Discussing
Ray Allen's Jump Shot and the Sovereignty of God

In his retirement letter, Ray Allen says that God doesn't care about jump shots. We beg to differ.

I was listening to a Q&A session with RC Spoul about three weeks ago. Someone asked him if God cares about his golf game and if God cared when he sliced the ball. His answer was, yes. And God cares about the slice because he cares about me. It was a good answer. I had never thought about it that way before.

Does God really care about who wins the NBA championship? Does God care about who won the World Series? I think not. Both Cleveland Indian fans and Chicago Cubs fans were praying equally as earnestly for their own teams to win after a 68 year and 108 year championship drought. This is a "first world problem". God cares about the poor, the hungry, and the oppressed. He does not care about my golf swing. My golf swing, good or bad, is something that I get a chance to do as re-creation. Even a bad golfer gets to take a Sabbath from work.

Actually a good little train of thought here. I agree it's hard to think God cares at all with something so unimportant as a sport championship, but I've never read one scripture that would said he doesn't.

I'm cautious here. I completely support the notion that God cares about us more than we can imagine down to every hair on our head (Luke 12:7) and I'd be comfortable saying that God cares about everything we care about BUT if I care about winning (anything) I would say God cares about this because it might be a distraction from God (idolatry).

Because winning is inherently focused on humans being better than other humans, either on a individual level (golf) or a community level (basketball, baseball, etc). Any kind of sport doesn't immediately lend itself to proclaiming the Gospel. If you think about it, you have millions of people (fans, players, venue staff, media, etc. etc.) all solely focused on the human activity of competition for 60 minutes, 90 minutes whatever. Think about all that time if it is combined - were the two commandments observed - loving God and loving neighbor? Were new disciples made? Were people baptized? Was good news to the poor, the prisoner, the broken proclaimed? Most likely not. Again not using the time God has given us for bringing the Kingdom closer, is ultimately time wasted.

Just because something hasn't appeared in scripture doesn't make it true by default.

We can never find a place in scripture where God is opposed to us watching youtube videos of kittens all day, therefore it's good!

I think we must use the time we have wisely and towards loving God and loving our neighbors. Honestly, I just probably squandered the time writing this. But alas, we are all losers following the king loser who died nailed to a cross, and we are all victors, following the one that rose again.