Is God a Broncos fan?

Alright, I don’t want to be a tightwad obsessing over minutia, but I encountered an interesting idea yesterday that I thought was worth posting about. It’s one of those things that operates so subtly that we are unaware of its presence, even though it has the potential to snowball into something that has a meaningful impact on our beliefs about life, the world and God.

Yesterday was the Broncos’ second game of the season, against the Cincinnati Bengals. Watching the Broncos play is a revered pastime for many Denverites, for the boys in orange and blue represent our city and make us proud (when they’re actually playing well). The game ended with the Broncos narrowly avoiding a comeback by the Bengals as they were driving down the field to score a winning field goal with just under 3 minutes left in the fourth quarter. Nevertheless, the Broncos stood their ground and stopped them on 4th down. After the game wrapped up and a round of high fives was exchanged, a friend I had watched the game with added an interesting piece of commentary: “That was the Lord’s mercy.”

I don’t want to come across as an insolent jerk looking down from my high and mighty pedestal. That is the last thing in the world I hope to accomplish with this post, so please, call me on it if you notice me beginning to scuttle down that path. My aim is not to discuss this occasion or individual specifically but the underlying assumptions and what their ultimate implications are in a more serious situation. Anytime you make a declarative sentence with ‘God’ in it, you are making a theological statement. And any theological statement will reveal something about our beliefs. Kinda scary! I know I make statements flippantly that are very theologically unsound. Gotta keep control of that tongue of mine, and the heart whose abundance from which it speaks.

If you’ve lived in Denver long enough, you’ve most likely seen this bumper sticker at one time or another:

Now, a lot of people are not going to take this bumper sticker seriously. The notion that God created sunsets in the beginning with the Denver Broncos in mind is absurd and usually does not even need to be pointed out. It is a joke, one to be enjoyed for what it is worth. And yet, do some people not secretly believe this? If God is pulling strings for the Broncos to secure a win, wouldn’t that make Him a Broncos fan?

As innocent and harmless as it may seem, this bumper sticker actually symbolizes a spiritual problem that affects the faith of many Christians and would-be Christians: seeing what they want to see in God, forcing Him into the cookie cutter of their liking. The important shortcoming illustrated in this example, something we all can and do fall victim to, is this: molding God around our life, instead of molding our life around God.

In our day and age, believing in God is like a buffet. You can pick and choose what parts and how much of them go into the god (lowercase 'g') you believe in. He is completely customizable. In our nation, God has become "Americanized" as a big ol' buddy who wants us to live a good suburban life in a nice house with a white picket fence, five honor roll students for children and a shelf full of golfing trophies from every competition we've ever participated in.

This can be a serious, serious problem, because it ultimately results in false theology. In its most extreme form, it is known as postmodernism, a worldview in which you construct beliefs about the world that fit your own personal preferences on how you want it to be. Oprah has helped spearhead this movement in her church that doesn’t believe in heaven or hell, sin, or salvation by faith in Jesus Christ alone. The staple postmodernist adage is “That may be true for you, but not for me.” The question is, “What would you like to believe?” It should be, “What is true, regardless of how you feel about it?” If we're not careful, God's desires begin to look conspicuously like our own, because we are casting our own earthen images onto Him.

A proposed method for soundness of belief

If I were to write a book on how to be as reasonably and logically sound as possible, I would construct a method something like the following:

1. Doubt the “givens.”
2. Play devil’s advocate for the alternative(s).
3. Argue back to the cause.
4. Discard the errors.
5. Revise the belief.

This method will reveal what unreasonable assumptions we’re making in our hearts and will illuminate what our actual arguments are for the subject at hand (and sometimes, they’re not pretty!). There is no reason not to try out such a method on our beliefs, because it will either prove them (in which case you can then present a defense for them) or disprove them (in which case you can clean house for beliefs that shouldn’t be there). In either case, you will gain strength in your beliefs and solidarity, solidarity that doesn’t come from leaving things unquestioned and believing them with unyielding narrow-mindedness.

The first step can be the hardest one for people to take: doubt the “givens” you’ve been taught and have come to believe with an iron fist. The ones that you’ve always left unquestioned, the ones that you think need no defense, the ones that you regard as untouchable and absolute truths, doubt them. If they are really true, you will be able to argue back to them with a sound, Biblical argument. If they are not true, you will reveal something that doesn’t truly have a solid basis and is not something you should be believing. Never be afraid to ask questions, because a question you are unable to give a solid answer to reveals a weakness in your worldview (of course, we can’t answer every question because we are finite, tainted creatures). It’s a win-win situation either way, nobody loses unless you refuse to try it.

The second step is also another hump to get over, playing the devil’s advocate for alternate worldviews and belief systems. Why should we do this? Because we often write off opposing viewpoints as being absurd and wrong before we’ve ever considered their “selling points,” the reasons why people choose to believe them just as strongly as we choose to believe our own beliefs. Calvinism answers its own set of questions about theology, while Arminianism answers a different set. Likewise, each has its area of difficulty in reconciling itself with other truths from the Bible. Some people who are brought up in one or the other never get to hear a good argument for the other, just a crass, mutilated one that has been selectively censored to portray only its weaknesses. They have been indoctrinated and have never paused to reflect, truly reflect, on the explanatory power the other has to offer. I personally believe you should not write off a belief as wrong until you have tried to see it through your own eyes so that you know exactly what you’re not believing. Otherwise, as ugly as this word is, you’ve succumbed to bigotry. Most bigots don’t know they’re bigots, because they think they’re just too right to even consider for a second that they might be wrong.

