We are told Americans don't like soccer. I'm not sure that's true. The first World Cup game had more viewers than any game in the NBA Finals. Either way, it's interesting how much God uses sports to describe how we should live our life on earth. Run your race, receive the prize, and whatever you do, don't beat the air.
Welcome to Politics by Faith. It's where we take the news of the day and bring it to the Bible so we can walk away with some peace and perspective. New headlines every single day. But Ecclesiastes says there's nothing new under the sun. So thanks for being here to get the true story. The story of the day is the World Cup is a lot of fun.
It's awesome. Let's celebrate the World Cup for a minute. They may crash out here soon. So let's enjoy a good, you know, patriotic national team victory while we can. This was only our 10th World Cup victory ever. It was against Paraguay on Friday.
Paraguay leading up to the tournament after the World Cup. They beat Brazil. They beat Argentina, one of the best defenses in the world. And we scored four goals on them. We've never scored four goals in a World Cup game ever before. If we keep this up, we could legitimately win this thing.
I don't know if we can win it. But we can go far and we can have fun. Now, hold on. Listen, I know what you're saying. You're saying, Slater, I don't care about soccer at all. Soccer's stupid, man.
You don't have to. You don't have to care. My wife hates it with a passion. But after we won on Friday, she decided to be patriotic about it. Now I'll give you one opportunity to care. This is my one convincing of you to care about soccer for a month.
A month of your life. That's all I ask. And I'm like moderate. low to moderate fan. I love, I like the World Cup because I like international sporting events, but soccer, like I played in high school or whatever. Like I like soccer.
I get it. Um, but I'm going to, so I'm not like going to convince you to be the biggest fan of the world, but you like to like it for a little bit for a while. Uh, here's why, here's my one argument. We've got to pay. We've got a couple of patriotic things going now, right? The, uh, us hockey team won the gold medal flew around the moon the other day.
And now we got this, like we had some good things happen in here and it's been fun. you look at the USA hockey team right they were having a blast they were winning but because they dared to love this country and because they also dared to talk to the president on the phone in the locker room the left decided to hate the hockey team now like winning on the international stage is right wing coded and it's flag waving so because of their tds tds the the left has to hate it All the more reason for us to love it. The New York Times, they wrote an article. It's a real life article. They said, uh, it wouldn't be a world cup without a problematic host. Russia in 2018, Qatar in 2022.
Now the U S is on a slide under humanity's microscope. They're making fun of us overseas. That was, that was the tweet they sent out. New York Times that the tweet about that article, like, what are you talking about? The New York Times is writing about the problematic hosts of the World Cup. That's us.
We're the hosts of the World Cup. You're putting us in the same category as Russia and Qatar. So that's my argument. The left hates winning. They hate patriotism. They hate the flag.
They hate America. And we have all these awesome things that have happened recently. And this could be another fun one that the left hates. Therefore, we should love it. That's my argument. Can you get on board for like a couple of weeks?
I don't know. Maybe they'll get blown out next week and the whole thing's over anyway. So I don't know. It is curious why Americans don't like soccer that much. This is like a fascinating question. Why is this not a more popular sport or why don't more Americans love soccer?
And some things I've heard are like, our best athletes go into football, baseball, and basketball. and some hockey, right? But we're a big country. You'd think we'd still have some good soccer players, like enough to hang around. It's just not our thing. We just don't, I don't know why.
There was a funny article I read about people in Boston asking all these Scottish people, right? So these Scottish people are showing up to Boston and the Boston people are like, what are you doing here? What brings you to town? And the Scottish people are very confused because this is the most important sporting event in the history of their country. that happens to be taking place in Boston. And the people of Boston don't even know that it's happening.
I'm trying to think of any sort of analogy like that. Like, I mean, imagine we have a Super Bowl every year, but like, like the biggest Super Bowl ever for some reason, and it's taking place in Scotland and they don't even know, like Scotland doesn't even know. Like, oh, what do you, why are there so many Americans here all of a sudden? Like, that would be a weird thing. We just don't, we don't really get on board. At least maybe we don't.
