Jesus Followers Among NFL Quarterbacks

Drew Brees; Russell Wilson; Kirk Cousins

New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees is a Saint in more ways than one. He’s just one of several quarterbacks in the National Football League who profess Christian faith. Indeed, Richard Lindsay, writing at the blog Pop Theology, claims three-quarters of starting NFL quarterbacks are evangelical Christians.

Why so much faith among quarterbacks? And when two Christian quarterbacks play against each other, who—to quote the old hymn—is on the Lord’s side? Russell Wilson, quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks, celebrated a come-from-behind victory over the Green Bay Packers last January, telling Sports Illustrated, “That’s God setting it up, to make it so dramatic, so rewarding, so special.” Green Bay QB Aaron Rodgers disagreed, saying on ESPN Milwaukee radio days later, “I don’t think God cares a whole lot about the outcome. He cares about the people involved, but I don’t think He’s a big football fan.”

Wilson’s response? “I think God cares about football. I think God cares about everything He created.” Rodgers either changed his mind or decided to play along: In September, after the Packers beat the Seahawks 27–17, Rodgers remarked, “I think God was a Packers fan tonight.”

It’s hard to know why so many NFL quarterbacks are Christians, but it’s clear that one generation of players helps shape the next. Matt Hasselbeck, now a backup QB for the Indianapolis Colts, was a rookie with the Packers when Reggie White was a team leader. In 2008 Hasselbeck told Sharing the Victory magazine that White studied the Bible faithfully and helped Hasselbeck see that “Jesus was a man’s man. He was a stud. I mean, He was hardcore!”

Faith in Christ certainly doesn’t guarantee NFL success. Tim Tebow became famous as a Christian player for his on-field habit of praying on one knee, head bowed (“Tebowing”), but after some initial success in Denver, he’s been unable to hold onto or gain a QB job in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.

One consistent theme from Christian quarterbacks: Football doesn’t last. Kirk Cousins went from Michigan State to the Washington Redskins and addressed the permanency of Christ in an interview with Beyond the Ultimate, a website started by the NFL’s Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith to promote the faith. Cousins said, “I know that football will one day end. Jesus however, and all who know Him, will live forever.”

from World Magazine by James Bruce, associate professor of philosophy at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Ark.and graduate of the World Journalism Institute's mid-career course.

Brother, Where Is Your Identity?

Who are you? What gives a man his identity? On what foundation are you building your sense of self? Your answer, whether true or false, defines your life.

Wrong ways of defining who we are arise naturally in our hearts, and the world around us preaches and models innumerable false identities. But Jesus maps out and walks out a counterintuitive and countercultural way to know who you are. Your true identity is a gift of God, a surprising discovery, and then a committed choice.

What are the ways men get identity wrong? Perhaps you construct a self by the roles and accomplishments listed on your résumé. You might identify yourself by your lineage or ethnicity, by your job history or the schools you attended, by your marital status or parental role. Perhaps you define who you are by your political leanings or the objects of your sexual longings. Maybe you consider yourself to be summed up in a Myers-Briggs category or a psychiatric diagnosis. Your sense of self might be based on money (or your lack thereof), on achievements (or failures), on the approval of others (or their rejection), on your self-esteem (or self-hatred). Perhaps you think that your sins define you: an angry man, an addict, an anxious people-pleaser. Perhaps afflictions define you: disability, cancer, divorce. Even your Christian identity might anchor in something that is not God: Bible knowledge, giftedness, or the church denomination to which you belong. 

In each case, your sense of identity comes unglued from the God who actually defines you.

God’s way of sizing up a man goes against the grain of our instinctive opinions and strategies. Here are six basic realities to orient you:

• Your true identity is who God says you are. You will never discover who you are by looking inside yourself or listening to what others say. The Lord gets the first word because he made you. He gets the daily word because you live before his face. He gets the last word because he will administer your final “comprehensive life review.
  
• ”Your true identity inseparably connects you to God. Everything you ever learn about who God is—his identity—correlates specifically to something about who you are. For example, “your Father knows your need” means you are always a dependent child. “Jesus Christ is your Lord” means you are always a servant.

• Who God is also correlates with how you express your core identity as your various roles in life develop. For example, the Bible says that God’s compassion for you is like that of a father with his children (Ps. 103:13). You will always be a dependent child at your core, but as you grow up into God’s image, you become increasingly able to care for others in a fatherly way.

