Did anyone else find the Super Bowl yesterday to be a bit … weird? The teams played mediocre at best. The camera lenses kept getting fogged up. The commercials were horrible. Prince didn’t dance. It was like a Super Bowl Twilight Zone episode.
And then there was the trophy presentation. Here’s what Tony Dungy said:
“I’m proud to be representing African-American coaches, to be the first African-American to win this. That means an awful lot to our country. But again, more than anything, I’ve said it before, Lovie Smith and I, not only the first two African-Americans, but Christian coaches, showing that you can win doing it the Lord’s way, we’re more proud of that.”
At first, that’s a nice thing: a kind of color-blindness that seems to befit the Gospel, and a simple example of a Christian man witnessing to his faith. But if you listen to his remark a few times, it just raises more and more questions than anything else. Here are some of mine:
1 - So, winning the Lord's way involves spotting the other team a touchdown on the opening kickoff, having the opposing quarterback to fumble all over the field, missing an extra point and a chip-shot field goal, having the opponents best running back get injured, and then running the most boring, conservative, dink-and-dunk offensive gameplan ever written? Give me a good Red Sea parting any day. Come on, even God was bored.
2 - He’s talking about football, right? So, is he claiming that the Lord actually cares one way or the other about who wins a particular football game? As if Jesus needs to be validated by the outcome of a sporting event. I am as big a fan of the game as anyone, but I’m not quite ready to say that God is quite that interested, and may have even had a few other things on the heavenly agenda for that day.
3 - This latest Super Bowl was the 41st one. If Dungy is right, why has it taken 40 years to “win doing it the Lord’s way?” Was it a modern day journey through the wilderness of other ways to win the Super Bowl, awaiting Moses Dungy to lead the NFL into the promised land of the Lord’s Way to Win?
4 - On the flipside of question 2, I wonder what all the other 40 winners of the previous Super Bowls think about Dungy’s claim that now, at last, he and Lovie have shown you can win it “the Lord’s way?” Let’s check in with Bill Walsh on that one. Somebody go ask Tom Landry what way he was winning, since it must not have been “the Lord’s way.” Vince Lombardi, care to comment?
5 – And on the flip-flipside of that, wasn’t Lovie Smith doing things “the Lord’s way” last Sunday? If Dungy and Smith are examples of coaches coaching “the Lord’s way,” why did God pick Dungy to win this one and not Smith? Did Dungy just pray a little bit harder that morning or what? Lots of grey area there. Gets to the whole theodicy question (our favorite seminary word!).
OK, OK - I know that Tony Dungy wasn’t trying to be all deep and theological when he was accepting the Lombardi Trophy last Sunday. He really seems like a nice guy, and I’m not trying to beat him up or anything. But his expression “showing that you can win doing it the Lord’s way” kind of makes my stomach gurgle a little bit. Not because of what it says on the surface level, but for the questions it raises underneath. I just think we need to be extra careful whenever we are claiming that God has favored us in a particular way. Often such a claim carries with it implications that we likely do not intend.
God loves us and all, but I'm pretty sure that by halftime, God had switched channels, and was watching Puppy Bowl III on Animal Planet.
