November 23 2022
SOCCER: THE SELECT FEW.
When I was in elementary school in Groningen, an old University City, I played soccer in two ways. We played a game called, ‘putje’, where the street on which I lived, was the soccer field, the ball a bit bigger than a tennis ball, and the goals were the cast iron, four-holed drains – putjes – some 50 cm across, built into the curb of the sidewalk on each side of the paved street.
Just imagine, playing on the thoroughfare, where then – this was 1930’s – the traveled road was basically free of automobiles, and the only traffic was the baker’s three-wheeled ‘bakfiets”, a carrier-tricycle, and the horse-drawn-wagons of the fruit-vegetable vendor and milkman. No fast-driving cars or trucks. Lots of bikes and pedestrians, of course. The streets were safe, the air, well? There were the street cleaners, scooping up the horse manure.
No TV, outdoors all the time: inventing games, annoying neighbours, playing hooky. No worried parents, always at some sort of game, and, of course soccer, always soccer.
We were very fortunate: a very talented fellow lived just around the corner: a teenager, who started a real soccer club, on a real field, with a real soccer ball and real goalposts in a nearby recreational park: he was so good that later in life he became the goalie for the Dutch National team. My younger brother and I became member of that neighbourhood club. So, yes, of course, soccer is in my blood, even though I never became a good player. Broke my right-foot big toe, maybe that’s why. It still hurts when a kick a ball.
QATAR, the world-wide soccer host.
Some $300 Billions have been spent in getting Qatar ready for the soccer tournament: new roads, shopping malls and subway stations, six stupendous stadiums of course, all built by workers mostly from India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, toiling for up to 16 hours a day in intense desert heat; often no rest or days off; living conditions usually shantytowns without air conditioning or even the most basic of services. Reliable sources suggest that thousands died on the altar of religious soccer. A tournament built on blood.
Soccer and Church.
When I see the turnout for soccer/football games on television – where else? – the tens of thousands of people, mostly male, and younger, and then look around in my church, the few there, mostly female and seniors, then I wonder: “What is more important, momentary thrills or eternal destiny?”
I know, it’s not a fair comparison. Soccer games are a work of art, an endless enterprise in human physical skill, a cluster of cooperation, a summum of intense training and tactical expertise and tenacious teamwork, fascinating to watch.
Comparing it to ‘religious routine’ is grossly unfair. Or is it?
“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize”, writes Paul to his people in Corinth. (1 Corinthians 9: 24).
Hey! Am I engaged in a race? The apostle Paul thinks so. A race? Yes. Christians are in a competitive battle that requires much more than physical agility. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms, Ephesians 6:12 tells us.
That is a comprehensive battle. It seems to me that this text foresees the evils of TV, “the spiritual forces we pull out of the air around us”, including the soccer games, financed by the advertisers who have no regard for air quality and cause climatic deterioration. It is ironic that COP 27 almost overlapped the Holy Grail of soccer, both only possible through oil-based flying and oil-based climate control. An economy built on blood.
The struggle Paul had, converting from being a Pharisee, living by the ‘law’, to becoming a participant in the freedom in Christ, was common to all converts. Just imagine the transformation, from a worshiper of idols to living as a Christ follower, alienating family, community, friends, losing one’s livelihood, customers, business associates, changing one’s diet, persecution. A church built on blood.
Being a ‘Christian’ is a 24/7 affair: we love God through the world, and we love the world as a function of God, the creator of all things. With that same intensity we love our neighbor as we treasure our own wellbeing, evident in eating real food and doing everything possible to ‘live’.
Playing world-class soccer involves total training and the utmost of devotion. Out of millions of players, less than 900 were selected, to go to Qatar. “Many are called, few are selected”, tells Jesus (Matthew 22: 14). That also applies to those who call themselves Christians.