Although I now live in New England, I was born and raised in western Pennsylvania, and natives of that region are Steelers fans from birth (if not before). Since the Super Bowl, I’ve thought approvingly of that saying hanging in countless homes there: “If there’s no football in heaven, I don’t want to go.” I assume that there will be little need for theologians in heaven, since the Bible suggests that when we are with God we all will know perfectly. Since football is the other thing I spend most of my life thinking about, if there is no football in heaven, it’s going to be a long eternity for me.
So will there be football in heaven? That’s actually a really good theological question. Your answer says something about what you think are God’s intentions for human beings. Whether we think of heaven as an actual place, a “state of being,” or something else, we often think of it as the symbol of human perfection, the moment in which we will be stripped of the shackles of sin and transformed into the perfect creatures God intended us to be. But what would the perfect human life look like?
Contrary to some pious portrayals, I don’t imagine the Big Beyond to consist only of contemplative souls lounging on clouds and attending angelic concerts; I imagine it as a little more active. God created us not just with spirits but with minds and bodies, with the intention that we would use our whole selves to God’s glory and our common good. Human sin compromises our efforts to fulfill God’s intentions, but I assume that when we are perfected, we still will have bodies that need to move, minds that need to be used, and spirits that need to be fed. So I assume that the perfect human life would include contemplation, but also creativity, and physical activity as well.
But is football part of that perfect human life, or is it sin’s defilement of God’s intent? One of my seminary teachers is a big Chicago Cubs fan, and he could be a little snobby when comparing his favorite pastime with mine, claiming more than once in class that football was nothing more than “a metaphor for war.” In other words, football is a reflection of human sin and violence. With due respect to this beloved mentor, it’s obvious that his loyalty to the Cubs undermines his credibility as a theological interpreter of sports. Football is not a metaphor for war, despite the frequency with which players inappropriately refer to it that way. It is not an essentially violent game, if by violence we mean the intention to physically harm another person. Rather, football is about physical exertion, competition, and the creative coordination of strength, skill, and smarts. None of these things is inherently sinful, and in fact, I’d argue that they are a part of being human, divinely-given character traits that can be used for good or bad.
Furthermore, I think there are aspects of football (and sports more broadly) that can be downright holy. Like Jacob’s wrestling match with God, sports can be a religious experience, occasions to see glimpses of God’s wonder. Football is beautiful, and anyone who denies this fact never saw the aptly named “Immaculate Reception.” There is something aesthetically pleasing about a pass half the length of the field, landing softly in the hands of a receiver streaking into the end zone without breaking stride. I also happen to think that there is something beautiful about a defensive back blitzing a quarterback, or a running back pushing a linebacker into the end zone. It’s not violence that makes these plays beautiful; it’s the mathematics, the science of football that makes it art. Football testifies to the internal precision of this complicated world we live in. When a quarterback gets the perfect arc into his pass or two players careen off of one another magnificently, they personify the elegance of physics and geometry. Football turns the wonderful design of the universe into choreography.
In doing so, football reminds us of how amazing is this complicated, precision instrument of a world that we live in, and it can lead the pious spectator to marvel at the wisdom and greatness of God. John Calvin used the word “sacrament” to refer not just to the Eucharist and Baptism but also more broadly to wonders of our everyday world (like rainbows) that provide us with “visible signs of [God’s] invisible grace.” Depending on the game I’m watching, I might be willing to use that term to describe football, too.
Football also can be holy to the extent it serves as an object lesson in virtue. The game requires discipline, self-control, unselfishness, civility, and fairness. Of course I’m aware that many professional players do not reflect these virtues. Football doesn’t always live up to its potential for holiness, but even in missing the mark, the sport is an accurate reflection of the human condition, the messy interplay of human beings’ godly potential and their penchant for compromising everything they touch. And even in those too familiar moments of excessive violence and narcissism that we see in professional sports, the game itself indicts those who offend its expectation of virtue. Unsportsmanlike conduct is not the nature of football, but its derangement (to borrow from Calvin again).
In this way, sports can be a metaphor for the task of Christian living. As authoritative a sports fan as the Apostle Paul thought so. Paul used the image of a runner pushing through a race to illustrate the way Christians ought to be motivated by the end for which they labor, the Gospel of Christ. He commended focus and discipline by comparing discipleship to a boxer in a title fight. Paul understood that sports can articulate vividly the requirements of the Christian life.
So will there be football in heaven? If so, I’d expect it to be played more perfectly than we see displayed here. In heaven I wouldn’t expect to see Ray Lewis standing over a running back, celebrating because he separated the player’s shoulder. But I would expect to see Ray Lewis playing smart, hitting hard, and celebrating that he stopped that running back on fourth-and-one.
In many ways, our question is shorthand for the larger issue of how Christians should evaluate the larger culture around them. Contrary to the majority of sermons you hear from American pulpits, “the culture” is not an unambiguously bad thing. Culture is a product of human creativity, and our creativity is one of the great gifts of God. Sin compromises our culture, and thus we should be wary of uncritically baptizing elements of it as untainted reflections of divine will. But sin’s imprint on our culture is not its nature but its derangement. Our culture is a gift from God, which means that there is a lot in it that is good, that reflects the loving genius of a graceful God. We should revel in the wonderful gift of culture, even as we stay vigilant against the way human sin has weakened it.
Ultimately, we Christians are called to critically embrace the culture around us. It is a good, but one that must be kept in perspective, that can be (and normally is) compromised by human sin, but that is also redeemable in the transformative grace of Christ. There are aspects of our culture we ought to reject, but there are also aspects in which, if we look hard, we might see residual signs of God’s wonder and beauty. I just happen to think that a last-minute, toe-tapping touchdown to win the Super Bowl is one of those divine-disclosing moments.