A wrong temper of mind about another soul will end in the spirit of the devil, no matter how saintly you are. One carnal judgment, and the end of it is hell in you. Drag it to the light at once and say - "My God, I have been guilty there." If you don't, hardness will come all through. The penalty of sin is confirmation in sin. It is not only God who punishes for sin; sin confirms itself in the sinner and gives back full pay. No struggling nor praying will enable you to stop doing some things, and the penalty of sin is that gradually you get used to it and do not know that it is sin. No power save the incoming of the Holy Ghost can alter the inherent consequences of sin.
-Oswald Chambers

The next three steps come much more easily because by this point, everything has been made bare and laid out in the open. That which is ridiculous and/or unjustified will be pruned. That which withstands the test and remains true will now be held with greater conviction. Argue back to your original cause (if you still can), discard the errors you once held and revise the belief in light of the belief “audit.” You now have something of almost immeasurable value: you not only believe something, you know why you believe it, and it is not just a ‘why’ but a good ‘why.’

Preferences from "the man upstairs"

That was a lengthy aside, now back to the original topic. This is not a very serious topic compared to what we can believe (abortion, euthanasia, etc.), nevertheless a fault is a fault and paves the way for other faults. Let’s take the statement “It was the Lord’s mercy” about the Broncos’ win and put it through the scrutiny of the method.

1. Doubt the givens.

The given is “God is a Broncos fan,” not much more to say about it. Pretty clear-cut, although there is an even deeper given which operates even more subtly: “God cares about football to begin with!” Hmm, does God really care about where the pigskin falls? When Jerry Jones tries to “make a deal with the man upstairs” for his Cowboys to win another Super Bowl, is God really going to give ear to that “prayer?”

2. Play devil’s advocate for the alternative(s).

In view of the bumper sticker, are there any other teams that have orange as one of their colors? Ahh there are. The Cleveland Browns and (coincidentally) the Cincinnati Bengals. This puts God’s loyalty to the Broncos in jeopardy!

Also consider this, that the same scenario is almost surely playing out in the opposing team’s city: a family of Christians is watching the game and believes God is going to help their team win, because it is their team. Huh. Who is right? Is God going to have mercy on your team or mine?

3. Argue back to the cause.

At this point, we don’t really still have a solid case for the original statement. If anything, we’ve proved it to be faulty and wrong. Is there a verse from the Bible we can consult? Yes, there is.

For God shows no partiality.
Romans 2:11

Succinct and to the point. God does not take sides apart from upholding goodness. He loves what is good and hates what is evil (Psalm 97:10-11), but other than that, we really can’t make any theological statements about God’s preferences because He shows no partiality. Does He prefer the Broncos over the Bengals? If the Broncos are less immoral than the Bengals, then yes, He prefers their moral conduct, but that still says nothing about His preference for the winner of a football game between the two.

4. Discard the errors.

In this case, the entire statement is the error. It does not just contain an error in the fruit, it contains an error in the root. It is not erroneous that the Broncos are God’s preferred football team, it is erroneous that God prefers a football team to begin with. The Bible is filled with verses that reveal the heart of God: His heart for the poor (Luke 6:20), His heart for the widowed and the fatherless (Psalm 68:5), His heart for the lost (2 Peter 3:9), and His heart for His own people (2 Timothy 4:8). Nowhere do we read anything that can lead us to believe He cares about the outcome of a football game (caring meaning showing partiality). God cares about people’s lives and their eternal souls. He wants them, above all, to know they are loved and to be in a relationship with Him and walk in His ways.

5. Revise the belief.

What is left after the pruning? An entirely new belief: God does not care about the outcome of football games. He does not intervene in order to show His partiality for this or that team. He has much more important things on His mind.

Conclusion: remember God for Who He really is

It is easy to carelessly make casual statements like "God is a Broncos fan" or "God, please help the Broncos win." I myself am guilty of praying the second of those two in the past. But we need to be watchful of our lips and hearts, because false theology cheapens true theology (at least to us and others it does, but not in actual worth). Prayer for the Broncos cheapens prayer for one's mother who has cancer, because in one, the prayer is a desperate cry for healing, whereas in the other, it is wishful thinking for a leisurely pastime. Mercy for letting the Broncos win cheapens mercy that pardons sin, because in one, the mercy is tearing the person from the grip of spiritual death, and in the other, it is helping a bunch of guys wearing orange pants to get a pigskin down a field.

Who is God? What are the desires of His heart? What does He care most about? What breaks His heart? What fills His heart with joy? What does He want from us? How does He want us to live our lives?

While these all seem like easy questions from Christianity 101, we need to check our answers to them every so often. Sloppy theology is a bad habit, and if we're not careful we will sneakily transform God into who we wish He was, not who He truly is. If we've ever forgotten what the heart of God loves and hates and cherishes and abhors, we have access to the greatest resource on the matter this side of heaven: the Bible. All we have to do is pick it up, and we get a glimpse, more than a glimpse, into the heart of our Creator, Savior, Redeemer, Friend.

Heal my heart and make it clean
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like You have loved me

Break my heart for what breaks Yours
Everything I am for Your kingdom's cause
As I walk from earth into eternity.
-Brooke Fraser, Hosanna

God does not change. He is the same today as He was yesterday and as He will be tomorrow, and He will stay the same regardless of our misconstruings of His character. Let us pray, then, that our imperfect vision would become ever more corrected with each passing day, that we may see Him as He is in actuality and praise Him for His wondrous deeds.