• Your instinctive sense of identity is skewed. In the act of suppressing the knowledge of God (Rom. 1:18–23), a fallen heart suppresses true self-knowing. Whenever we forget God, we forget who we are.

• A true and enduring identity is a complex gift of Christ’s grace. He gives a new identity in an act of mercy. Then his Spirit makes it a living reality over a lifetime. When you see him face to face, you will know him as he truly is, and you will fully know who you are (1 Cor. 13:12). 

• Your new and true identity connects you to God’s other children in a common calling. It is not individualistic. You are one member in the living body of Christ.

Now consider a few of the details. Don’t skim through. You will never be gripped by these truths if you treat them merely as an information download.

• All good gifts, beginning with life itself, come from God. You will never be independent. The Lord sustains our lives physically. And every word from the mouth of God gives life. And, supremely, Jesus Christ is the bread of life. Faith knows and embraces this core identity: “I am his dependent.”

• Our dependency as created beings is compounded, complicated, and intensified by sins and by sufferings. To know ourselves truly is to know our need for help. Faith knows and embraces this core identity: “I am poor and weak.”

• The Lord is merciful to the wayward. He redeems the sinful, forgetful, and blind. Faith knows and embraces this core identity: “I am sinful—but I am forgiven.”

God is our Father. He adopts us in Christ, and by the power of the Spirit, he gives us a childlike heart. We need parenting every day. We need tender care, patient instruction, and constructive discipline. Faith knows and embraces this core identity: “I am God’s child.”

• The Lord is our refuge. Our lives are beset by a variety of troubles, threats, and disappointments. We aren’t strong enough to stand up to what we face. God’s presence is the only safe place. Faith knows and embraces this core identity: “I am a refugee.”

• The Lord is our shepherd. He laid down his life for the sheep. He watches over our going out and coming in. We need looking after and continual oversight. Faith knows and embraces this core identity: “I am a sheep in his flock.”

• Christ is Lord and Master. He bought us with a price; we belong to him. We need someone to tell us what to do and how to do it. Faith knows and embraces this core identity: “I am a servant, indentured for life.”

• The Lord is married to his people. He patiently nourishes and cherishes his wife, the living body of Christ. We need husbanding from someone faithful, kind, protective, and generous. Faith knows and embraces this core identity: “I submit to Jesus.”

• God searches every man’s heart. We live before his eyes. Faith knows and embraces this core identity: “I am a God-fearing man.”

• Our God is good, mighty, and glorious. He is worthy of our trust, esteem, gladness, and gratitude. Faith knows and embraces this core identity: “I am a worshiper.”

We could go on! The pattern is obvious. Every core aspect of a man’s identity expresses some form of humility, need, submission, and dependency before the Lord. Our culture and our hearts might claim that masculinity means being independent, self-confident, proud, strong, assertive, decisive, tough-minded, opinionated, and unemotional. But Jesus is the true man, and he is unafraid of weakness, lowliness, and submission. He came as a helpless and endangered child. He became dependent, poor, afflicted, homeless, submitted—an obedient servant entrusted with a job to do. He became a mere man and died in pain—committing his spirit into God’s hands, depending by faith on the power of the Spirit to raise him. He feels every emotion expressed in the Psalms.

Yet Jesus is also strong. He is leader, teacher, and Lord. He speaks with decisive authority. He helps the weak. He forgives the sinful. He has mercies to give away. He faces the hostility of men with courage and clarity. He lives purposefully. He goes out looking for his lost sheep. He does the things God does.

How did these two things fit together in Jesus’s life, and how do they fit together in ours? Here is the pattern: Core identity as a man leads to the calling to act like God. Weakness leads to strength. Serving leads to mastery. Deaths lead to resurrections. It never works the other way around. When your core identity is meek and lowly—like Jesus—then your calling develops into his image of purposeful, wise, courageous love. You become like God.

The order matters. You become generous and merciful to others by continually receiving generous mercies. You learn how to protect others by finding refuge in the Lord. You develop into a good father by living as a well-fathered child of your Father. You develop into a masterful leader by living as a well-mastered servant. You develop into a wise teacher by being a well-taught learner. You learn how to husband a wife in love by being well-husbanded by Christ. You develop into a caring pastor of others by living as a well-pastored sheep of your Shepherd. You become a surprisingly good counselor by being well-counseled by your Wonderful Counselor.

