Effeminacy in Watching Sports, Christian Competition, and Brotherhood

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Effeminacy in Watching Sports, Christian Competition, and Brotherhood

November 2, 2022

Rome created the colosseum to keep the masses distracted and happy. Men and women get wrapped up in the same trap today through sports in America. Sports in America are one of the chief idols of our society and we ought to put it in it proper place as Christians. Thanks for listening!

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Transcript

[Music] Don't think I will even ask you to make Jesus Lord of your life. That's the most preposterous thing I could ever tell you to do. Jesus Christ is Lord of your life.

Whether you serve him or not, whether you bless him, curse him, hate him, or love him, he is the Lord of your life because God has given him a name that is above every name so that the name of Jesus Christ every knee shall bow. In tongue confess that he is Lord. Some of you will bow out of the grace that has been given to you and others will bow because your kneecaps will be broken by the one who rules the nations with a rod of iron.

[Music] And I'll not apologize for this God of the Bible.

[Music] Welcome friends to the 40 King podcast where we proclaim the edicts of the king, namely and chiefly, that he reigns and you ought to bend the knee. So thanks for joining in.

I got some guy with me named Noah. So very frequent guest on the podcast. Thanks Noah for being here again.

This episode we wanted to walk through the topic of sport or competition. You had heard, we've had a Wednesday episode recently where we talked about Christian aggression and we kind of touched on it a little bit how aggression is good at sports. But then we talked specifically about aggression and how that's used for men on all a vast array of things.

Well this episode Noah and I thought it would be good to just talk about how competition is to be used rightly in the world and maybe some of the idols we've made out of competition. So Noah had shared with me some thoughts. Can you kind of start us off Noah with maybe kind of some of the things you were sharing with me? Yeah.

About competition or maybe some things you've been thinking about recently. We were playing basketball. You were telling me about competition.

Yeah, I was just recently reminiscing with some friends on the good old days of running crack in high school. Yeah, well I mean we got into a lot of shenanigans. We actually like one time spent the whole night in the high school football stadium and there was like this huge event where people were running on the track all night.

Oh yeah. Did you ever do that? That's not the year I had to do it that year. Yeah, that was a thing.

But having the experience of participating in an individual sport where your success is wholly determinant on your personal performance in the event. Exactly. So Rocky and I both ran the 400 meter dash event in high school.

I was a swimmer though. That was my main sport. I want everybody to know that.

Noah smoked me and running. I was a swimmer. That was my swimmer.

So you would get that in swimming events too. Oh my goodness, yeah. Swimming is very similar to running in the sense it's completely individual.

How hard are you going to push yourself to win? The minor mistakes make huge differences in your time. Oh yeah. So it's a lot of pressure.

You have to bear the weight of knowing that you could make this little mistake that will potentially cost you a race if you're like racing at a high level and you understand the strategy of how you go through a whole race to get the best possible time. Exactly. So like for example in the 400 there's a strategy to run the race where you do these specific things.

It also I mean it varies from race to race what strategy you want to use. But basically it's something like you want to try to first of all accelerate fast by the blocks. Because you're just cutting off time.

That time that it takes to accelerate. So you get up to speed quickly and then you want to try to find a pace that's about like a 95 percent of your max speed because you're going to need some for that back stretch. I mean for anybody who's participated in the 400 is that kind of race.

You're nearly at a full sprint right. You're saying 95. So there's strategy to it.

You know in certain races you want to keep in mind longevity. You know so there. Yeah there's a lot of wisdom there inherent your strategy.

Same thing for swimming. What was comparable to the 400 in swimming was the 100. Similar.

It's kind of funny even looking at the similar times like a good 100 for a swimmer would be like sub 50 would be an OK for high swim. I was like a 49. That's a good 100 but a good a good 400 meter race for track is some some 50.

For the two that's really good. Yeah for the 200 yard for a swimmer. You want to go about sub one one minute 50 seconds major good 200 summer the 800 you need to be a sub 150 to be a good 800 runner.

Same thing with the mile of the 500. It's very it's very interesting how the. It's like the lengths were perfectly proportioned out for how much slower swimming is to running.

But same strategy for I was a I was a 500 and 200 summer. So for the 500 that's more of a mile. You want to really kind of pace yourself.

But like you're saying for the 400. I actually have the 100. I was a 49 second 100 swimmer in high school which is pretty good.

You have to go out. The whole thing is a sprint basically you're 95 and then that last lap or whatever. But for you that last stretch would be you're going as hard as you can.

And the start really does matter. I almost I would say even more so for swimming. I don't know if you've ever seen a swimming start but it is it's not like you just start running.

