facing the Giants. It's a Christian movie which basically compares the gospel to football. It's a good movie; very inspirational, funny, good morals, etc. In particular, my bishop emphasized a scene where the coach puts a blindfold on one of the players and challenges the player to crawl across as much of the football field as he can with another player on his back. The player ends up crawling across the entire field, and it turns into a teaching moment for the coach.

Anyway, for some reason, I started wondering what I would do if I were in that player's shoes. Let's say that by some miracle I feel a desire to be on a high school football team, I make the team, and I stay on long enough to make it to this moment. Would I crawl across the entire field? I don't think so. You see, towards the end of that player's crawl, the coach gets down into his face and yells at him constantly. "Don't give up! Don't quit! Do your best, your very best!" That would drive me insane. Seriously, I would just drop down and quit right then. Why? Because football is just a game; it's not life and death. That's when I finally understood the main problem I have with sports movies and analogies: sports are not about winning and losing. They're not even about how you play the game.

I played Jr. Jazz (community basketball) every year from third grade to twelth grade. Obviously, Jr. Jazz is not as intense as professional, college, or even high school basketball. But I remember in eighth grade the playoffs seemed particularly intense. My team did pretty well, but no matter how well my team or I (individually) played, the game was ruined if even one player, on either team, had a miserable experience. Based on my experience with sports, I'm gonna argue that sports are about making sure that every single player has fun playing.

As soon as I realized the real reason for sports (at least, according to me), I decided to develop my own sports analogy to the gospel. First of all, most sports analogies are Heavenly Father's team versus Satan's team, but since winning isn't the most important thing, I'm going to have both teams be coached by Heavenly Father. To be honest, giving Satan his own team is giving him way too much credit. Don't get me wrong; he does influence the game. He's just not playing. He's in the crowd with his minions, throwing stuff on the court, booing us, trying to make us err, etc. However, I think it's important to point out that the other side of the crowd is much bigger and is full of people cheering us on. They cheer when both teams score, they cheer when players admit their mistakes instead of yelling at the referee, and they cheer when players pick themselves back up, dust themselves off, and keep playing.

Actually, that's what most of the players are hopefully doing too. The most fun I've ever had playing basketball has been at elders' ball. I'm not talking about like in Church Ball where the basketball is a competition between wards. I'm talking about just casual, pick-up ball with the elders within a ward. The reason I like it is because everyone knows who is old and fat and out-of shape, who is practically a professional, and who has probably never touched a basketball in their life. The beauty of it is that no one cares. Everyone acknowledges the good plays, everyone passes it to the guy who has missed twenty shots in a row, and everyone has fun. And in my analogy, if anyone starts making the game miserable for others, the referee (Jesus Christ) kicks them out of the game.

Even if you don't agree with my analogy, or if it doesn't make sense to you, I hope we can all play the game of life to the best of our ability. I hope we can cheer our teammates on, try to help them, and allow them to help us. We also need to remember that Satan has no chance of winning because he's not even playing. Most importantly, I hope that we all help each other have an enjoyable experience in this life.