Of course, in much of life, we function in roles where others are over us, and we live in honorable dependency and submission. “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution” (1 Pet. 2:13). Leaders in one sphere submit in other spheres. The pastor of your church is subject to the church’s governing authorities. A father of children owes honor to his own mother and father. When your core identity is in Christ, you bear fruit whether he calls you to serve as a leader or to serve as a servant.

Finally, consider that all your present callings will someday come to an end. When you grow old, frail, and helpless, you will become someone else’s charge and responsibility. But your true identity is imperishable. You will still abide in Christ. And when he appears, you will appear with him in glory (Col. 3:4).

  

David Powlison is a faculty member at CCEF and a council member for The Gospel Coalition. David has been counseling for more than 30 years. His books include Speaking Truth in Love; Seeing with New Eyes; Power Encounters: Reclaiming Spiritual Warfare; and The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context.

Note: This is an excerpt from the new ESV Men’s Devotional Bible (Crossway, 2015). 

A Pastor's Journey from Gay Pride Parades to the Pulpit

How Caleb Kaltenbach shed his anti-Christian upbringing...

Interview by Morgan Lee/ October 14, 2015

When Caleb Kaltenbach was two years old, both his mother and father came out as gay, then got a divorce. Growing up, he absorbed their antagonism toward Christians, but went on to embrace Christianity as a teenager. In Messy Grace: How a Pastor with Gay Parents Learned to Love Others Without Sacrificing Conviction (WaterBrook Press), Kaltenbach, a pastor in Southern California, charts the path to reconciling with his parents, who are now both believers. Christianity Today assistant editor Morgan Lee spoke with Kaltenbach about his experiences ministering to people with same-sex attraction.

Where did your youthful hatred of Christians come from?

My mom and her partner were active in gay-rights organizations. They took me to gay clubs, parties, and campouts. I marched in gay pride parades and went to political events. That was just my life. I hated Christians because I saw how they treated gay people. At the end of one parade, I saw signs saying, “God hates you.” Protesters were spraying water and urine on people. I asked my mom, “Why are they acting that way?” She said, “Caleb, they’re Christians, and Christians hate gay people.” My dad and I sometimes attended an Episcopal church, but it didn’t teach me much about God. I was an altar boy but fell asleep during most services. I learned that evangelicals were people who wouldn’t like you if you weren’t a white Republican.

How were you able to repair the relationship with your parents?

After I came to Christ, my parents were irate. My dad grounded me. He told me I was basically disowning him. My mom wouldn’t talk to me for months. When I told them I believed that God intended sexual intimacy only for one man and one woman, that created more trauma.

But I always told them that God loved them, not based on their sexuality but because of what his Son accomplished on the cross. I had to continually show them examples of people, including my friends, who were not like the Christians they had known before.

How has reconciling with your parents influenced your ministry?

After I first brought my mom to one of my former churches, two elders basically said, “If you want to keep preaching here, don’t ever bring someone like your mother again.”

That was my last Sunday there. I prayed, “Lord, if you give me the chance to lead a church, I want it to be a place for people struggling with sexual identity, for addicts or gangbangers, for people who are bankrupt, for people having affairs.”

At my current church, we absolutely believe God has expectations for sexuality. But I am not called to change anyone’s sexual orientation. My goal is to preach the gospel and to share Jesus. The LGBT people who attend know about our traditional views. That doesn’t stop us from loving and embracing them.

What can evangelicals learn from the LGBT community?

We can learn that homosexual identity goes much deeper than sexual habits. Before her partner died, my mom told me they had stopped being sexually active years ago. But she still called herself a lesbian. When gay people are invited to give up that lifestyle, they think, “You want me to give up my friends, my community, my movement, my acceptance? No, thank you”—especially when the church hasn’t offered them an alternative community.

We can also learn a lot about loving other people. Are there militant activists like my mom? Sure. There are extremists in just about every community. But for the most part, they are some of the most loving and accepting people I know. They’re not looking for the next battle to fight. They just want to live their lives.

At its best, the LGBT movement has many qualities we’d associate with the church. There’s a love for people. There’s a strong sense of justice and a commitment to a shared cause. They’re intentional about sharing their views and unashamed to be recognized for what they believe.

What do you find most frustrating about the divide between evangelicals and the LGBT community?