I think we do actually, more than, maybe this whole thing, maybe Americans do love soccer. I got some numbers I'll share in a second about the NBA ratings. The soccer ratings were higher than the NBA ratings, NBA finals. Anyway, here's my question as to why soccer's not more prominent in America. One reason I think is it's a weirder track to go pro in soccer. It's like basketball and football.
Baseball is kind of weird too, but basketball and football, it's a pretty easy track or it's a clear path. You play in high school, then you play in college and then you go pro. But soccer, my understanding is there's like these developmental leagues from a young age. And then when you get a certain age, if you're really good, you go to Spain. And it's like, what's going to limit a lot of people. So college soccer isn't like the track you take.
College soccer isn't like a big competitive sport. It's not how you play. it. It's not where the best go. The best don't go to play college soccer. Interesting.
But then why not watching it? Why don't Americans like watching it? What is it about the American mind or the American psyche where we don't watch it? Is it as simple as we don't win? We're really, we just like things we win at. That's why my wife doesn't, my wife doesn't like it because not because we don't win it, but because sometimes no one wins.
Tie. She hates the tie. My wife, with a passion despises the concept of tying in a sporting event. Great disgust that you can tie in a soccer game. She hates that. I think Americans don't like soccer because of the flops.
The flops are so lame. Now, basketball players have started to flop, and I think their ratings show that as well. But I will say this, to that argument, I hate the flop. I was watching the USA game, of course, and a USA defender tripped a guy in Paraguay, and the American got the yellow card. And they took a free kick. Paraguay took the free kick.
And then right after they took the free kick, the ref blew the whistle. Because I guess in the replay booth, they looked at the tape and the American guy never even touched the guy from Paraguay. Did not touch him. And you know the guy from Paraguay falls over like someone shot his leg, but never even touched him. So they took away the yellow card for the American and gave the yellow card to the Paraguayan guy for lying and cheating. flopping and making it all up.
So there was some sweet justice there. And I like that a lot. I think that's really, I've been watching years ago and being like, why can't we not take care of this? And they did, they took care of that in FIFA. So that's really nice. And as a soccer fan or not, the fact that all these people from around the world are coming to America and loving it here, that's awesome.
Scottish fans going to Texas barbecue this German guy Freddy going to Places that many people in America have never been to or heard of Fairhope, Alabama calling in the most beautiful places ever seen in his life Again places Americans have never been to Japanese fans going to Nashville, taking in the beautiful lights of Broadway and country music. It's all very fun to watch the rest of the world love this country. And I want all of us to fall in love with America again, too, just like these foreigners are loving their time here. I want Americans to love their time here, too. So that's been a fun aspect of, you know, of the tournament seeing all the people come here and uh and love it and love the sights love the scenery and love the people so maybe we'll go far in this tournament our next game is uh friday and then we got a game after that next thursday and maybe we'll go pretty far as my dad always said whenever there was an upset my dad always said that's why they play the game here are the numbers uh 25 million people watched the usa game most ever for an American soccer game.
And it beat all of the NBA finals games. 16 million people watched game one and game two of the NBA finals. Then Trump went to game three. So I watched a little bit of game three. 23 million people watched. They got a nice bump for Trump, the Trump bump.
And then game four went down to 20 million. And then game five was 17 million people. So even game three, the biggest one, 23 million people watched. That was the most watched NBA finals game since 1998. But more people watch the soccer game and wait until we make a run. would be 50, 60 million people watching these games, maybe 100 million if we get pretty far down the end.
And that'd be great. So again, a good year for cool, awesome things. America hockey team winning gold flying around the moon. It's almost like we're it's almost like we're on the cusp of a golden age in America. Love that. All right.
So let's go to the Bible here. I like I'll take opportunities to talk about athleticism and athletic references in the Bible. Think about this. This is very fascinating. You know, we think of the Bible as this Maybe certainly atheists, I shouldn't even say that, certain people, lots of people will think of the Bible as maybe something distant or far away or irrelevant or foreign.
And this is true, that there's all these references, let's say to like even money, like a Daenerys or whatever. Like, I don't know what that money is. Or there's references to lengths or measurements that we don't use in America. So it can seem kind of foreign and different. A lot of references to farming, which used to be very applicable to Americans, but not so much to us anymore. But there are in the Bible tons of references to sports.
