I believe I’ve written some about this concept/analogy
before, but it came back to mind again yesterday while in church…
When coaching, one is faced with many decisions to help
his team grow… not only in skills but in attitude as individuals and a team… Yes,
you teach to try to win games, but it is also important how you win games…
Fans love a blowout win for their team. Yet, blowouts can
be fools gold… part your team being good and/or part the other team being
really bad. I’ve coached in a few games like that and had tough decisions to
make; the reason is that the scoreboard is alluring… and can be deceiving!!!
Scoring is not the only “goal” of coaching a team. It also
matters how the team scores; often times when scoring comes easy, bad habits
get formed, such as lazy passes… not running sets properly… etc. Or on the other
end of the floor, when the other team has trouble scoring, (a nice way to say, lacks
the skills to score), it is easy to drop the hands and just be thinking about
getting the ball to score again.
I’ve seen many teams running up the score in these
circumstances with the fans going crazy, the players jumping up and down, and
the coaches often beaming as their teams “look so good.” (When teams play this
way, piling on the score, it causes the weaker opponents to ask, “Why you wanna
be like that?”)
The problem is what this can do to a team when they face
a stronger opponent, the bad habits it can develop. It gets the team more
concerned with the scoreboard than doing things the right way. What happens
when the opposing team is better at defending those lazy passes? What happens when
the opponents can take advantage of your team’s hands being down on defense?
I’m not saying the scoreboard doesn’t matter… just that
it doesn’t tell the whole story. The emphasis needs to be on how the team is
playing in spite of the scoreboard. As a coach, I wanted to see my team playing
beautiful basketball… when winning or losing.
Let’s move this into what this means off the court… Often
I hear preaching/teaching that is just looking to the “scoreboard” to motivate
the “team.” This happens in a couple of ways:
1. Teaching that only looks toward “heaven” and neglects
that salvation, being born again, also relates to our daily living… an old
phrase I heard is teaching that gets us so heavenly minded that we are no
earthly good.
2. Teaching that insinuates we will always be “up big on
the scoreboard” and ignores that life is full of trials and tribulations… that doesn’t
allow for how we handle the tough times… prosperity teaching.
I don’t want to turn this into an entire sermon, so I will
stick with the verse that jumped out at me yesterday. It is found in the “Beatitudes”
in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. The term “beatitude” carries the idea of blessed
or happy living… literally “a state of utmost bliss.” I have a little different
take on the word… I think it is Jesus telling us “how to be (play) attitudes”
that lead to happiness…
So basically He taught us that whatever life brings
(strong or weak opponents… ahead big, in a tight game, or behind), we need to
focus on “playing right”… focusing on doing things the right way… avoiding bad
habits… If we want to be happy… content… satisfied…
Matthew 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness, for they shall be filled (satisfied.)
My coach translation and the bottom line: Although the
scoreboard teaches us some things, make sure we are focused on playing the
right way in spite of the circumstances… and then we experience the joy and peace
that salvation brings… not just in the afterlife, but in the here and now.
Have a beautiful life my friends!
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