Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ

I spent the last few minutes wracking my brain to come up with some sort of nice introduction, but couldn't think of anything, so this meaningless-placeholding sentence is what you get.  I'm sure that anyone who reads this is tired of me talking about BYU football, but it is my hobby outside of work, so that is what you get.  The team ran out of last-minute miracles last night and lost by 1 point to #10 UCLA at the Rose Bowl.  And that was actually what I wanted to write about today.

I had a strange experience at the end of the game last night that anyone who knows me well will find similarly surprising.  With 50 seconds left and BYU down by 1, Tanner Magnum (BYU's QB) threw an interception, meaning that the game was effectively over.  Normally such plays would send me into either some sort of rant or some sort of depressed melancholy.  But in that moment, I found myself clapping for the guys, the effort they had given, and how well they had played against a very good team.  Rather than being unable to go to sleep for a few hours because I kept going over the loss in my mind, I quickly fell asleep--which was good because it was midnight and I had a 7 am meeting.  I simply wasn't bothered by the interception or the loss.

Now this may sound ridiculous to non-sports fans--and it probably is--but any true sports fan will tell you that the post-loss funk is a real thing.  So I was surprised at how well I took things.  When I woke up this morning I kept thinking about the experience and what had happened.  As I thought about it, I had an impression--again something that is so simple that it is foolish to think that I needed an impression to understand it.  The impression was simply: "BYU football is not the gospel of Jesus Christ."  Because that statement is so obviously true that to think contrary is absurd, I'll explain what I mean.

Of course I know and have always known that that is true.  But in tough moments during the past, I have subconsciously looked to BYU football to make everything that was wrong in my life right.  If things were going wrong, I looked to the team to get wins where I felt like everything else in my life was turning up as losses.  And I learned by hard experiences that BYU football was a very poor gospel to have faith in during troubled times.  Last year, Taysom Hill went down and BYU lost four straight games at the most inopportune of times, leaving me even more angry and frustrated than I had been before.  As dumb as it was, I connected the outcomes of that game to the rest of my life because I was looking to BYU football to make things right when I should have been looking to the Savior.

We all do this.  For some it is a football or basketball game.  For others, it is a career or a school achievement.  For others, it is a new car.  Perplexed and troubled by other struggles, we look to other sources to give us validation, to say that everything isn't wrong, to give us hope.  We turn to these other things only to find out that teams can lose games, careers can suffer setbacks, someone else may beat us out for this achievement or that scholarship, new cars may get dinged at the grocery store.  Even placing our validation in relationships and families is unwise, as good relationships can fall apart and even the best of family members can let us down.  This is not meant to be pessimistic.  I love and will continue to cheer on my teams.  We all enjoy and should seek for career and school advancements.  Everyone loves riding in a new car.  And certainly relationships and families are among the best investments of time and effort we ever make.  I am not suggesting that we should disregard any of these important things.

What I am suggesting is that we must learn that there is only one safe harbor in which we can anchor our faith:  The Lord Jesus Christ and His Everlasting Gospel.  Everything else, no matter how well made, how well intentioned, or how well prepared for, will ultimately let us down at some point or another.  In those moments, if we have lost the proper perspective and have placed our faith in anything other than the Savior, we will find ourselves tossed mercilessly upon the seas of doubt.  I never intentionally placed my faith in BYU football.  But by looking to it as a kind of savior in difficult times, I took my eyes, ever-so-slightly off of the Son of God.

Last night I felt like a bit of proper perspective had begun to return.  It didn't diminish from my enjoyment of the game or of BYU football.  In fact, it actually made the game more enjoyable because I didn't have to worry about every missed throw or every sack or penalty or whatever.  I could enjoy the game for what it was without needing it to be something that it was utterly incapable of being.

Brett