You don't start off swimming. You have to do a jump a jump start into the water. So it's kind of a different technique.

But I'm saying principles apply for almost any individual athletics work. You know. Right.

So there is a lot that you can draw out of competition like this. I guess the idea like if you want to win like you're probably going to have to you're going to face challenges. Like you're yeah the way your way of thinking is going to be changed to some extent.

And so you need to be adaptable. So in the 400 you need to decide whether you're going to try to start your kick during the turn or when you come out of the turn based on your opponent and how much you're guessing that he has left in the tank. Whatever.

Yeah. So yeah there's a lot that goes into competition but having all that run through your mind at the beginning of the race. Like that was just like something that was impressed on me recently I guess.

And then doing the race competing with other people seeing how you size up. Yeah. So how does that translate to when you're when you're training.

Like obviously Paul uses that a lot as an analogy for the Christian faith. What do you want to extract out of that in terms of humility and race humility and defeat. How do we be graceful and defeat.

How do we win over our enemies over the foes that we're fighting or that we're racing against. How do we win over them in such a way that we do it graceful. Because it's odd even in sport there's an idea of being unsportsmanlike but being unsportsmanlike has nothing to do with athletic ability.

It's a completely metaphysical idea. Even in some of the most physical things that we do in our society which is sports. Throwing a football back and forth or shooting a basketball or running a race.

It's like OK that's I'm a materialist right. So that's all there is in sports is just who runs the fastest. But then we have all the time this talk of being unsportsmanlike.

That's not physical at all. That's not material at all. That's a metaphysical idea.

So that's obviously a part of the race and your morals going into the race how hard you train your resolve in the midst of the race your steadfastness will determine also what happens physically to your body your mental your mental resolve. So there's some there's some good lessons there. So what do you think about maybe defeat or even to be humble and victory if you're better than somebody.

How should men think about that and anything whether it be a sport or if you're better than somebody any kind of skill. Even the job it could be in the workplace. I guess it depends in large part on what you mean by better.

So a lot of people might consider being better at a sport is purely being more skillful. Yeah. But that might not be true.

Being a good sportsman means having a level of respect for your competitors no matter how good they are. Exactly. You show them respect because they're participating in this sport.

Maybe it's where you really enjoy. Yeah. For us it could be chess for me it could be soccer and playing it for a really long time.

When you come to a certain level of playing a sport you begin to realize that it really isn't all about winning because I mean if you're really good at something and you face somebody who's bad at something you're not going to get hardly any satisfaction about just going all out and beating them. Yeah. Because that's not a challenge for you and there's little diversity there's little opportunity to grow.

So it can't be just purely about winning when you're a sportsman like you have this respect. Your desire is to see improvement in the other person and also learn humility for yourself because there is that metaphysical aspect of growing in character. And I think that's a big reason that children should participate in sports.

Yeah. Competition. That's a good thought.

Yeah. So I would say being good at a sport requires you to be humble because a good sportsman continuously has opportunities to grow where in that situation with you're a lot better than somebody you still have an opportunity to improve your game through helping the other person get better and learning how to become a good teacher. Exactly.

Yeah. So I think that's an art a lot of people don't really realize and that's something I've only noticed very recently. And I'm an extremely competitive person so I like just.

Yeah. Real quick. Tell the people your background in terms of sports.

You were a collegiate athlete. You know walk us through that a little bit. Sure.

Like how far back do you want me to go. Well I just just give us a real quick background. What sports you played and how far you progressed.

I go. So I just. It's real fast.

Just so people have a background like why do we. Did we play a lot of sports. Are we athletic.

We have a decent person I guess. I grew up playing soccer. Played through high school.

RCD. Yeah. For a couple of years.

Unfortunately I didn't play much because. I just didn't have a very good attitude. That's another thing being sportsman like you really need to have a good attitude.

Yeah. And coaches will notice. And then I also ran track all throughout high school.

Started running bar. You races junior year by senior year. I was.

Pretty good. So there's an indoor season outdoor season. So at the end of indoor season my four by four and four by two.

100 meter relay teams made it to the state competition. And I think we actually got fourth in the four by two. Yeah.

So we're pretty good. I was running like 50.5 in the 400 right then. This is a respectful time.

Yeah. So I had a had pretty good season. I ended up tearing my hamstring right then.

But then going into college. Started running with the UND track team. So that was actually one of the most difficult.

Programs I'd ever participated in like the training was extremely difficult. Built some good camaraderie around among my teammates but. Yeah I think I learned a lot about competing that year.

