COMPETITIVENESS VS. AGGRESSIVENESS

 

“Good guys are a dime a dozen, but an aggressive leader is priceless” – so said the American football coach Earl (Red) Blaik. We might expect something like that from a former military academy trainer (!) but aggressiveness, whilst encouraged by many, is a real problem. In the academic literature there are generally three descriptions of aggressiveness given and the first two don’t make for pretty reading: the intention to harm or injure outside the rules of the game; intent to harm but within the rules of the game; or competitive behaviour without the intent to harm and within the rules of the game. Now my intention is not to engage in drawing lines in the sand asking ‘what is permissible’ (either for Christians or for everyone) – rather I’m assuming that any ‘intent to harm’ is obviously against God’s intention in creating sport. Instead I want to help us understand the mindset that leads to aggressive behaviour and therefore how an athlete can avoid such behaviour.

 

In Paul’s letter to the Roman church he writes a list of some of the most horrible aspects of humanity – sadly much of it reads a bit like a highlights reel of the worst moments of aggressive sport – ‘evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness…’ (Romans 1: 29) and the list goes on. However, it’s important to see that Paul doesn’t say ‘some of the time all people are like this’, but he tells us the reason that some of the time all people are like this. Earlier on in the chapter he writes, ‘Claiming to be wise they (people) became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images’ (Romans 1:22). Paul is saying that this is the rotten root that leads to the bad fruit of such behaviour – but what does he mean by ‘exchanging God’s glory for images’?

 

Well swapping God for an image is describing the way that everyone has a god. God is the one who is the loving ruler of the world, but the opposite of believing in God is not the belief that there is no God, rather the opposite of believing in God is to believe in something else that you make your god. This thing is what is described as an ‘image’ or as the root of the word indicates an ‘imaginary’ god. Now perhaps you or your friend would say ‘I don’t believe in an imaginary god - I just don’t believe in god.’ Well to help you see the truth - take a look at your life; have you ever been aggressive in sport - ‘malicious… full of strife’ as Paul puts it? Now ask the question; why did you act like that, what was the motivational root of the action? You see there’s always a reason we act aggressively and underneath it all it’s because our imaginary god is being threatened.

 

You see when winning’s important to us then we’ll compete hard to win, but when winning’s our god then we’ll harm others to win. When our spot in the team matters to us then we’ll play our best to try to keep it, but when it’s our god then we’ll do anything – even hurting others to keep it. Aggressive behaviour always has at its root an imaginary god that we’ve put in God’s place.

 

So what’s the solution? Well Paul goes on to explain in chapter 3 of Romans all ‘fall short of the glory of God, and are justified (made right with God) by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus’ (Romans 1:23-24). He’s saying that God forgives us and puts himself back in the right place in our lives – instead of our imaginary gods – through Jesus’ death on a cross. Only this deals with aggressive behaviour, because only this deals with the rotten root of aggressive behaviour.

 

Pete