Like a lot of American guys on Sunday afternoons in the fall, I generally find myself in front of the TV rooting for my favorite football team. Until recently they never won a Super Bowl (though they had come close), but that hadn’t stopped me from going through the usual cycle of fandom every year—of hope and disappointment.
Sometimes when I’m watching a game, I wonder why anyone should think football is so important compared to spiritual things. “Spiritual things”—the phrase itself almost makes my skin crawl in the moment I’m most invested in the game. Why is that? Why does the spiritual seem most remote when I’m most invested in the ephemeral? On the other hand, certainly there’s nothing wrong with occasional relaxation and good entertainment.
The problem, I think, is prolonged distraction. The Bible calls it “the cares of this world.” It’s the worrying about many things: health, finances, work, parents, kids, politics, social issues, the economy, the future, boredom, depression, anxiety—all taking their turns consuming us. Even football. And so, between the sublime and the ridiculous our minds and emotions are filled like sponges, daily, until at last sleep overtakes us, pressing out our ‘sponges’ so they will absorb the next day’s worries when we wake up. Yet it never seems to occur to us that our minds are the fandom of our lives—our emotions the roller coaster of our experience—and that often we have chosen what absorbs us.
To emphasize this point about the spiritual versus the ephemeral, a man named Keith Miller once gave a talk at an Easter service before a Rose Bowl many years ago. It was a dramatic presentation of events surrounding the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ from the perspective of Matthew, the tax collector-turned disciple. During his speech, Miller mentioned how removed these ancient and coarse events might seem to his audience, accustomed to modernity and terrycloth bathrobes. Today, thinking back upon Miller’s talk, I realize how dated even “terrycloth” sounds.
And that will be the problem with the material in this book for some of its readers. Its subject is well beyond even a “terrycloth” context, to a point far removed from anything in their experience. And the book’s necessary discussion of, e.g., the reigning years of kings with names like Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin, lunar-solar years and leap months, Hebrew words called “Nisan” and “Tishri,” the dative case, NASA charts, proposed death dates for a 1st century BC ruler, etc., certainly seem to invite off-putting.
But I ask the reader, you(!), to put aside your cares for the moment, in the hope they might become a little lighter after reading this book. And I hope for this, even knowing it is difficult read. So put aside those worries as best you can. Even whatever is your football.