Courier Conversations

Balancing Faith and Fandom: Exploring Sports as Gifts and Idols

Jeff Robinson and Travis Kearns / Brian Payne Season 3 Episode 37

What happens when the thrill of a last-minute touchdown crosses paths with the teachings of faith? Join us in an enlightening discussion featuring Brian Payne, lead pastor of Lakeview Baptist Church and former University of Alabama football player. Together with Travis Kearns and me, Jeff Robinson, we reflect on Alabama, Clemson, and Georgia's recent playoff exits and what they reveal about the fascinating intersection of sports and Christianity. You'll hear personal stories, like Travis's Clemson devotion shining through his orange wedding band, and how each of us finds our sports passion reflecting in our spiritual journey.

Our conversation goes beyond the surface, tackling the dual nature of sports as both divine gifts and potential idols. Drawing insights from historical figures like Thomas Aquinas and the reformers, we examine how the church's views on sports have transformed over the decades. Brian shares his personal odyssey from the football field to the pulpit, highlighting the delicate balance between fostering discipline and avoiding idolatry. We unpack the idea of being good stewards of our talents and time, emphasizing how to maintain harmony between our love for sports and our faith in God.

As we journey through the life lessons sports offer, particularly through baseball, we explore how failure and perseverance form cornerstones of both athletic and spiritual growth. These stories of mental toughness and resilience serve as metaphors for our Christian walk. We ponder the cultural implications of sports, urging listeners to seek identity in faith rather than athletic success. To wrap up, we hint at exciting developments at Courier Publishing, including upcoming books on the Doctrine of Perseverance and Mormonism, inviting you to connect with us for more insights and inspiration.

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Speaker 1:

Well, happy New Year and welcome to the first episode of 2025 of Courier Conversations. My name is Jeff Robinson, I'm the host and also president of the Baptist Courier and with me is my fine co-host, travis Kearns, and we're glad to be here, or be anywhere in 2025. And we're glad to be here or be anywhere in 2025. We have with us a special guest today, travis. In case you've forgotten, travis is the mission strategist for the Three Rivers Association Baptist Association here in Greenville and Travis and I are together every month. We will be going twice a month, by the way, you're probably hearing this on the 15th. We'll be dropping on the 15th and the 30th, so that's a change in our schedule for the new year. So you'll have more career conversations and we hope you enjoy that. And with us today we have a very special guest, very special to Travis and I.

Speaker 1:

Longtime friend of ours, dear dear brother of ours, friend of ours, brian Payne. Brian is the lead pastor for Lakeview Baptist Church in Auburn, alabama, and the irony is this man is a pastor in Auburn and he played football at the University of Alabama, which makes him the perfect candidate to be on with us today, because we're talking about sports and the Christian life, having all three of our teams that would be, alabama, clemson and Georgia bow out of the playoffs or bowl scene early. We are thinking about that, and so today we want to think about sports and the Christian life. Brothers, it's good to have both of you, brian. How are things in Alabama?

Speaker 2:

Going west cold, but it's sunny. I'll take that. I'll take that combination. We spent a lot of time together living in Louisville cold, but it's sunny. I'll take that. I'll take that combination. We spent a lot of time together living in Louisville, Kentucky, and it was cold there, but cloudy.

Speaker 1:

And so we get cold and sunny in the south. Yeah, for your reference, we spent about 20 years together in Louisville teaching at Boyce College, our southern seminary, and being students there and on staff there and pastoring there and all kinds of some combination of all those things there for a long time. So we've talked a lot about sports over the years, haven't we, Travis?

Speaker 3:

Yep, Once or twice a fall. We might text a little bit here and there about football especially.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, my wife has said if I could get a job texting Travis about college football in the fall, that our financial woes would be over forever.

Speaker 3:

We would be totally fine and we might text a little bit about baseball, especially when my Yankees are in the series.

Speaker 1:

That's right, and Brian and I Brian we've got a text string about baseball that goes back years and years. Because he's a baseball lover like me. I think that's actually your favorite sport, right, brian? You're a football player, but you love baseball the most.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's interesting. I can watch any football game, I can't watch just any baseball game. But I prefer watching the Braves over any sport, over any game. So I'm pretty selective when it comes to baseball, but when it comes to the Braves, I would rather watch the Braves than even the Crimson Tide.

