Faith and Sports and Lifeby Eric Jensen

How do you write a sports and faith article when there are no sports? Well first, you get really angry. So angry that you write passages like this:

“The world we live in is a freaking nightmare. That’s right, this one contains lots and lots of church-inappropriate cuss words.  If you’re a traditionalist like me though, feel free to fill in the actual word in your head, or say it with some gusto if you are reading it aloud). Just no ifs, ands, or buts about it. This will probably contain a lot of bleeped out swear words. I feel that in this context of the world we live in now some of them are appropriate. This is a ‘poop show’ for instance. (I’ll have fun seeing what Pastor changes that one to).”

You then in the process of writing, that find out how deeply scared you are. You probably write something like this:

“Listen, the truth is, I’m scared. I am scared because for the first time in my entire life my dad is scared about something. My mom is scared too, and so are my brothers. No one is not afraid right now.”

Then that fear, just like the wise master Yoda says, turns to anger:

“There is no anchor other than God and if we are being completely honest, I feel like God has abandoned me. I know that sounds harsh.  He’s taken away so much from me though.

I know that’s a very young person thought to have but wouldn’t you be angry too? Put yourself in my shoes. I was a 20 year old college student who was just getting used to independence, working hard at his job and doing fairly well in school. Then one morning I went to Pennsylvania and in the span of three days my life was ruined essentially.”

Then immediately you feel guilty that you feel this way. You know you are very fortunate to not have to worry about the basic human needs at this very moment. So you immediately try to put yourself in the shoes of those who are less fortunate, mainly out of guilt, thinking angry thoughts tends to bring a sense of self-loathing to me:

“I can’t imagine what some of my roommates from out of state had to deal with. Imagine if you just left your entire family for your first year of college and all the struggles you went through in the first four to five months. Then suddenly you got the hang of it and you felt awesome and then suddenly it was ripped away from you. In the blink of an eye, your life, through no fault of your own, essentially flipped upside down.”

Then you probably get angry again, about money, about independence:

“Now imagine your job gets taken away. I work as an hourly employee for a sports radio station. I am an events-based staff member. When there are no sports I make no money. I have more or less essentially been laid off for the foreseeable future.”

Then you have some big questions about God:

“If God loves us, why is this happening?

I feel like God has abandoned me, is it ok to feel that way?

I am angry at God, is it ok to feel that way, I want to scream expletives at him! Don’t a lot of people reading this probably feel that way to?

How can I keep my faith in such a trying time?

If God has a plan, why is this terrible thing in his plan?”

Then you probably try to finish it off with something hopeful:

“I’ll finish with this. I keep telling myself, my great grandmother lived through the Great Depression, I can live through this. It sucks right now. It is going to suck for a long time. I don’t know if I will feel the same way about God once this is over. This experience is forcing me to ask a lot of tough questions. We are all going through this. I am sure most of you want to scream loud expletives into pillows as well right now. Maybe we can take some solace in that.”

Then you bring it to someone you love and respect, in this case my Dad, because you know you cannot possibly publish all of this. Then he tells you to send this as an email to Pastor David: a letter with questions. You of course are scared by this because you don’t want to have Pastor get this and think, oh this Eric character is so self-absorbed there is no hope for him. The person you care about tells you how crazy that sounds and you ship the whole thing to Pastor David.

You get a long response and you start writing this version of Faith and Sports. You start picking out the highlights of the email.

My heart goes out to you for all the changes you're experiencing right now. You have every right to feel angry, upset, and frustrated. Your questions about "where is God in all this" are ancient questions people from every era have wondered about. 

Everyone in our country is being asked to make changes and sacrifices as you know.”

Suddenly you don’t feel so deeply alone. We are all scared and angry and sad. There is a silver lining in that. We are united, we feel these things together. We will get through this together.

