Today while clearing out my old papers, letters, articles and other random bits of paper, I came across a year-old article from Espn.com entitled "Sports, God, & Religion", by Robert Lipsyte. No real deep insight here--about as much as you could expect a sports columnist waxing theology. However, there were a couple interesting quotes. One is by Jerry Falwell...the ultra-conservative president of Liberty University who often speaks out against various hot topics in America such as Islam, homosexuality, abortion, etc. Anyways, before I start to lash out my opinion of the man (and believe you me, I've got a colorful one since I grew up practically in his backyard), let me provide the quote for ya'.

On the Christian's place in the world of athletics he says:
"If kicking butts is part of it, that's part of it. Jesus was no sissy. If he played football, you'd be slow getting up after he tackled you."

I must admit, I'm humored by Falwell's exegesis of the nature of Christ. All chuckling aside though, the author of the aforementioned article, Robert Lipsyte, does make a good point in expounding 'ole Jerry's comment--

Falwell's version of muscular Christianity is part of the traditional American pep talk from a God who can be celebrated with material success, whether it's selling cars or scoring touchdowns. If you say you believe and then you win, God must have been on your side. If you lose, maybe your faith wasn't strong enough. Try harder.

It does seem that we, as Americans, try to squeeze God into various avenues of our self-centeredness. Remember the "What Would Jesus Drive?" campagin a couple years ago? It was driven (no pun intended) to make car buyers decide about which SUV Christ would have driven.

Perhaps these deep theological questions concerning how hard Jesus would hit if he played football, what his batting average would be if he played baseball, or which type of luxury car he would drive assuming he had a driver's license are simply the shadow of a larger problem. The fact that we've asked these questions isn't the primary problem. It seems like the actual problem is that these problems even need to be asked. For if we spent enough time truly digging into scripture and seeking to understand the holiness of Christ, we'd have no need...or even desire to discuss and debate such foolishness.

I dunno, call me a party-pooper but when we have tens-of-thousands of children dying each day from hunger-related causes, it seems that we're completely off on our understanding of Christ. So to try to dress Him in our clothes not only shames Him, it shames the millions He commands us to love.