So yeah that's. I got to run only a couple of races. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Nice.

Yeah I just started I think fifth grade swimming. And I swam all throughout high school. And then I quit my junior year.

But I probably could have swam D3. I that that was not without outside the realm of the possibility. By the by junior year I was scoring the most that are on our high school team.

And I mean yeah. So yeah I was a pretty good swimmer but I wasn't like D1 material. But I could have swam D3 or D2 or something.

So yeah that's kind of my background with sports. But I do know what you mean like it's odd when. So I want to get to this by the end of this conversation about the idolatry of sports.

How we bust out of that and be humble in the midst of it. Because this is a big sin in America. I remember dude being so frightened.

Being like the best on the team. Everybody kind of looked up to like okay it's Rocky. Is Rocky going to show out or not.

Yeah. We have to perform well. Yeah and if you don't perform it really impacts like the freshman obviously when you're an upperclassman.

But also just being one of the better swimmers it was like okay is you know. I remember the coaches telling me that a lot. Like if you don't show out the whole morale of the team is going to be down.

You know and it was always like a lot on me. I remember like crying after I would like not do well in sectionals and state and things like that. And wanting to do better than I was.

And honestly I think I would have been a much better swimmer. I probably could have been D2D1 stuff if I didn't eat poorly. In retrospect looking back we did no dry land which would be like lifting weights.

I probably couldn't put up 135 on bench or squat over 180. If I actually would have been strong I think I probably could have been much better swimmer. I was already pretty good.

So I don't know. It is a lot of pressure and I was a pagan at that point. I was worshiping the world.

I was worshiping creation. And I had no category to put into oh if I don't do well I'm still learning. I'm still growing in my character.

There's something I can take away from this. What I only saw as a pagan doing a sport was if I don't perform again you focus on the physical. If you're a pagan you're usually in our society usually an atheistic materialist.

You don't even believe there's a god and you're worshiping the creation. There are some people that are pagans that obviously worship like Hindu gods and things like that. But I was more of like a materialist in my mindset.

So I was like thinking in my sport all that matter was my performance, my time. What did the clock show when I finished my race and if it wasn't a good number and I did win then I was crushed. I had no category in my mind for growing as an individual.

That sport is an end in of itself. Everything's moral. Everything has a moral substrate to it and sport is one of those things.

So I just remember being very crushing and I'm sure you have stories like that. You're not performing well and you knew you could have beat that dude. I'm just walking through how I interacted with it.

I know exactly what you mean. Not being humble in defeat. Not being humble in victory.

Having no humility. Not being sportsmen like at all. I think I've grown in that a lot.

I used to get frustrated a lot but when we play sports and hangout stuff it's not really a big deal. I can still get a little frustrated and there's still more I can work on. I don't know if there's some of my thoughts I had.

Seems like a mark of maturity how you react to victory or to defeat. Yeah, exactly. As we continue to grow as time passes it becomes more and more evident.

The fact that there's a bigger picture outside of the sport that you're playing and when you finish playing you gotta go back into your daily life. All that really matters is what you picked up and what you learned from participating in the competition. Exactly.

So something we mentioned in one way we're talking about chess is that when you're competing with other individuals who are dynamic the outcome isn't always, I mean it's not predetermined other than in the mind of God. Yeah, they've been. When you get into the competition there are times when it can go either way and it's kind of ambiguous and these little moments will decide the outcome of the game.

You can't get caught up on that. If you're placing your worth in something that you have no control of then you're gonna have issues. Yeah.

So then we can get into how that's such a big problem when people idolize sports. Yeah, well before we go there talk a little bit more about the teaching aspect of sport, passing down the flame, the torch, the baton. Being humble as a teacher that you can still learn something in teaching moments.

Not being, again like you're talking about things are gonna be out of your control in sports and sometimes you'll get wrecked, you'll get smoked. But one thing that's also out of control is there's not enough talent for everybody to have competition all the time. Sometimes you need to face somebody that just stinks and you really wanna play the sport at your level but you're playing with people that aren't at your level.

How do you take joy in seeing others benefit? How do you count others' interests more? You know, and Philippians too. How do you count others more? Like Christ did, more important than yourself. You know what I mean? So I started playing volleyball about two years ago and I mean I'm pretty athletic so I picked it up pretty quickly.

All I did was practice biomechanics of hitting. I got pretty decent. But then going and playing pickup games I would just wanna hit the ball as hard as I can just because I wanted to get better at hitting.

