What Game Are You Playing?

A few months ago I started getting up before breakfast to take a long walk. I did it for a variety of reasons. My weight had gotten higher than I was comfortable with. I've been told that walking is good exercise and will make me feel better. I thought this would be a great way to multi-task by spending an hour listening to good Christian music on my IPOD, and praying. It's been a very successful endeavor, although I suspect, after these past few months, the weight thing will always be a problem.

This past week, as I was preparing for my early morning walk, I realized that I had put on a White Sox World Series T-shirt, my favorite Notre Dame cap, and a pair of shorts in the University of Georgia team colors. I chuckled as I imagined what my apparel would communicate to anyone who knows anything about sports. "What team is his favorite?" "What sport is his favorite?" Does he realize that any Georgia fan would think he's out of his mind wearing a Notre Dame cap in Bulldog country! "That boy doesn't have a lick of sense when it comes to style." "Boy, is he confused!"

I like a lot of sports teams on the college and major league level. For some reason I acquired a love for Notre Dame football as a child and it has stuck to me. I love baseball on any level but if pushed for a choice I would have to say Cubs first, White Sox second, but a close second. BTW, that last statement is true and it infuriates some of my friends that I would have the audacity to claim an affinity for both Chicago teams. It's their problem, and they'll just have to deal with it. :) Actually my baseball fanaticism is simple. I want the Cubs to win every time they play. I want the White Sox to win every time they play, unless it's against the Cubs. I want the Yankees to lose no matter who they play. But hey, I digress.

During my walk, my preacher mind kicked in. I started to see the parallels of how discombobulated my sports fan testimony was compared to how confusing it must be to unbelievers who see Christians professing allegiance to more than one team. We claim that God hates divorce and yet Christians get divorced at roughly the same rate as non-Christians. We claim that materialism is a sin, but misspend our money in much the same way as the unbeliever. We say that God loves sinners and yet we show a lot of contempt toward them and the worse kind of contempt is to condemn without offering loving witness.

If it is true, that the average Christian lives pretty much the same way a non-christian lives, then how is our testimony influencing the world? It's like claiming to be on one team, but wearing the uniform of several and trying to play various sports at once. It just doesn't work. I doubt that my exercise apparel will change much. I've got a number of caps, shorts and t-shirts and the matching ones may not necessarily be clean at the same time. But I'm going to work on my witness so that there is less confusion about what team is my favorite.