God and Football – Mark C. Robinson

If there’s really a God, a being created by us as ants create an ant colony, then can we feel him? Can we have a direct experience of God?
Of all things to do on Monday night, I was watching ‘the game.’ And I was really getting into it. Screaming advice at the TV when the home team quarterback was getting ready to make his move “NOW!” I screamed, “NOW YOU ASSHOLE!” I got up and jumped and shouted with the crowd when the team made a touchdown. The referee might have thrown me out of the stadium if he’d heard what I yelled at a fumbling runner. The game was almost over and it was a high-tension moment. One guy was running after another for the tackle that would decide the game. I had spilled my soda on the carpet and kicked over my popcorn. I was clenching my fists and my very soul was shouting, “go… Go! GO!”

And then… in an instant… the lights went out. Poof. Gone. Over. I missed it. I just stood there, sweating, breathing heavy, every muscle tense, and I was staring at absolutely nothing. I looked around, the room was silent, the night was cool, there were crickets chirping outside. A soft breeze blew and rustled the trees. There was a soft dripping of this afternoon’s rain rolling off the roof.

My whole body was pumped full of energy. My adrenaline level was probably high, triggering my heart rate, my breathing reflex. My body had released all kinds if chemicals, hormones, and electrical signals to make me strong enough to lift a piano and fast enough to outrun a gazelle. My cells knew it… every one of them. A powerful message had been sent to all of the parts of my body. So, even though there is no way for my cells or my organs to understand the rules of football, they did understand the rules for being a member of the community of my body… when you’re called on for action, you go, Go! GO!

What things do we feel that are generated by the ultimate being we exist within? Well, in times of national disaster there’s a strong human compulsion to reproduce. Anytime there’s a significant global occurrence; a tremor runs through the entire human population. The Kennedy Assassination, the First Step on the moon, the challenger disaster, the Desert Storm War, The collapse of the Berlin Wall, The OJ Simpson chase and verdict, were all huge collective experiences which happened to us as a race and was a twitch in our god. . God can be directly felt in shared, collective experiences. These experiences can be global, local, or shared by a few people in a room. Fear is a common shared experience. Love is a very powerful one. Piety is a blissful shared experience. Singing is a nice one, it’s healing and empowering. But the most wonderful type of shared experience, the one that binds us to our god and lets us really experience him is the feeling of Hope, Gratitude, and Faith. When a group gets together in Faith, Gratitude, and Love miracles can happen, and have so many times throughout our history. It heals us, fills us with joy, and the god we create as a group becomes Joyful because its made of Joyful parts. So it’s true, we make god happy with our prayer and worship. That’s why he told us to do so.