Paige Bueckers credits God for the UConn women’s basketball team’s win over South Carolina in the national title game:
If I could say one thing, it would be to stand firm in who you are. There’s a lot of people who write you off, there’s a lot of narratives that could be trying to put you in a box, tell you ‘you got to do this,’ ‘you got to do that,’ ‘you got to more like this player,’ ‘you got to be more like that player.’
There’s people that doubt you because they think you’re doing it on your strength alone. We lean on God’s strength here. We’re for God’s power, for God’s purposes. We’re not doing this alone, and we have the village that we lean on.
This sort of thinking is common among college and professional athletes. Athletes raised in religious cultures that teach them that “without Jesus you can do nothing” typically give God/Jesus credit for their physical abilities and wins. I usually ignore such religious utterances, seeing them as the product of indoctrination and conditioning. Bueckers is an outstanding player because of two things: genetics (natural ability) and hard work. God has nothing to do with it.
If God was behind UConn’s win, that means he willed South Carolina’s loss. The latter naturally follows from the former. The same goes for Christians who credit God for healing them. Such statements imply that God is in control of everything. If God heals, it necessarily follows that God chooses NOT to heal.
Claims of God helping teams win ballgames trivialize Christianity; that God is more interested in the outcome of a basketball game than he is the suffering all around us. Woo! Hoo! Our team won! Praise Jesus! And what about the thousands of children who will die today from malnutrition, starvation, war, and disease? God says, “They should have played basketball for UConn.”
I’m sure Bueckers meant well, and that her pronouncements reflect her religious upbringing. However, I see no evidence for the claim that God helped UConn win their latest title.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