So it definitely made it less fun for other people but it's like I saw it as I'm still improving so it's like... Yeah, it's all about you. Yeah, just out of this selfish mentality. So it hasn't been, again, up until recently that I've realized the importance of being able to just exhibit self-discipline in your play.

That in itself is going to allow you to grow so much more than doing crap like trying to hit the ball as hard as you can. Yeah, and even in moments like that you hit the ball really hard, you hit somebody in the face, they're got a bloody nose. That's what I'm saying.

I would hit other people. There's a sense where you can get to a point where you might be slightly improving your hitting mechanics but nobody else is enjoying it and having fun and nobody else is actually learning because every time they serve it, you get a nice set, boom and then volley is over. There's no more volleying because you just slammed it and nobody gets to play.

So there's a moment where you can be reserved. I think when we become fathers, that's gonna be very evident. When your little kid is barely able to walk and you're kicking a ball back and forth and you're gonna teach him soccer and when me and you are kicking a soccer ball back and forth, you've hit it at me pretty hard before and I can't really control the ball when you hit it that hard.

If you did that to your kid, they would never learn, right? They would never ever learn. They would never want to play. They would never want to play, they'd never learn but there is a – I don't know.

It's such a good teaching in sports to control like you're saying self-discipline, control your strength, control what you're doing, be a self-controlled man and produce enjoyment for others and create a space where other people can learn and you can focus on fundamentals. You can move actually on how to slow down hesitation in your movement. Really telegraph your actions so they really know what you're gonna be doing but then it's like are they actually gonna be able to handle it? So yeah, I mean I can just dial back the hit a ton to where it's a somewhat difficult ball and they still get practice getting it up.

Yeah, in volleyball, when you have longer volleys, it's much more fun because the longer it goes, you're like each game wants to get the point. Those are some of the best. So just like realizing little things like that, like how to switch from a mindset of self-improvement to how can I use what I have for the benefit of others which is a big principle in Christianity.

Yes. It just makes things so much better for you but then also for everybody you're playing with. Exactly.

That's a good point. So that's what a good sportsman does. Exactly.

Being a man in every sphere of life where you are a blessing to those around you, that's really I guess what we're kind of drawing out here and I think one of the, and I think you hit it on the head, one of the worst examples of like toxic masculinity for instance would be the man that goes to a co-ed sport like you Noah. You're a great example of this. Go into a co-ed sport where there's girls present and slamming the ball as hard as you can playing volleyball, right? That's toxic man.

I hate to say it but it is. I mean you're recognizing that. Nobody's learning, nobody's having fun.

You're the only one having fun and you're being a terror to others, right? My team has fun. Yeah, your team has fun because you're winning. All they're doing is setting to you so you and the setter are like yeah, let's go.

Good hit. But there is that, there's a real sense to that of when a man enters into any sphere of life, he's doing whatever he's doing, how can he be a blessing to others? How can he go in and be like 11 and a lump and produce growth? How does he bring life to the place he's at? And a woman ought to think the same thing but a man does it in his way. A man does it in a masculine way, a woman brings life in a feminine way.

How do you, according to your God-given gender, how do you exemplify that and actually amplify that wherever you're at? That takes wisdom and it takes a lot of self-control. So that's something we've hit on a little bit. The importance of developing self-control, you get a lot of opportunities to do that in competition and in playing sports.

Exactly. So some people will take that opportunity and use it to grow. Same with martial arts too, people just tend to develop self-discipline as they progress in the martial art.

But then you can also do the opposite and just play the sport selfishly. You can even play the sport selfishly when somebody's like, "Oh, let's suck at the sport, I don't want to play." And then somebody's not even trying. Even if there are sports I play, I'm not very good at, I was a swimmer.

So I can't, for instance with track, I still try goals. When you saw me run that year, yeah, I didn't do well. I finally broke a minute though, my 400.

That's okay. That's good for me. And the sportsman thing to do is for Noah to say, "Dude, I run a 49 but 59, that's really good for you." And encouraging me, everybody encouraged me actually.

It was actually a really good environment for me to get better at running even though I was a swimmer and I had never run before. I was a land lover. I was lost at sea before that.

So I was- It was a lot of fun watching you and Blake compete. Blake, duke it out. Yeah, there was this guy named Blake.

He's a very funny man. He's hilarious. And I called him my arch nemesis the whole year and we would run next to each other.

I don't know if I ever told you this, but when I would run next to him and meets, I would literally say to him while we were neck and neck, I would say, "Initiating stride sequence." And I'd start really exaggerating, running. I was still trying. I didn't stop.

I didn't cease to try, but I started really going. I said, "Initiating stride sequence." And I'd start running and Blake would start- I could hear him. He'd laugh a little bit, but then we would be going after it.