I see many churches digging in their heels instead of wrestling with issues of grace and truth. For example, how would you react if two men were holding hands in church? Could a lesbian couple attend a parenting class? Could they attend your small group or Bible study? What if a lesbian wants to be baptized, or an openly gay man wants to go on a men’s retreat? These questions will come up eventually.

The Genuine Courage Not To Be Silent on Issues of Sex, Gender and Sexuality

It takes no courage to write a book that simply drifts and bobs along in the cultural mainstream. It takes no courage to say the things that are already popular in the world around us. But to stand firm on ideas, on truths, that people despise—now, that takes courage. In that way Albert Mohler’s We Cannot Be Silent is a genuinely courageous work. It closely and critically examines the defining moral issues of our day—sex, gender, and sexuality—and stands firm on the unpopular, traditional, biblical viewpoints

Mohler begins by positing “The Christian church in the West now faces a set of challenges that exceeds anything it has experienced in the past. … This is a revolution of ideas—one that is transforming the entire moral structure of meaning and life that human beings have recognized for millennia.” Some might accuse him of exaggeration, but I believe he is exactly right. We are caught up in a full-out moral revolution that is changing everything. “This new revolution presents a particular challenge to Christianity, for a commitment to the authority of Scripture and to revealed truths runs into direct conflict with the central thrust of this revolution.” As Christians come into conflict with the revolution, they will inevitably come into deep conflict with those who are swept up in it. “The moral revolution is now so complete that those who will not join it are understood to be deficient, intolerant, and harmful to society. What was previously understood to be immoral is now celebrated as a moral good.”

We Cannot Be Silent is Mohler’s attempt to speak truth into this moment of crisis. He does so with boldness and conviction. He looks first at the cultural shifts that preceded and birthed this revolution. Then he shows what the Bible says about sex, gender, and sexuality. He lays out the current and future challenges to the church. He concludes with brief answers to thirty challenging questions: The biblical authors did not have the category of orientation, so aren’t they talking about something different than we are? Is homosexual sin worse than other sins? Are people born gay? Should a Christian attend a same-sex wedding ceremony? Can a person with same-sex attraction change his or her orientation? If so, how?

The chapters that may bring the most unique value are the ones that trace the history and growth of this revolution. Most of us see how it is playing out around us today, but few understand how we got to this point. Mohler proves that any consideration of the rise of same-sex marriage must first look to other developments that have rocked society and set the stage: birth control and contraception, divorce, advanced reproductive technologies, and cohabitation. Marriage, gender, and sexuality would not be up for redefinition today without these four prior developments. And then he shows how there really was a gay agenda that was very successful in transforming society’s understanding of sex and sexuality. He explains the rise of transgenderism and shows that redefining marriage is actually obliterating marriage. Only when he has explained this revolution in the light of history does he advance to the present and future.

While the book’s subject matter is unsettling and even discouraging, Mohler leaves the reader with hope. “As a historian and theologian, I submit that the church has often been most faithful during times of exile and cultural marginalization.” The Bible promises that Christians will be strangers and exiles on this earth, so we should not be surprised at the current and coming state of affairs. Rather, we should see it all as an opportunity in which the gospel will shine brighter than ever in contrast to the darkness around us.

We Cannot Be Silent is an important and timely work that addresses urgent matters, and Mohler serves as a trusted guide to many of our deepest, most difficult, and most perplexing questions. The book will equip you to better understand this world and to live as a Christian in it.

by Tim Challies, who serves as a pastor at Grace Fellowship Church in Toronto, Ontario, edits Discerning Reader and is a co-founder of Cruciform Press. He has written The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment, Sexual Detox and The Next Story.

When sports becomes your god

When I hear someone say, “War Eagle,” or see someone wearing Auburn sports gear, I almost reflexively feel obligated to respond, “Roll Tide!” It seems like a duty, a moral responsibility even. To call football in the South culturally a big deal is akin to saying the Grand Canyon is a big hole in the ground. Any time Alabama and Auburn meet on the football field, everything else in the state grinds to a halt. Football analyst Beano Cook once said, “Alabama-Auburn is not just a rivalry. It’s Gettysburg South.” The thought of a wedding or funeral in the state of Alabama on the day of the Iron Bowl would be met with a “Bless their heart.”

