The Americans defended their title in the gold-medal match that went down to the wire...what an exciting game! But here’s something you may not have know
about the game. Basketball was invented more than 100 years ago by a Christian
theologian as an evangelical outreach tool!
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| USA Basketball Wins Gold. Source. |
As Breakpoint mentioned in a recent article, John Murray of The Wall Street Journal recalled the story of the game's founding. The inventor of basketball, James Naismith, became convinced that he stood a better chance of exemplifying the Christian life through sports rather than through preaching. So he took a job as a physical education instructor at the YMCA's International Training School for Christian Workers in Springfield, Massachusetts. Naismith's vision was "to win men for the Master through the gym."
In
1891, Naismith set out to invent a new indoor game that students could play
during winter. He spent weeks testing various games, including versions of
soccer, football, and lacrosse, to no avail. "Finally," Murray writes,
"Naismith decided to draw from all of these sports: with a ball that could
be easily handled, play that involved running and passing with no tackling, and
a goal at each end of the floor." In short, he came up with basketball.
From
the beginning, Naismith and his athletic director, Luther Gulick, held the players
to a high standard. As Gulick wrote in 1897, "The game must be kept
clean." A Christian college cannot tolerate "not merely ungentlemanly
treatment of guests, but slugging and that which violates the elementary
principles of morals."
He
recommended that a coach should "excuse for the rest of the year any
player who is not clean in his play."
Basketball
served as an important evangelical tool during the next 50 years, Murray noted. In 1941,
Naismith wrote that "whenever I witness games in a church league, I feel
that my vision, almost half a century ago, of the time when the Christian
people would recognize the true value of athletics, has become a reality."
In
the last 100 years, we've seen no shortage of Christian athletes who use their
skill, self-discipline, and sportsmanship as a witness to Christ-from Olympic
runner Eric Liddel in the 1920s, to football player Tim Tebow in our own
generation.
In
fact, so many athletes give the glory to God after a game that sportswriters
sometimes get irritated with them. To which I respond: Which would you prefer
-- players known for their faith and good sportsmanship, or players who are
arrested for assault or drug use?
If
you have a young basketball fan in your family, tell him or her the story of
how basketball was invented. And pray for Christian players who can use the
public's love of sports the way Naismith envisioned when he invented
basketball-as a witnessing tool to "win men for the Master through the
gym."