We would try to- And by the end of the year, he beat me the last race. He got me and ended up being better than me. But that was fun.

You shouldn't be if you're bad at a sport as a man. There's a real pride when you say, "I suck. I can't do it." Because guess what? You keep saying, "I suck.

I can't do it. I don't want to do this. I don't want to play." I'm not willing to learn.

Yeah, I'm not willing to learn. You know what that is? That's pride in the same sense. Noah, running a 49, it'd be prideful for him to say, "Dude, you suck.

You should just quit." Why are you even trying to break a minute? You're not even good. We don't need you." Both are instances of pride and not good masculinity. The true man tries and gives effort, whatever he's doing, and he tries to be a blessing to others and help others learn, help others grow, grow himself.

That is what a man does. Yeah, you should be adaptable to where he can go into any situation and apply- I mean, play volleyball. Play at a skill level that facilitates better play in others.

Exactly. Yeah, you shouldn't just not try it all and just act like a- It'd be mopey. Yeah.

Nobody wants to play with that guy, but if you're encouraging people, you're actually having fun yourself, but you're not making it all about yourself and playing at your full skill level. You have the self-control to know how you can challenge others in a way to make them grow. You push on the right spots on their weaknesses to show them that they have these weaknesses.

I think a good sportsman, a wise man, has a discernment and a broad enough vision to where he's paying attention to how he can defeat his opponent at all times, but then he doesn't exploit that to a point where he just crushes the opponent. You do that when you're actually in a hostile confrontation. Yeah, if you're playing a game.

If you're out of meat, the enemy is now here. It's time to destroy. Right.

It's a different mindset. Yeah, so you don't- it's a different- yeah, exactly. It's a different mindset.

Well, I guess that also includes no- thine enemy. If you're a friend- if somebody's a friend that you're playing a sport with to help them get better, then they're a friend. They're in the category of friend.

If you go to a meet, a swim meet, a track meet, the other school is in the category of enemy. So you want to utterly destroy them. No mercy.

You've made me like in a team sport, say you're on your school's soccer team. I can relate to that. When you're competing with your teammates, it's like everybody wants each other to get better, ideally.

Yeah. I mean, yeah. But then, yeah, when you go and face another school, you're trying to destroy them.

Yeah, exactly. So you want to get better as a team as much as you can because you know there's going to be a time when you as a team are going to have to be able to rely on each other and trust you and win. Trust you next year.

Yeah, I think- yeah. Help a brother. I think it's a very important lesson.

So is there anything positive I guess we want to say about how to self-restraint, self-control in sport? Because I kind of would really like to start driving this conversation towards the idolatry of sport in our society, how people use sport for evil, the enterprise of sport, the idolatrous, feminine, gay, sport watching that so many men do across this country that actually a lot of men will opt to watch football on Sunday rather than go worship the living God. That's pretty gay. I mean, to sit on a couch and watch other men play a sport, that's extremely gay.

So- That's pretty effeminate. Yeah, exactly. So let's kind of walk through that.

Like, how should a man- you know, it's good for men to use their bodies. When you have a man that does not ever play a sport, it doesn't even have to be a sport. It can be working out, it can be running, just some kind of physical exertion.

A man should always be doing that his whole life until he dies. I was telling Noah about this. There's a guy at my work.

He's in his 60s. I think he's 66 now. He's in retiring age.

Yet what he does is he works for a drilling company and he lifts these 80 pound big metal augers and puts them on this drilling rig and he's drilling big old holes to get soil samples and stuff for me. And he's 66 and he's picking up 80 pounds of material and moving it around. He still moves better than I've seen some 40 or 30 year old move.

And I asked him, I'm like, so when are you going to retire? He's like, I don't want to retire. I really don't have that in mind. I've seen men retire and then they went downhill very quickly because they stopped moving.

That's what he said to me. So I think it's incumbent on men in our society to move, to continue to move. This is a sin.

Gluttony is a sin. So men need to continue to move throughout their whole lifetime. That's good for men.

To go and watch a sport rather than play it has some kind of usurpation of what God has commande as a man to do, which is to live and breathe and have being. Like I said, it's an act 17. In him we live and move and have our being.

When you sit and you do nothing and watch other men do something that you wish you could do, that's extremely effeminate. So I don't really watch sports ever. I might every once in a while, but I never ever just sit down and watch it.

I like to play sports. No one I play sports all the time. I don't watch sports a whole lot.

I might watch a highlight if somebody's something crazy happened. You know what I mean? But I would never sit down and watch a game. It has gone way too far in society in general, like how much they care about sports.

