Pros
update
10 March 08
Lost
For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost (Luke 19:10)
Over the past 150 years of sport it’s possible to trace two very
different approaches to coaching. One is about unlocking the latent
potential in a player by giving them the environment to express
themselves; the other is about viewing the player as an blank canvass on
which the coach imposes skills and structure to create them into a good
player. The former approach if you like is a bit like the Arsene Wenger
(manager of Arsenal FC) approach to coaching the latter much more like
Jose Mourinho (former manager of Chelsea). I don’t think it’s too much
of a stretch to say that underpinning both of these approaches are two
very different views of humanity – one sees us as basically good and
therefore if we just have the right conditions we’ll flourish, the other
sees us as unable to succeed in and of ourselves and needing external
help to become a decent player.
Now my purpose in this illustration is not to enter into a debate about
the relative merits of different coaching styles (clearly both Arsene
and Jose are brilliant managers!), but rather to use it to question how
we view ourselves; are we basically good – just needing the right
conditions to flourish, or are we in a hopeless state without someone
coming from outside and helping us? Jesus says ‘the Son of Man came to
seek and save the lost’. He’s saying that we’re lost – and we can’t get
ourselves found by our own efforts – he has to seek after ourselves and
save us.
Lost
In modern-day thinking about ‘spiritual issues’ man is often portrayed
as the great seeker of truth, as though he’s on a long pilgrimage
walking through life trying to find his way to God. But Jesus doesn’t
give any credit to such an optimistic view of mankind - he says we’re
lost and even says elsewhere that we’re trying to hide from God. Over
the past four years there’s been an American TV show called ‘lost’ in
which a plane crashes down on a desert island. The survivors of the
plane crash try to come to terms with their new environment but what
becomes very obvious is that they can’t work out where they are, nor do
they have any success in getting off the island – they are totally lost.
This is a picture of all of us in our ‘natural state’; we can’t really
work out where we are nor how to get found.
You may well say, ‘how can you say that about humanity when we’ve made
such progress through history’? Well I’d suggest that though we have
made technological advances we’ve not actually really made progress.
It’s a sobering thought that there was real optimism going into the
twentieth century that man now possessed the scientific sophistication
to create a new and perfect world free from poverty, disease, and war.
But what was the bottom line on our progress – two World Wars to end all
Wars – in which more people were killed than all other wars throughout
history put together. We are just as lost as we’ve ever been.
But if we’re prepared to see that we’re lost then there is one
incredible source of hope – Jesus, the Son of Man, came to seek and save
what was lost. The same work that he started two thousand years ago he
now continues by His Spirit; he’s amongst lost people seeking them out
and saving them. So as Christians in Sport – let’s do likewise.
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