Why Do We Love March Madness?
00:00:00.000 | [Intro]
00:00:06.000 | Today is absolutely epic, Pastor John.
00:00:08.840 | This is episode number 300 in the Ask Pastor John podcast series.
00:00:13.280 | Episode 100, if I remember correctly, was a little less epic.
00:00:16.760 | Episode 200, I think, was pretty epic.
00:00:18.720 | But this is episode 300, and it is truly epic because today is the first round of March
00:00:25.440 | Madness, which begins in Dayton, Ohio.
00:00:28.240 | And Pastor John, here is the question that millions and millions of people around the
00:00:33.400 | world want to ask you right now.
00:00:35.920 | Why, Pastor John, why do we love watching March Madness basketball?
00:00:40.520 | Okay, I'm the least likely person to say anything about college basketball.
00:00:45.760 | But here goes.
00:00:46.760 | I enjoy watching college basketball.
00:00:49.120 | Yes, I do.
00:00:51.000 | More than football because there are no breaks between the plays.
00:00:55.840 | The action is fast-paced, more than professional basketball because their hearts seem to be
00:01:01.080 | in it more, and more than baseball.
00:01:03.000 | I don't want to offend you, Tony.
00:01:04.880 | I know you're a big baseball guy, but to me, that sport is just painfully slow.
00:01:10.120 | And I have to admit, it's evidently the intelligent man's sport, but I'm not intelligent enough
00:01:17.280 | to be thinking deep thoughts about what might be coming with this pitch and what has happened.
00:01:23.040 | I'm saying, come on, come on, come on, get on with it.
00:01:26.160 | So anyway, I enjoy college basketball.
00:01:29.400 | Why?
00:01:30.640 | And I think I'm probably typical in enjoying it.
00:01:34.680 | I'm going to download probably the NAAC, that's not right.
00:01:39.360 | That's the African American group, right?
00:01:42.160 | NCAA.
00:01:43.160 | NCAA, yeah, sorry.
00:01:44.420 | So anyway, I'm going to download their app because last year I knew they had an app and
00:01:48.120 | you could listen to every one of them free, unlike these crazy Olympic apps that don't
00:01:52.000 | let you watch anything.
00:01:53.000 | So I don't have a television and I want to watch, so there's the app that'll let me peek
00:01:58.040 | in.
00:01:59.040 | Why do we like to watch this sport?
00:02:03.080 | Number one, we, I want to say we, love to see great skill.
00:02:08.040 | It's a form of beauty.
00:02:10.440 | We're wired to enjoy beauty.
00:02:12.840 | That's the way God made us.
00:02:15.640 | Mainly so we can enjoy his beauty and all of its refractions in creation.
00:02:22.080 | And there are refractions of his created beauty in college basketball.
00:02:27.680 | There is individual artistry and beauty, the dribbling, the shooting.
00:02:32.840 | We love to watch the phenomenal dribbling around, around the opposition that drives
00:02:38.260 | and finishes smooth two points.
00:02:40.600 | And by the way, I don't value dunking.
00:02:44.040 | I don't like to watch dunking to me.
00:02:46.760 | Dunking is not very artistic.
00:02:48.600 | It seems to be like it's mainly height and Hulk.
00:02:52.600 | Whereas an artistic smooth layup in an old traditional way, that's a lot more art about
00:03:00.480 | it than the smoshing dunks from halfway down the court.
00:03:05.440 | It is pretty amazing, but it's just not as artistic.
00:03:08.520 | Second, there's team beauty, not just individual, but team beauty.
00:03:12.480 | When a defense is simply impregnable or an offense maneuvers so beautifully successfully,
00:03:19.400 | it looks like one single organism.
00:03:22.880 | And the best of all is when the individual and the team combine so that the players shine
00:03:29.840 | at their peak performances, but they're actually serving the coordinated effort of the team.
00:03:36.640 | So all of that beauty falls under what I would say that the reason we like that sort of thing
00:03:44.120 | is the beauty of art, the artistic skill of players and teams.
00:03:48.360 | This is a God given ability, and it points the way to the way God is in his abilities.
00:03:56.800 | He's beautiful in his skill, in his skill giving wisdom.
00:04:01.960 | Here's a second one I enjoy, I admire endurance.
00:04:07.640 | I love to watch sports that require enormous endurance.
00:04:13.440 | I love perseverance in real life.
00:04:17.560 | People that do something through thick and thin for decades and accomplish much by little
00:04:22.360 | steps, you know, like chopping down a huge thousand year old tree with a little teeny
00:04:28.960 | axe because you've hacked at it every day for 50 years.