Speaker 1:

Wow, well, brian actually played. He was a linebacker in the early 90s for the Crimson Tide, late 80s, late 80s, late 80s. Okay, we're old dudes here. Brian and I are about the same age.

Speaker 2:

Well, you all are old dudes, young puppy, I know.

Speaker 1:

And of course that's his qualification being on here, being, of course, a longtime pastor and scholar at Southern. And Travis, well, I was a sports writer for many, many years and I covered the Atlanta Braves when they were terrible and then great, and had a lot of friends who wanted tickets. My dream was always to play second base for the Cincinnati Reds. I'm a Reds fan. I love bad baseball teams who love to talk about the past all the time, and Travis well, travis, I don't know that I've ever met a more zealous fan of the Clemson Tigers and I live in the upstate of South Carolina. I mean, travis, he's got orange right now. His wedding band is orange. I don't think I knew that.

Speaker 1:

Yep Wedding band and watch band. Both of them are, that is just. And you go in his office and you know we were joking earlier that our old boss, albert Moeller, president of Southern Seminary, would have eight nervous breakdowns just walking into your office, wouldn't?

Speaker 3:

he? Yeah, he'd probably think there were too many convicts in there because of all the orange or people picking up trash on the side of the road, something like that. But he also wouldn't understand what a Clemson even is. So, yeah, the only thing I'd have that's not orange is my truck. Everything else is pretty much orange.

Speaker 2:

The thing you're talking about gold wedding band. I was in New York City and I bought a fake necklace fake gold necklace and it turned orange.

Speaker 3:

I wonder if that's what happened. So, jeff can tell you, my wedding band, sure enough, is orange. It's as orange as it gets, and it has never been gold, it's always been orange.

Speaker 1:

Boy is it ever? Orange as it gets, and it has never been gold, it's always been orange. Boy is it ever? And if Alan Muller were here he'd wonder why the merits of even doing Christian sports and Christian faith? He'd say they probably have little to do with one another right.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Which brings me to our topic actually. But it's great to have you with us, brian, and just always a pleasure and a privilege. We've enjoyed a friendship for the three of us now for a long time, so it's good to be able to talk about this, and so I'll just kind of start off here. How do we think about sports? You know we talk about there's a biblical way to think about everything, the whole comprehensive worldview in the Christian faith. But are sports, when you say sports, a gift from God, or is it something for which we should be grateful? I mean, cj Mahaney, I know, talks a lot written about that don't waste your sports. Or is sports something we need to kind of handle with care, that we could devolve into idolatry with sports pretty?

Speaker 3:

quickly. I think a good way to kick us off would be because sports is about discipline and sometimes can be painful. I think, dr Payne, kicking us off might be a good way to do this.

Speaker 1:

I could not agree more BP. What do you think Dr Pain tell us?

Speaker 2:

Sports can be used for good, it can also be used for ill. Thomas Aquinas I don't know if he coined the term, but he said that sports are autotelic, which means they have their own end, the end in themselves. And so he says nothing autotelic can be virtuous unless something good can come from it. And for Thomas Aquinas and others in church history they said that good can come from sports. Of course they recognize that evil can come from it as well, like self-aggrandizement, self-glorying idolatry, like self-aggrandizement, self-glorying idolatry. And some sports have probably had gratuitous violence attached to it, especially in the early centuries. We've got the gladiatorial games, and even chariot racing was very violent.

Speaker 2:

But Thomas Aquinas said that if good can come from something autotelic, then there is virtue in it. And so him and reformers like Zwingli. Of course Aquinas was not a reformer, but the reformers who followed him, like Zwingli, saw there was benefit to sports because it could produce physical strength and other benefits. John Calvin saw it as adiaphora, it was an indifferent matter. Richard Baxter gave 18 stipulations to determine the lawfulness of the law.

Speaker 1:

Of course he did.

