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Letter from AmericaA tale of two gamesThis year the Super Bowl was between the New England Patriots and the Carolina Panthers. During the Super Bowl I went to a Super Bowl party. A Super Bowl party means eating and watching the game on TV, or at least the commercials which air in between the frequent time outs and other interruptions which so bemuse a British observer. The commercials are particularly expensive to air during this prime time viewing moment of the year and consequently vie for being the most memorable or funny. More fascinating, though, even than the commercials, more intriguing than the game, more fun than the good-humoured rivalry between North and South evidenced at this Super Bowl between New England and Carolina, was the implicit comparison I couldn't help but make between American Football and Rugby. DifferencesDuring the Rugby World Cup I enjoyed showing the delights of the real man's game to various Americans. They were impressed by the sheer size of the players, the full scale aggression of a game played without pads and helmets, as well as the non-stop pace of the sport. They were also rather puzzled by aspects of Rugby. At the Super Bowl party I was startled by several differences. The American Football players are immense, the largest even bigger than the likes of Martin Johnson. But these big players don't really seem (to an ignorant limey like me) to actually do much. They do not need to be as fit because they do not do much more running than jog onto the pitch every now and then. All their activity appears focused on an occasional few seconds of manic pushing like Sumo wrestlers. In many ways these very similar games expose different assumptions about what's just and fair. I can't imagine Americans long accepting a game where you can only throw the ball backwards. Rugby and American Football are alike in many ways and yet they are also so different - and it's the differences that are beginning to intrigue me when I think about mission. In Paul's various apostolic journeys recorded in Acts, he proclaimed the gospel in ways that both avoided cultural trip wires and exploited cultural openings. Observe how different the form of his message is in Lystra, Athens, and his standard sermonic exegesis in the synagogues. What does it say?Take careful note of the games cultures or sub-cultures play. What does it say about teenagers that they play computer games? What are the rules of such games that expose the implicit assumptions of what is right and fair, or best and fun? What does it say about OAPs who play bingo? If Americans construct a game that while theoretically lasting for four quarters actually goes on for a couple of hours, that is constantly interrupted, that is highly strategic, that has teams of enormous numbers of people, that has a specialist who just kicks and nothing else, how does this all compare to the cultural assumptions evidenced by the more brutal, more straightforward and ultimately far better (detecting any bias here?) game of Rugby? So here is a new thought for evangelists and missionaries trying to figure out how to penetrate a culture with the gospel: observe the games they play. Josh Moody© Evangelicals Now - March 2004 |