I think somebody did a study that it showed men who have a team, they're significantly happier. They have higher dopamine levels when their teams win. Throughout their week, like in their life, dopamine levels.

Wow. Yeah, that's how much they're invested in the success of their team. Their team.

That does nothing about them. None of those guys in the team care about him. Nothing.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's total idolatry.

You're that invested. Yeah. If your dopamine moves with the winning or losing of some team that you like, then it's probably an idol.

And it's having physical implications through your dopamine, your hormones in your body. I also have physical manifestations, folks. Yeah.

And dopamine. So for you and me, I would say a reasonable, a reasonable reason. Dude, reasons better be reasonable.

If you're going to have them. Yeah, they ought to be. To watch sports would be like, it's a sport that we play.

So we're trying to watch people better than us to learn how to be better. Yeah. I would say it's a fine.

I don't want to wholesale say never ever. Because again, I watch highlights to see if that was a really good move that led to a goal. How do I implement that? That's not bad.

It's like only natural that the best people at a specific thing are going to be able to make a living by doing that thing. Yeah. The problem comes from, yeah, this having such a high investment in the outcome of a sports team.

And just paying that much attention, you're going to become more like those players. So it's something I've noticed with people who follow professional sports. An example is following professional soccer where they're paying so much attention to the soccer players who start to become like them, especially when they're playing the sport, they'll just become like extremely arrogant because the idols that they're watching are extremely arrogant.

So people who really like Ronaldo are... He's super arrogant. Yeah. They tend to become possessed by the spirit of their favorite player.

Interesting. You've legit seen that. Friends take on the persona.

No, it's like people I play with. Yeah. Interesting.

That's very fascinating. Even like what you're saying, nobody's... They're not... It's okay to learn a move and how to move properly from the sport above. But when somebody has a certain way they do things or a celebration they do and they're just like copy, that is kind of... It's like, come up with your own stuff.

Come on. If you're going to play your sport, you can use a similar move, but don't put your own little finesse on it. Put your own English on the ball.

Don't just completely be a copycat. That's how some of the best players ever didn't... They didn't... I don't know. Maybe Kobe copied a lot of Michael Jordan's moves.

Obviously you want to learn the moves, but he still made himself his own even though he looked similar to a player. He was still his own player. I guess it's my point.

What you're saying, don't take on the persona. Don't make an idol of a sports player. You're going to have a fundamental flaw in how you're competing if you're trying to just continuously do things in a certain way and you don't have that adaptability towards like... Yes.

I have in your mind. I was like, "Oh, I saw somebody do this. I didn't do it the exact same way," where it's like you're in a situation where that's just not going to work and then you're just going to get destroyed for it and you just didn't learn anything for it.

That's a great point. You see an amazing player do something once and you're like, "Okay, I can do it," but it's like he knew he could only do that in that specific situation. Don't try to replicate it 24/7.

That's not a good move in most situations. It's a great lesson to learn. Just learn from the sport.

What Noah and I really want to push back against is this very effeminate idolization of sports where men spend hours each week not playing a sport to better themselves, to learn self-discipline, but rather to just watch for pure entertainment and just to talk about it, just to say, "Did you watch the game?" "Yes, I watched it. Wasn't that crazy when this happened?" "Yes, it was crazy." It's like what a waste of time. I've had people ask me that before.

It's like, "Did you see this last night?" I'm like, "No. I didn't see any of it." If I would have said yes, then that guy would have talked my ear off about it for 10, 15 minutes about what somebody else did that really doesn't matter. It's okay to talk about something that matters like, "Oh, they just inflated the currency.

The inflation is at 9%. Okay, that's useful information. Thank you.

I'm glad you told me about that." To just be constantly recounting what happened. Again, it's got some kind of Ecclesiastes vanity to it where it's week in and week out. It's the same kind of every week there's a sports game and then next week there's a sports game and we can talk about that game the next game the next week and the next game the next week and it's the same field.

It's the same yardage. It's the same ball. It's the same goals.

Same teams, same country. It's this kind of megalomaniac where you get in your head and you're just crazy about it. It seems like a mark of lunacy when ... People are watching these sports.

Like you said, if this fellow who's a sports fanatic is talking to you, he's just going to be talking about the events as they happen and that's like the lowest level of intellectual conversation when he could be talking about the physics or the biomechanics. Did you see how low his knees were and the angle that his shin was with the ground when he did this? Yeah, it's like I tried to do that and I couldn't. It's like, okay, you're doing something.