I am an unabashed sports fan, but I do not write this article as a fan — rather, as a Christian pastor and a seminary professor. Any discussion of the widespread love of sports begs the question, Is this good or bad? My answer is an unequivocal yes. It all depends on whether sports are summed up in Christ or abstracted from him. God did not create sports — people did. But people created sports in a reflexive response to the world God created. Sports are capable of providing spectacular glimpses of truth, beauty, and goodness, as athletes tune and discipline their bodies to perform amazing feats. I consider sports to be a competitive manifestation of the performing arts.

But God’s good gifts are always in danger of being corrupted into idols. Idolatry is often subtle because we tend to make idols of good things — like sports. We can fixate so much on a particular good thing that it becomes an ultimate thing to us. Any time we think that we cannot be happy or satisfied without something, we have made it an object of worship — an idol.

Is your commitment to sports becoming a substitute god rather than a means of delighting in God? To help you decide whether or not you are corrupting God’s good gift of sports, I have offered several guidelines.

Do you enjoy sports as a good gift of God even when your favorite team loses?

Tragically, it is not difficult to find, even among professing Christians, idolatrous excesses in devotion to sports competition as a player or as a fan. In my home state, the Alabama-Auburn rivalry has been connected to incarceration, divorce, violence, and recently, the poisoning of majestic trees that were a part of one of the grandest traditions in college football. For such people, allegiance to a favorite team is not an enjoyment of God’s good gift of athletics, or a rooted cultural identity marker, but an obvious idol. Most who read this article will never contemplate such atrocious acts; however, idolatry that is more subtle is no less an act of rebellion.

If one cannot delight in God with thanksgiving for a hard-fought contest when your team loses, then you are perverting God’s good gift of athletics and teaching those around him to do the same. Christian parent, if you cannot root like crazy with your children for your favorite team — only to see them lose — and afterward laugh and play in the yard with your kids, you have a problem; it’s called idolatry. I have known children who desperately wanted their dad’s favorite team to win, not because they cared all that much but because they knew their father would be sour the rest of the day if his favorite team lost. Such behavior is pathetic for one whose identity is in Christ.

Do you sever your participation in sports or cheering for your favorite team from your Christian faith?

I once knew a godly man who just happened to have season football tickets for the local college team and invited me along to attend a game. During the middle of the game, I was stunned when he blurted out an occasional profanity I had never before heard him utter. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. His demeanor was also aggressive and rude to those around him. When I saw him later at church or at his job, he was back to the godly and faithful man I had always known. At the stadium, the outcome of the game was functionally his lord, which is a problem for one who confesses Jesus is Lord.

If your behavior at a game would make it awkward for you to shift the conversation to your faith in Christ, you are making an idol of sports. I have known Christians who prefer to watch games alone because they did not want others to observe the way they act.

Abraham Kuyper’s dictum should shape our interest in sports: “Oh, no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”

Does your involvement in sports inspire you to faithfulness in your vocation and endeavors?

Paul seizes the metaphor of sports as a key image to explain Christian living because success in athletics demands purposeful self-sacrifice and requires self-discipline for a cause greater than the individual (1 Cor 9:24-27; Phil 3:13-14; Gal 2:2; Eph 6:12; 2 Tim 2:4-7). A Christian approach to sports as a participant or as spectator involves being inspired to worship the Creator through witnessing the honed physical gifts and agonizing determination of his image-bearers who compete with excellence. Therefore, Christians should be challenged to offer a similar purposeful, sacrificial devotion and discipline in their vocation and endeavors.

How many Christians rigorously critique the job performance, dedication, and work ethic of the coach of their favorite team while simultaneously complaining about their job and excusing their own lack of work ethic and dedication? Such is a sad commentary on their lack of commitment to the priority of the kingdom of Christ. Where this is happening, the love of sports has become detached from the Christian life and transformed into a barrier rather than a bridge to worshipping Christ. Participants and fans watch and enjoy the beauty, effort, and focus that the sporting contest brings out in its participants and Christians should be challenged to agonize in similar fashion for the glory of Christ in their own vocation (Col 3:17).

A Christ-centered approach

Throughout church history, Christians have struggled with their relationship to sports, which is appropriate since we are called to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor 10:5). Unthinking rejection or enjoyment of sports are both a failure of Christian discipleship. I believe that the Christian with a rightly ordered, Christ-centered worldview is uniquely in a position to enjoy athletic competition as a good gift from God. Nevertheless, we must be aware of the danger of rendering sports an idol rather than a gift.

David E. Prince is assistant professor of Christian preaching at Southern Seminary and pastor of Ashland Avenue Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky.