The Phillies made it, AGAIN!

Wow, this is amazing. The Phillies are in the world series again! Two years in a row. Back to back. What an amazing accomplishment...

And where am I? I'm about as far away from all of it as you can get. On the other side of the world. Where not one person has told me. Where not one soul has mentioned how overjoyed their hearts are about this outcome. About how worried they are about facing the Yankees.....and on and on....I'm missing it all. And honestly, it's opened my eyes to something major.

Now what I am about to say is not meant to spoil any joy, kill any fun, or take away from the excitement of the world series. Especially when our good ol' Phils are in it. But I just wanted to share some reflections I've been having recently about this phenomenon we call "sports."

When I went back home in July to see my family and friends for a month, there were many things that I missed, many things that I enjoyed, and also many things that I had forgotten about. One of them is "sports chat." In South Korea, they have sports, but it's much less pervasive in the culture. Teams are not categorized by location, but instead by company. So the Samsung team will play the LG team. Things like that. So needless to say, not too many people care about it. The only thing Korea really gets fired up about is the World Cup. And as for now, I'm not really around for that. So being in South Korea for so long, I forgot how much of American's conversations are dominated by, and often centered around sports.

Literally, basically, honestly, I would say 80% of the people I talked to in America mentioned the Phillies within the first 15 minutes of conversation. It's just classic, "how's the weather?" conversation; instead it's "how about them Phils?" But it seemed so much heavier than I remembered it. And then I realized why?

BECAUSE the Phillies are actually good now! All of a sudden, everyone wants a piece of them. It was in the air went I went home. I could smell the Phillies on people's breath. If the Phillies won that day, everyone was happy and talking about it. If the Phillies lost, everyone was depressed and talking about it. Either way, the Phillies were on everyone's mind.

And in some ways, this seemed to be a good thing. It seems to be a common unifier amongst people. People can have nothing in common, but you mention the Phillies, and they're talking like they were college roomates for 4 years.

When I came back to Korea, I was reflecting on my time back in the States, and I thought about how strange the Phillies environment was to me. Immediately I was reminded of Marshal McLuhan. His famous quote goes,

“We don't know who discovered water, but we know it wasn't the fish.”

People can't see their own blindspots in their own culture. Fish don't realize water, because they're swimming in it. In the same way, people don't realize things that are obvious to outsiders, because they are neck-deep in them. It's how they live. It's the air they breathe. And sports seemed to me to be the most relevant, eye-catching example of this in America today.

Now, what water am I referring to here? Well, let me take a moment and refer you to a Mark Driscoll video clip. Please watch it now, and then continue reading my blog. It's only 2 minutes longs, so please, please watch it now.



Driscoll said, "Your god is your sportsteams, and you build multi-million dollar stadiums to house them."

Now I am no foreigner to idolatry. Media, attention, approval, recreation, things like these are constant sources of idolatry in my life. It just so happens that sports was never one of those idols for me, so maybe it's a cheepshot for me to point this one out, but that's the penalty for the Phillies making it this far I guess^_^.

Now before you start defending yourself, which I'm sure you could do well, and I'm not trying to make you feel guilty, I would just ask you to take a moment, and think about all of the time this past week you've thought, talked about, researched, or watched the Phillies. How much has it dominated your conversations with friends, co-workers, church members? How evenly balanced have your affections for the Phillies been with your affections for God?

Just in the clip I posted a couple blogs ago, the title was "Test Yourself: Christ or Football?" Do you love the Phillies more than you love Christ? Now this may seem like a patronizing question to some, and I'm sorry if it is, but for me it's earth-shattering and extremely heart-wrenching. I think about all of the time I spent "worshiping" movies. All of the time I spent adoring movies and trying to push other people's affections towards movies. I think about all of the money I gave to movies. All of the time and energy and thought I gave to them. It's shameful for me. It's humbling. It made me completely re-evaluate everything now to the point where I've had to almost completely divorce myself from movies for a while so that I may get my affections straight.

In the same way, you need to ask yourself the tough questions. Because your life will be laid bare when you do. You'll be left with nothing but a plea for the grace of Christ to cover all of your sins. Any shred of self-sufficiency you had will be gone! Any sense of merit before God will be blown away.

I want you to picture a world where every time the word "Phillies" comes up, we replace it with "Christ." What would that look like?

What would unify us?

What would bring us joy?

Wha would bring us tears?

What would dominate our time, conversations, and affections?

CHRIST!

I think about all of the eagerness to discuss sports, and I replace that with an eagerness to share the love of Christ with one another, and the thought is almost too lofty to entertain. Do we see the idolatry in our own hearts? Or are we so saturated by it that it has become the water that we swim in?

Now once again, I don't be to rain on the parade. Continue to celebrate and watch the games. The Phillies winning can only help the city of Philadelphia I think, so in that I rejoice. But I pray that as you watch, and as you cheer, and as you rejoice or lament (depending on the outcome), that you would have Christ first and foremost in your affections, and that he would be the one dominating your thoughts, conversations, and time!

One more video to hit home and the all surpassing greatness of Christ, and the ulimate triviality of our earthly idols.