Yeah. That'll actually go somewhere but then it's like, do you see him shoot the ball and then this other guy got it and then he threw it and it's like ... There's nothing to gain from any of that. Exactly.

It's too base. It's too vain. Exactly, yeah.

It's okay to have hobbies and be interested in things. So don't hear us wrong in that. We're talking about the obsession.

Hobbies are not obsessions. Hobbies are hobbies. They stay in their place.

Don't let sports or even just like learning about sports or talking about it. People make their idols and then they think themselves unique because they watch the game. I'm one of the unique millions of Americans that watched it.

So now I care. You know all the players' names. Yeah, I know all their plays and I know the stats, right? That's just odd to me.

That's very odd. So yeah, a little bit of feminine there. Let's just watch out for idolatry in sport.

Let's keep sport in this rightful place. Let's learn something from it. Let's be men that play sports in a righteous manner.

And I guess these are kind of good extrications we want to walk away with here. One other thing that I've noticed is these sport players being continuing to be idolized and they're not just idolized in their sport. We also have lots of sport players that are now like social activists.

They are political leaders. They are leaders of movements. They're donating lots of money to causes that they like.

They're not just sportsmen anymore. They become public figures, right? So like influencers. Yeah, influencers.

And it's a dangerous thing. And the only reason they have this much influence is because the American populace has given it to them and given them the fame. So just a man that keeps up with celebrities, a man that's concerned about other men's lives that it's good to be like Noah here, my brother, one of my best friends.

I'm very concerned with Noah's life. I know what's going on in his life on a weekly basis. Okay, that's not hard to do.

He's one of my best friends. To know what's going on on a weekly basis of some person that lives in a very high estate because they're a sports star or a celebrity, that's a waste of time. You're not growing in human community with that.

That's not the way God created you to be. You're not supposed to just know about somebody. You're supposed to experience human interaction.

Jesus says, if you have something against your brother, leave your offering at the altar and go reconcile with him. Jesus wants us and God wants us obviously because Christ is God. He wants us to interact with people.

So there is something very effeminate and just, I don't even know what the word would be. It's androgynous. It's not like it's a uniquely feminine thing to be obsessed about other people.

It's just this, it's almost inhuman to be concerned about humans that aren't in your life. You know what I mean? You're overly concerned about their personal lives. Not big events like politicians making the Supreme Court doing this.

That's okay to be concerned about what people are doing because it affects you, right? I'm talking about things that don't affect you at all that are useless information that public figures do. Fame is a weird thing now. The kind of fame we have in our society.

I don't, I'm not sure if, I'd like to do a deep dive into that, but I mean, I don't think there's been fame on the level we've seen historically because we didn't have social media and things like that. Yeah, the internet has changed a lot too. And if somebody was famous in the past, it was because they're actually contributing something to society at large.

So their names, they earned the platform. But nowadays you don't really need to earn the platform. You can just kind of leverage things and just kind of happen upon it pretty much.

Yeah. You just like follow the trends and do a really good video about one of the trends or something or enter into one of the trends, you know? Yeah. It's more ambiguous.

Yeah. So I don't know, some good exhortations for men did not get wrapped up in things like that. So women either, neither sex should be wrapped up in anything like that.

Let's extract from sports what God meant sports to be. Remember we live in God's world. So we ought to interact with things in the world according to the way God made the world.

And that includes sports. We ought to be humble in sports, be a man that blesses other in sport and be a man that does sports. It's good to train your body.

It doesn't have to be a literal sport where anything to exert the body is good for men. We're in body, we're body and soul. You should be exerting your body in some capacity.

Yeah, we're made to move. We're made to move. So eventually Noah and I would actually, we would like to do, we're teasing a little bit with that, but we're going to do an episode eventually of body and soul, how we think about body and soul and how the ungodly wicked pagans in our society are destroying body and soul.

So we ought to as Christians build up body and soul. So we'll talk about that eventually. This is kind of a precursor to that conversation.

Do you have any kind of last big ticket items? I would just like give an encouragement to I guess not be afraid to compete in new things because I think participating in a variety of competitions will, it's just going to help you think better and you're going to be able to recognize patterns across different kinds of competitions. Like, exactly. I play chess, we play basketball together.

So we're actually actually able to take principles that we notice in each of these games and actually apply them to each other. So there's a lot of benefit that can be had from competition, both men and women. Exactly.

Yeah. Like it can, you can use it to build character and self-discipline. So I think we should try to promote a right usage of competition.

Yes. And I think even within the church, one more layer to this, tell me what you think about this. I think it is also very wise for men at churches.