Speaker 2:

But he saw sports fundamentally as needless and a time waster, because it does take a lot of time whether you're taking part in it or viewing it, and so there's been different views of sports through church history. I will say that there was a book that came out by a guy named Cheryl Hoffman, in a book called Good Game. I do recommend the book, and he said for most of church history the church tested sports, the sports of the day, against its theology, but by the time you get to 1950, that had ended and it had transitioned from critic to avid supporter. So the church really stopped critiquing sports around the 1950s. So I think all of us would agree there's great benefit that can come from sports, but there's also evil that can spawn from it as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's interesting how the church it has been a mixed bag in terms of how the church has viewed sports, because my dissertation wrote on HH Henry Holcomb Tucker, 19th century Southern Baptist theologian in Georgia, my home state, and he writes about he condemns baseballists in there because baseball is becoming a thing in America and it's two words. It's kind of funny Baseballists and their childish games and how these men become children. Of course that's why we like baseball in some ways and how you know, especially playing on the Lord's Day, how scandalous that was. And so it was scandalous for a man to make a living with a child's game and to play it on Sunday back in those days was roundly condemned and he went to great lengths to condemn baseballists in no uncertain terms and I think that was common. And growing up you'd hear a preacher say something like a revival preacher especially would say something like well, you go to ball games and cheer for the Georgia Bulldogs or the Alabama Crimson Tide or the Clemson Tigers, but you can't cheer for Jesus. Well, there's something with that.

Speaker 1:

So is that an argument, or is that just a non-sequitur?

Speaker 3:

Sounds to me like a Billy Sunday wannabe preacher. Maybe he's going to stand up on the pulpit while he's saying that.

Speaker 1:

I heard that a lot you guys probably did growing up. Well, how has God used sports in y'all's life? I know it plays a big role in our fun, but how has he actually used it, do you think, to shape your lives?

Speaker 3:

I tell you, for me it's being a Clemson fan my entire life and not having played or participated in any sports really until I was in seminary.

Speaker 3:

Being a fan has caused me a lot of heartache and sorrow and a lot of frustration. But now, participating regularly, especially in cycling and running, it's taught me discipline. It's taught me what it means to try to get better at something through that discipline. But at the same time it's also taught me how to understand that there's always going to be somebody that's better and that's okay. I don't have to be the best or perfect at everything that I try to do, except to do the best that I've got or the best that I can with what the Lord's given me and be a good steward of what I've been given. So, looking at it, trying to keep it from being idolatrous, especially in cycling, I could spend 30 or 40 hours a week training easily, but that would take up every bit of extra time I have and it's just not worth it. So, again, I think discipline, I think learning that there's always somebody better, but just being a good steward of what you have, especially bodily, of what you have especially bodily.

Speaker 1:

Brian, you played on a high level.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I played from 86 to 90 at the University of Alabama and I wasn't converted. I was a graduate assistant coach after those four years and I was converted in 1991. And one of the things the Lord really exposed to me was I was enslaved to idolatry and football was not my idol per se. I was my idol and football was the way I served my idol. You know, in the South if you can achieve any kind of success as a football player, there's a kind of glory that comes with that that only belongs to the Lord.

Speaker 2:

And it's intoxicating and I was enslaved, belongs to the Lord, and it's intoxicating and I was enslaved. And. And yet there were common grace, benefits that came through that process, even before I was converted, that the Lord has used since then. So, for instance, I'm convinced I would have quit the PhD program had I not developed this ability to persevere through pain and challenge and struggle, not to mention the fact that I had coaches, especially coaches, christian coaches, who still speak into my life.

Speaker 2:

In fact, I texted one this morning, coach Rocky Colburn, who was a strength conditioning coach at Alabama when I was there and I and and I was just telling him you know, if it wasn't for you and other great men, I would have quit at Alabama because it was so hard. And here's what he said. He said great coaching involves driving men so hard that they want to quit, but motivating them in such a way that they would never quit, and that's the kind of benefit I have gotten from. Sports is most especially the Christian coaches that still encourage me, and are in my life, I think.

Speaker 1:

For me, baseball is my favorite sport. I played baseball from age four until 29. I played all my life. I grew up in a baseball family. A lot of you know Brooks Robinson, know that name. He's a distant cousin of mine. So just love baseball. And baseball is an exercise in managing failure.

