Article May 30, 2011 Issue

Football dreams and spiritual goals

By Bob Cochran

My high school had a strong football program with a long winning tradition. As I began my first year there, it was my dream to start on the varsity squad and play under the “Friday night lights.” The only problem, as I quickly discovered, was that I was a terrible player. (As the old joke goes, I was small, but at least I was slow.) I endured a fair amount of ridicule from teammates, but that didn’t affect my love for the game. In fact, it made me feel like I had something to prove, and for better or worse, football pretty much became an obsession that dominated my high school years. It kept me out of trouble (good) but also occupied my time and energy, to the point where I sometimes didn’t give much attention to anything else (not so good).

I’d been raised in Christian Science, and had learned that God could be counted on to meet every legitimate need. So I figured I’d “use” Christian Science to become a better player. Every day after school I’d have a physical workout, and most evenings I’d add a spiritual workout, searching the Bible and Science and Health for helpful ideas. Both books contain wonderful passages about strength, power, movement, and many other qualities that relate to athletics. For example, I loved this sentence from Science and Health: “Divest yourself of the thought that there can be substance in matter, and the movements and transitions now possible for mortal mind will be found to be equally possible for the body” (p. 90). Imagine being able to demonstrate even the tiniest fraction of the possibilities in that statement!

Of course, even then I realized that the truths I was studying were meant for far more important things than sports (though I did feel that if they governed greater things, they must govern lesser things as well). Gradually, I also came to understand that we don’t “use” Christian Science to attain some particular human goal. Truth isn’t here to serve us; we’re here to serve Truth—a lesson I soon learned in an unusual way. In the meantime, I tried consistently to acknowledge that all my abilities, in whatever arena, ultimately had their source in God. This effort was spiritually productive and, though I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, helped me grow in all areas of my life. Still, football remained my main preoccupation. When my friends were eagerly obtaining their driver’s licenses, I didn’t bother. What was the point? You couldn’t drive a car on a football field.

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