By Brad Locke
May 7, 2004

(AgapePress) - Boy, sports these days are so not with it, so inhibited, so ... antiquated.

I mean, they have all these rigid rules and stuff. They're such a hindrance to the creative expression of an athlete. And what right do those referees and umpires and commissioners have imposing their morality on everyone? Just because some authorized book says the game has to be played a certain way doesn't mean anything. If some people want to play that way, fine. Not me. I don't let a bunch of words dictate how I should believe and behave on the playing field.

Now, as I remove tongue from cheek, I think it's clear the point I'm trying to make. If it's not, then here it is in even plainer English: If the moral relativism so pervasive in today's world were to seep into the sports realm, then organized sports, like our current culture, would be thrown into a state of chaotic regression. Fair play and sportsmanship would become archaic principles, cheating would abound (but be called "creative genius"), and the resulting consequences would be blamed on those few backward people who still insist on enforcing the rules.

And everyone would get a trophy. Or no one would get a trophy. Whatever kept folks from getting their feelings hurt.

Let's paint a scenario here. Super Bowl. Fourth-and-10, five seconds left in a four-point game. The quarterback drops back, spots his receiver flying down the sideline and heaves it. Just before the ball arrives, the defender knocks the receiver into the bench, makes the interception, game over. But wait, there's a flag. Pass interference, says the referee. The defender and his teammates and coaches grow irate and shout down the official, who stands firm. Finally, the defender punches out the ref, declares victory and is carried off the field -- along with the hijacked trophy -- by his team.

The quarterback becomes indignant over this injustice, until he's reminded that earlier in the game he'd hopped up after getting tackled, run into the end zone and celebrated a touchdown. Though the scoreboard didn't register the points, all that mattered to the quarterback was that he had crossed the goal line. Never mind how he got there. It was his sincere belief he scored. (On a side note, the road to hell is not only paved with good intentions, it is trod heavily by sincere people.)

Now, let's imagine a parallel. A guy meets a girl and takes her home for the night. The next day he is confronted by two things: guilt and the woman's husband. The second compounds the first, but instead of owning up to his actions, the philanderer rebels against the moral reality and tries to justify his behavior. He buries his guilt beneath a pile of excuses, and then he realizes something: he knows this guy, the husband. He saw him eating dinner and flirting with an attractive young lady that wasn't his wife. The husband admits as much, and both men wind up justifying each other's behavior. No hard feelings.

So let's imagine the many possibilities if sports were not bound by those oppressive rules. In basketball, players who traveled would be hailed for breaking the suffocating bonds of dribbling. Golfers could improve their lies (both kinds) with impunity, whining that it isn't fair that their ball is in the tall grass while the other guy's is in the fairway. In baseball, steroid use would be excused as a hitting tool ... wait, that's already happened.

Of course, as the steroid example testifies, a certain amount of rule-breaking is present in sports today. Cheating is often viewed as a way to "gain an edge" on the opponent, and it's not wrong as long as you don't get caught. Such "forward" thinking doesn't change the rules, just like no amount of sin, no matter how commonplace it becomes, can render God's absolute truth irrelevant.

In sports, there are rulebooks that clearly state how the game is to be played. Likewise, the Bible is the only rulebook we should follow. Not the Qu'ran, not the Book of Mormon, not Ghandi's philosophy, not some literary figure's writings, not our own prideful postulations.

The Bible is more than just a set of rules, however. It is a guide, a testimony, a history book, a love letter and, above all, God's unchangeable Truth. That Word was made incarnate in Christ, and the Lord will accept no substitutes. As David wrote in Psalm 119:128: "Therefore I consider all your precepts to be right; I hate every false way."

There is another thing about rules in sports. They make sense. Baseball makes sense. Football makes sense. Marathons make sense. They make sense because of the relationship between the rules. If Sammy Sosa hits the ball over the fence, where nobody can get to it, he gets to circle the bases. If a lineman breaks early from his symmetrical formation, he's penalized for being offsides. If a runner tries to sprint a marathon, he or she will collapse about 26 miles short of the finish -- distance requires patience.

Reason is foundational to God's truth. We don't know the depths of God's reason all the time, but we can see how His truths interrelate and affirm each other. They harmonize perfectly. Like rules are to sports, God's truths are to life. Without them, everybody loses.