Let's say you're at a hundred person church. I think it would be very wise and good and helpful for the men to get together in camaraderie and not just sit down and talk about your feelings, but to go do a sport together. It's very good for men to get together and play a sport.

Yeah. That's a whole other thing. You can use friendly competition to build camaraderie.

Yes. Exactly. Yeah.

That's what happens in a boot camp in the military. You get together and you just work out together really hard and learn a bunch of stuff together. And then that creates these bonds of men that run so deep and sometimes those bonds aren't even spiritual.

So how much more close, if we actually get together with the men in our churches, we work out physically. We do physical training. We play sports together.

We learn how to do martial arts and fight each other. And on top of that, we're united to Christ in one family of God. How much more camaraderie can we have than when you watch Band of Brothers and you see how much camaraderie these men had in World War II and the 101st Airborne? So I think it's good.

We need to, that's a huge element of camaraderie. We need to be cultivating in the church among men specifically. Yes.

I don't think there's really anything that you can replace competition with. Yeah. It's good.

It's a useful tool. Yeah. And so one other thing we thought we ought to hit on when talking about competition from a Christian perspective is not only the idolatry of the people that play the sport as we've been kind of hitting on, just kind of this weird, this weird kind of obsession that people have with these sport players themselves and the sport teams.

Another layer of this conversation is when we talk about just strengthening the Christian and talking about like very common sins in our society with the idolatry of sports is even the distraction from the things that are important in this world. So we didn't even bring up. The Roman Colosseum is really where we get our first kind of conception of this mass arena sport spectacle for the public to come and partake in.

And the way the Caesars actually use the Colosseum, it was a gift to the people to keep the people playful and happy so that he could do things, he could consolidate power in himself without the populace knowing and understanding. And I think the same thing happens here in sports in America that you'll get a headline in the news that is, "Oh, so and so scored this many points," or "So and so won the World Series," when like in the world somewhere there was just this bombing at a parliament or something. You know what I mean? They won't report on what's happening in the world.

They'd rather report on sports and celebrity. You know? And we live in a time where you should really be questioning the motive behind anything you hear from mainstream media because everything that the masses hear, there's a purpose behind it. I think a big reason that sports is so promoted is solely for distraction.

So yeah, the Roman Caesars, they would just give the people the Roman circus and people who are just all engaged in that. They're never going to revolt because they're entertained. It's like, "Why revolt?" Yeah.

If you give them bread and play, keep them happy and they'll shut up and you can slowly take power for yourself. So it's just like a little discernment to all like... Well, it's my train of thought. It is a discernment tool though.

Let's operate under that principle that when we talk about idolatry, it's something that steals your affections, all of your heart, your time, your money. If you're spending copious amounts of money to go to these games and get nice seats in these stadiums, which are really just temples to the gods of sport, you're spending all that money, you're thinking about sports, you're spending time away from God's people just to go watch a game. There are people, like I said earlier, that will go and watch an NFL game rather than go to worship the living God with their brothers and sisters.

Yeah, that's when it becomes... Yeah. That's too much. I wouldn't outright condemn just going and watching a sports game, especially if it's like your kids' games.

Yeah, exactly. You can go and support them. Exactly.

That's obviously a good reason to do that. That's fine. Yeah, I mean, we need to think about that as Christians when we think about being discerning about the spirit of the age.

What spirit does the majority of sports have? Well, it's a very Antichrist spirit, to be honest. They will perform. They will not honor the Sabbath.

They will have sports games on Sundays to keep people away from church. They will not allow athletes to talk about Christ. They will not advertise Christ.

Oh, man. Yeah, I'll cut that out. Sorry about that.

Yeah, look at the spirit that the sport is delivering to you. What's it packaged in? So that's our exhortation. Another thing, look at the way people have used play all throughout human history, and it's a distraction to the masses to keep people from actually thinking about, I don't know, maybe their own mortality, if there's a God or not, what the meaning of life is.

Don't be just... That's really what the idea of sensuality is, the sin of sensuality. You constantly want your senses to be. If you can't sit in silence for more than 10 minutes without getting bored, which I have trouble with, by the way.

I'm not saying I'm saying I... But if you can't, if you always need your senses messed with, then if sports one of those things then, yeah, that's an issue. Any last thoughts there? No, I think we got it. Oh, we got it real good.

Thanks for listening, guys. Check me out at forthekingpodcast.com. You can click on my Twitter, my GAB, for the King Pod. I post some things on there.

Thanks for listening, guys, to the King of the Ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, the honored, the glory forever and ever. Amen. Sole, deo, the glory.

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