You raise a good question regarding sin. As I mention above, I believe in God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. I believe we are culpable for our sin. Yet, God is sovereign. Reconciling those two is difficult but Scripture advocates both.

I understand your concern with saying God picked the Ravens. As the tone of my blog indicates though, God did not choose them based off their spiritual maturity–or for anything that they did. It wasn’t about them, it was about Him. I think if you explain the reasoning for God’s sovereignty, it leads people away from this perceived favoritism.

I find in the sporting world that people tend to have a high view of themselves and a low view of God. This leads to the dangerous views that God doesn’t care or is uninterested to be involved in sports. Scripture clearly says otherwise. The point in the blog was to let Scripture speak and challenge the status quo regarding His involvement in sports.

In trying to be provocative, I believe you are being misleading. Following your reasoning, you could also say “God picked me to be divorced” (thus justifying a bad marriage) or “God decided I should be a criminal, or a homosexual” Is God sovereign? Yes. Do I understand that? No, not completely.

The problem I have with people saying things like “God picked the Ravens to win the Super Bowl” is that it gives a very arrogant impression that God was on the Ravens side, and therefore, was obviously against the 49er’s. That train of thought leads to a very distorted view of a loving and gracious God, and I believe, leaves many with the thought that they are just too bad for God, unable to really experience God’s love and grace. I also think that it sidetracks people from really seeing what God does want to do through sport, which is far, far deeper than a Super Bowl ring!

I thought it was very interesting that S.I. ran the recent article entitled “Does God Care Who Wins the Super Bowl?”, or I should say, re-ran the article. They originally published one several years ago, I believe in the late ’80′s – early 90′s, under the same name. Neither time were they trying to help enlighten people on God’s sovereignty.

I would agree 100% with what you say regarding Ray Lewis and his team believing in what he’s selling. He’s a master motivator; perhaps the best ever in professional team sports. As one Christian brother to another, I would say to him though: “Don’t misconstrue Scripture just to motivate your team. When you do so, you’re not only mocking the intent of the Scripture but also God.” I understand it helps his team but in the end, I value God’s word above victory on the field. Ray should too.

Jesus himself may have been part narcissist because, I believe, it takes one to know one. His personality trait was INFJ (http://www.personalitypage.com/html/INFJ_per.html). I believe he balanced narcissism with empathy making him a lucid and genuine authority. To say this is to reinforce your point that God cares about the winners and the losers of these contests. In essence, it is the experience of both wins and loses that serves to balance confidence with humility. It is only important that one has played true to their ability to receive the blessing of this balance.

Ray’s quoted passage is relevant to today’s world and the desire for the 2nd coming. He may not “know” what it means, but he is certainly the spiritual leader of that team, and to be that, he has to be balanced, aka, Jesus-like. While all teams are just about equally matched in skill at the NFL level, it’s not the team with the most Christians that has the advantage. It’s the team that believes in their spiritual leader and what he’s selling. They develop the unit mentality that can not be broken, even in a loss.

The other teams may suffer from too much 2 Timothy 3:1-7 ~ 1 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. 6 For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7 always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.