Speaker 1:

Now, I don't like failure. I'm not going to sit here and tell you, I just love failure. It's taught me to love it. I hate it. But the Hall of Famers in baseball Ty Cobb got 36 hits every 100 at-bats, ted Williams about 34 hits every 100 at-bats, meaning they failed a lot. And even the best teams in Major League Baseball they play 162 games. Every team is going to lose 60 games. That's a lot of losing, and I was fortunate to play on some good high school teams and we played deep into the playoffs and we lost and I didn't like it. And the Lord has taught me, I think, perseverance, one. Sticking to what Brian said, I would probably quit the PhD program at Southern Seminary too, and a lot of other things, had I not played sports and learned that you know that you have to roll with the punches, by God's grace, of course, in everything and you're going to fail. We live in a fallen world. There's going to be failure. You're going to fail in the Christian light. You're going to sin and need to go to the Lord and take that to him. And so it's helped me. I don't like it any more than I used to.

Speaker 1:

My favorite baseball player growing up and boy, this is so, don't write cards and letters. When I say this, brian, you know what I'm going to say was Pete Rose. And now I did not say my favorite man or human being. Pete Rose just died a few weeks ago. But what I loved about him is he gave it everything he had. Pete was not someone who was blessed with a lot of skill, he's kind of a pudgy, you know. He looked more like Sam Gamgee than he did Mickey Mantle, you know. And so or Mickey Mouse and Mickey Mantle, but he had more hits than any man who ever lived 4,256 hits because he just hustled. Charlie Hustle gave it all he had and I think that taught me to give everything all I've had.

Speaker 1:

I've taught my sons that Again, I don't want to be the kind of man he was. But 1 Corinthians 10, 31,. You know a big, major verse that I taught my sons and daughters growing up is so, then, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all the glory of God, and I've tried to take that into every pursuit in life now, impersonally of course, but I think that's what it taught me is the perseverance and the failure, the managing failure, and that you know even the best teams lose, I mean even the Patriots. Their run came to a close. Georgia's run may have come to a close. Clemson, alabama, we're going to, you're eventually going to lose, and you know death ends life. It ends failure and success in our lives too. So I don't know. I think there's a whole lot to learn, not just from baseball, but all the sports. And so what about? What about sports? You know we talk about biblical manhood and womanhood relative to sports no-transcript.

Speaker 2:

We have to be careful of. The, you know movement began in the 1850s called muscular Christianity. That basically asserted that if you're not this real physical alpha male, then you're not a real crowd. I think Thomas Hughes was the guy that is credited with that term muscular Christianity. But I do think, as a man, it takes.

Speaker 2:

You know, we were entrusted with a mandate to take the minion, and sports is kind of a microcosm where we have to go in to the, to the you know arena and take the minion against pushback, against you know competition, and I think that it teaches us mental toughness. It teaches us how to to to uh depend on our teammates. It, like you said, it teaches us failure and how to get come back from failure. Uh, it teaches just, there's always, as travis said, always going to be someone better than you. Uh, and as christians, it reminds us that we better not find our identity in anyone or anything other than Jesus, because whatever we find our identity in will control us. And if sports controls us, we have this intuitive sense that our identity is going to be lost at some point, even if you're the best athlete in the world. At some point you're going to get old, you're going to retire, you're going to get injured. You're the best athlete in the world, at some point you're going to get old, you're going to retire, you're going to get injured. So I think, biblical manhood, one of the things that it teaches us about that is that, you know, sports is a microcosm of life. Life is difficult, it's broken, it's fallen. We live in a fallen world and we have to persevere to win the prize. That's why I think Paul often uses the imagery of sports fighting the good fight, competing according to the rules, self-control, receiving the prize because he saw sports as a beneficial metaphor for the Christian life.

Speaker 3:

So I think it's also important and, bp, I'm not saying that you're advocating this at all but I think it's also important to look at the flip side of that coin, which is we can't allow, especially Southern sports-dominant culture to inform the way we read Scripture, so that if there's a man in our church or a lady in the church who's not involved in sports, who just doesn't like it that for some reason that person is less Christian or less manly or less womanly. I think there's caution on both sides, because I think it's very true for both sides For the man who's very involved in sports, for the man who's not involved, for the one who is involved, to say I'm more manly than you are because I'm more muscular or can do these things, or I'm faster or whatever, and at the same time the one who's not involved, who might be maybe more on the academic side, might say, well, I'm smarter than you are. So I think it can be troubling on both sides.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's why I think I love baseball. Travis, this will give you a nervous breakdown. You ride your bike 50 miles a day.