00:04:33.040 | That's a glorious thing for me.
00:04:35.440 | So I love endurance and I love sports that keep men running or working like the Tour
00:04:44.000 | de France or soccer or basketball that just keeps they run and they run and they run till
00:04:51.040 | they drop.
00:04:52.040 | I mean, I've played enough basketball and enough soccer to know this is incredible or
00:04:57.360 | biking for two weeks at hundreds of miles a day.
00:05:00.720 | I mean, I just stand in awe because I admire perseverance in every legal sphere, especially
00:05:08.480 | in the relationship with God where we have to persevere every day.
00:05:13.800 | And the third thing I would say is I love to see David slay Goliath.
00:05:18.800 | I asked my wife about this.
00:05:20.480 | Why does she enjoy basketball?
00:05:22.800 | And she said, "Me?
00:05:24.680 | I don't."
00:05:25.680 | And I said, "Why do you think people do?"
00:05:27.880 | And she said, "Because they like to pull for their favorite teams."
00:05:30.560 | And I said, "Oh, I didn't even think of that because I don't have any favorite teams.
00:05:34.400 | I don't have anything invested at all in this."
00:05:36.840 | And if that's what people are thinking about, I'll just leave that for others to talk about.
00:05:41.240 | But what I do love is when a big cocky team, I'm tempted to name some names here, but I
00:05:48.040 | won't, gets taken down by this little college that nobody's ever heard of.
00:05:53.080 | I mean, there's glory in that because I love the biblical model that through weakness and
00:05:59.320 | smallness great evils are undone.
00:06:03.480 | And the last thing I would say is that we enjoy this, college basketball, March Madness,
00:06:12.200 | and other sports because the pressure is off of us and onto them, and we're relaxing, right?
00:06:20.260 | We're sitting on our couch.
00:06:22.080 | We've put in a hard day.
00:06:23.860 | We've bent our brains to accomplish as much as we could in God's will, doing what he wants
00:06:29.240 | us to do.
00:06:30.240 | We're tired, and it just feels good not to have to make this play happen.
00:06:36.920 | I am not the coach.
00:06:38.200 | I'm not responsible for this.
00:06:40.000 | I am not the key player.
00:06:41.280 | I don't have to make that basket at the buzzer.
00:06:43.760 | I'm just enjoying there acting with skill under pressure.
00:06:49.840 | In other words, sports have a unwinding, relaxing, appropriate function in the life of hardworking
00:06:59.080 | Christians.
00:07:00.080 | So if my wife is right and the reason you watch is just because you want your team to
00:07:04.240 | win, I don't know how to relate to you.
00:07:06.400 | Okay, so will you fill out a bracket?
00:07:08.680 | No, I don't have a clue how to do that.
00:07:11.600 | Excellent.
00:07:12.600 | Oh, folks, so be encouraged.
00:07:15.160 | All of you who can fill out a March Madness bracket but cannot arc the book of Romans,
00:07:18.840 | there is hope for all of us.
00:07:20.720 | Well, speaking of impregnable defenses, you don't want to miss seeing Pastor John suffocating
00:07:25.220 | defense on display by checking out a short video titled T4G 2012 Teaser, The Game.
00:07:32.760 | You can find it if you Google it, T4G 2012 Teaser, The Game.
00:07:38.040 | There right at the beginning, at about the six-second mark, you will witness his shutdown
00:07:41.840 | defense on display.
00:07:43.200 | No joke.
00:07:44.200 | And speaking of phenomenal dribbling around opposition and smooth finishes to the hoop,
00:07:49.520 | at about the 30-second mark, you'll see that on display as well.
00:07:53.360 | All right, we need to shut down this epic podcast before it gets even more out of hand.
00:07:58.640 | So I'll sign off with the wise words of a Major League Baseball Hall of Famer, one Leo
00:08:04.000 | Durocher, who once said this, "Baseball is like church.
00:08:09.320 | Many attend, but few understand."
00:08:12.000 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke.
00:08:13.000 | I'll see you tomorrow.
00:08:13.800 | [END]
00:08:14.300 | Leo Durocher, "Baseball is like church."
00:08:15.300 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke.
00:08:16.300 | I'll see you tomorrow.
00:08:16.300 | [END]
00:08:18.300 | Leo Durocher, "Baseball is like church."
00:08:19.300 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke.
00:08:20.300 | I'll see you tomorrow.
00:08:20.300 | [BLANK_AUDIO]