“For me sport was a religion... with religious sentiment.”

--Pierre de Coubertin, French educator, primarily responsible for the revival of the Olympic Games in 1894.

Whenever a group of highly-competitive Christian sport fans get together to talk about, well, highly-competitive Christian sport fans, the banter is likely to be revealing, even thought-provoking.

It all started when I, in my capacity as Christianity.com editor, came across a very good article on Christianity Today by Collin Hansen titled, “You Trying to Say Jesus Christ Can’t Hit a Curveball?” In it, Hansen, a Christian and Kansas City Royals fan, notes how gleefully many fans (and even managers) turn their ire and blame upon Christian athletes they perceive as soft. Finding it interesting, I passed the link on to my group of 12 Christian friends from my fantasy baseball league. I didn’t anticipate the comments that followed, which appear below, seeking to answer the question of how important sports and competition have become to us – and whether they run counter to the life Jesus called us to.

The quotations that appear between the various takes are not necessarily from Christian sources, and that’s by design. They also weren’t part of the original conversation. I include them only as a way to continue the thought process regarding how the world views competition/sport, how we should view it, and whether those views have become too similar or not.

The discussion was started by an unlikely source, a guy those of us who know him wouldn’t have expected the following words from…

Daniel Scott

The article Shawn linked to leads me to an interesting question that I have been asking myself lately, and haven't come to any kind of real conclusion. I thought I might ask it to anyone on this board who might want to share their thoughts. Especially since just about everyone playing in this league is competitive in some way.

Should we as Christians even be competitive? I know from scripture we read Paul saying run the race to win, but he is obviously talking about going all out to live the Christian life. But most everywhere else I see where God says do your best, but doesn't really talk about measuring yourself against others.

I do see where competition leads to negative things such as loss of perspective (I think I'm guilty of this more than anyone), jealousy and bitterness, and a focus on putting yourself first.

On the other hand, I haven't really been able to find a lot of positives (outside of a worldly perspective) in competing.