Speaker 3:

I love baseball Just 30.

Speaker 1:

30,. Okay, sorry, but you only have to run 90 feet at a time.

Speaker 3:

That's right, yeah.

Speaker 1:

And you look at Joe Morgan, one of my heroes. Growing up he was 5'6" or second baseman of the Houston Astros. Now he's 5'5" I think. But they're great players and so you know that always gave me hope.

Speaker 1:

So sports for me wasn't so much a macho thing I love the competition, but just love the exercise and all the benefits that have come, the things that it has taught me. But definitely I think we do have to guard against idolatry, because I do think Georgia football and baseball not Georgia baseball, baseball the game itself can become idols. I think there was a time in my life where they were idols when I got to cover some baseball back in the 90s and the Braves were terrible. Then they were great. I would often cover games on Sunday and it almost became a God replacement to me. So I've had to really check my heart, especially going over to Athens on Saturdays and getting so wrapped up in that where when they lose it ruins my weekend, ruins my family's weekend, and I think when it reaches that point then it has me more than it should and and it has me more than it should, and so I think there is a caution in there for us as fans and lovers of the games.

Speaker 1:

Yep.

Speaker 2:

There's a great thing in the movie called Fever Pitch. You know, jimmy Fallon is this huge Red Sox fan. It's to the point of idolatry though they don't use that terminology and so his fiancée believes that he loves the Red Sox more than he loves her. So he, she, breaks up with him, and so he's. He's a 12 year old, he coaches 12 year old baseball team and he's miserable. He's sitting there on the bench and one of the players looks at it, looks at him and says coach, can I ask you a question? He said do you do the Boston Red Sox love you as much as you love them? And that's a really telling question, because as Christians we recognize the idols. Don't love us back. If Alabama or Georgia or Clemson wins a national championship, we don't get rings, we don't get trophies.

Speaker 2:

No, that's right. The destination is never as fulfilling as the process, you know, and the journey, and there's just something empty about that if we put too much stock in it.

Speaker 1:

For sure, and our teams are eventually going to lose. Which tells us our best life is later. That's right, that's it. Well, guys, this boy, we could talk about this for days. I know we could.

Speaker 3:

And I hate to call this our fun to an end here, but we've reached our. We're at the bottom of the ninth and there's two outs.

Speaker 1:

That's right, we're going to have to swing and miss no extra innings here, but we need to take this up again. Brian, it's been a privilege to have you with us today. This has been fun. We will have you back, probably talking about preaching, which is an area you taught in, or something else. No, there's a lot of things we could have you on the show to discuss and all the topics we talk about on our little text, strings and stuff, but we appreciate you being here and Travis, thank you.

Speaker 2:

Let's look forward to again two episodes a week, beginning of this year A month I mean, I'm sorry, not two a week Two episodes a month.

Speaker 1:

Thank you very much. And so, on different topics of theology and Bible and history and culture and sports and just whatever, you have good books and things like that. Be sure to follow us on all the platforms of social media. Be sure to like us write a five-star review. Don't miss Courier Publishing. We've got a new website, courierpublishingcom. We've got three books out. We have a whole passel of new books coming out in the summer, the new year, and I'm writing one that will be out Lord Billington Spring on Doctrine of Perseverance of the Saints and Travis. We're in the process of getting one of his books on Mormonism a terrific book out. Brian, before it's all said and done, you and I are going to write a couple of those books we've been talking about for a long, long time. But thanks for listening to us and we'll look forward to seeing you here a little bit in two weeks.

Speaker 4:

We're glad you joined us for Courier Conversations, where we are informing and inspiring South Carolina Baptists and beyond. For more information about these topics and more, subscribe to our e-edition or go to our website at baptistcouriercom. The Courier is located in Greenville, south Carolina. As a multimedia ministry partner of the South Carolina Baptist Convention To comment about today's podcast, email us at conversations at baptistcouriercom. This podcast, produced by Bob Sloan Audio Productions.

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