You, the writer of Faith and Sports, then probably still wonder: Well where is God in all of this? Well perhaps he’s in the experience right now. God is with us now, when things are darkest. Trying to guide us to do the right things. Like stay home, wash your hands, don’t touch your face. Pastor provides some other thoughts on where God is exactly:

“God provides us humans with the scientific ability to address the challenges we face together in this century, and the ancient ethics of Christ's teachings to guide our behaviors and choices about how to use that science.”

If only there were a series that talked about Science and Faith……OH WAIT;  HOLY CRAP! EVERYONE:  I THINK WE HAVE SOMETHING THAT WE HAVE DONE THROUGH OUR CHURCH FOR THIS EXACT SCENARIO!  WOW!

So you think back to what your Dad, Chris Jensen, said on some of this stuff when he was preparing in your living room, and you see that science can actually be a tool of God, and those working on a vaccine for COVID 19 are a gift from God.

You still probably wonder, why exactly this is all happening though, if God truly is all seeing and all knowing, and what have you. So you consult Pastor David’s email:

“For me, God isn't a man on a throne with a long white beard who's written a script for all of human history that we are blindly living out.  That's a god to be afraid of.  And lots of Christian denominations (including Roman Catholics and fundamentalists) sell that picture of God to try and scare people into their churches.  For me, God is a radical unconditional suffering Love that never gives up on us, no matter how much humanity screws up.”

Now whether you believe in the all loving God or not is totally up to you. Part of faith is free will. Though reading this I certainly do though. Life is too short to live thinking God is out to get us. The ‘Rona’ (trademark Eric Jensen) as I like to call it, probably wasn’t God’s plan. Science says it developed because a human made a mistake and accidentally acquired an animal virus that the human body just wasn’t ready to deal with yet because it had never seen it before. This all from Dr. Anthony Fauci of the CDC, by the way.

So the ‘Rona was just a cruel twist of fate. (More on fate in a later article.) But to sum up, I believe Fate and God can both co- exist. Or if you need something else to blame it on, why not the Devil, who I personally don’t know if I believe in . . . more on that later as well.

At this point though, you still probably feel abandoned. Then Pastor points out, well Jesus was also feeling abandoned:

“God in Christ Jesus even experiences the perceived abandonment of God: "My God why have you forsaken me?" says Christ on the cross.  Our feelings of abandonment were experienced by God.  And that still wasn't the end of the story.  God spoke an overcoming word of undying hope on Easter morning. That hope is what we remind ourselves in the liturgy when we say "Christ has died.  Christ is risen. Christ will come again."  The baby in the manger is "God With Us" on his own cross of suffering so that nothing we suffer (including our feelings of abandonment) would ever be reason for us to think that God was punishing us in our own suffering, or abandoned us in our suffering.”

So you, the writer of Faith and Sports, feel much better now. You’re still afraid though. Not that you will get the disease but that you might unknowingly get the disease and give it to your type 1 diabetic brother. You’re deathly afraid of that. You find comfort in the fact that our Pastor feels the same way.

You feel pretty strongly about it so you decide to say right here in your Faith and Sports article, (that has not touched on sports one bit):  please stay home if you can. Not only for your health, but for the health of the people you know.

Then you realize, OH MY GOODNESS!!, big idea coming. ARE SPORTS LEAGUES LIKE JESUS?, in the fact that they have gone to the cross and died? Lost millions of dollars, angered a segment of their fans, and left so many like myself feeling heartbroken that I can’t watch Nick Senzel hit a dinger on opening day?!  All so that we as a society could live? Sports leagues realized they were the biggest threat to public health arguably, outside of churches (who ironically are also like Jesus for not meeting) so they shut down and gave their lives for the common good. Only to return at some point in the future TBD.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still angry at God. You might be too. But it makes me love him even more knowing that while I throw expletive into the skies these days, because I am human, he still loves me and he still loves you. No matter what.

 

Let me know what you think!  You can email me at  utaheric18@gmail.com