God talks about running a race, receiving the prize, fighting the good fight, playing by the rules. Second Timothy 2 .5, an athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. Think about that. This is in the section Advice to a Young Pastor. You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will also be able to teach others also.
" So go on, be, I'm coaching you. You player will become the coach. You go on and coach others, right? Pass it on, pass the truth, spread the word. You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.
Soldiers expect life to be hard. They expect their deployments to be uncomfortable. Athletes as well. Difficult to train. You're going to be uncomfortable. You're going to be sore.
You're going to push the limits. Similarly, the Christian life. Difficulties will occur. But as Jesus said, if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself. take up his cross and follow me. It's Matthew 16, 24.
Spurgeon says, Paul does not exhort Timothy to be a common or ordinary soldier, but to be a good soldier of Jesus Christ. For all soldiers and all true soldiers may not be good soldiers. There are men who are but just soldiers and nothing more. They only need sufficient temptation and they will readily become cowardly, idle, useless, and worthless. But he is the good soldier who is bravest of the brave, courageous at all times, who is zealous, does his duty with heart and earnestness as well. Charles Spurgeon.
And part of being a good soldier also is not being concerned with the affairs of this life, right? You got to be focused. I just think of, Michael Phelps comes to mind, because I was a swimmer first of all, but he's also like, I mean, there's so many athletes we could do, but Michael Phelps first comes to mind. Just extreme, crazy amounts of focus, like focus, like nothing, it's just swim, eat, breathe, like that's the only thing that matters. Everything with a diet, everything with exercise, everything with sleep, everything is only focused around the day, swimming for the next meet, the ultimate goal, all to culminate in this one week of swimming competition. four years from today, right?
That is maximum focus. There's no time for girls. There's no time for anything. No fun. You're never doing anything fun ever. You're just swimming.
Maximum focus for sports. Now in sports, after the whistle blows, none of it matters. Just a game. But when the whistle blows to end our life, that's when eternity starts, right? So in sports, the game's over and then the rest of life goes on. When the whistle of life ends, that's when eternity begins.
This life. the only thing that the only purpose of it is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and then love your neighbor as yourself. You do that, you win the game, and then you go to heaven for eternity. Pretty good. So I got off on a tangent because I mentioned just playing by the rules, right? You can't make up your own rules in the Christian life.
Here is the Bible. Follow it. We're always trying to do things our own way. We need to play by the rules and do it God's way. Paul talks about wrestling, running, boxing, and all these sports. You got to follow the rules.
And stay focused. Don't run aimlessly. Don't beat the air. 1 Timothy 4, 7, just like being ridiculous. You stay focused, train yourself for godliness. And like in sports, you got to have self -control.
It's one of the biggest vices in America is lack of self -control. Everything's about feelings and whim. People go on emotions, not constantly, just emotions, like emotional, instant gratification all the time. That's not how it works in sports. Of course, there's no instant gratification in sports. It's ridiculous.
There's a practice a lot all the time. That's why Paul says 1 Corinthians 9 .25, he says, every athlete exercises self -control in all things. Isn't that amazing? And the Greek word here literally is about athletes preparing for a big competition to not eat junk food, don't drink alcohol, just self -control related to your sport. But what Christians are doing is way more important, because the self -control that we're trying to show is not for a perishable wreath. At the Greek Olympic Games, you get this wreath, and then I don't know how long it would last, like a couple of days, and then it withers away, and you've got to throw it away.
It's a perishable wreath. And I think about everything the athletes do to get one of those. But what we're trying to do is or what Jesus gave us, is an imperishable one, eternity. So enjoy the World Cup, enjoy the patriotism, enjoy the hospitality of the whole thing. And it's great, it's a fun month.
I think it's a part of America's golden era. I think it's conservative and patriotic and good, and we should embrace it. And even if you don't like soccer, suck it up for a month, hop on board, it's fun. And also use it as a reminder. And also there's a bunch of Christian athletes. And on the soccer team, we have a bunch of Christian men who are leading the way and leading Bible studies and praying before the games and all that.
And that's good. It should be encouraged as well. And as this is all happening, just think about the race that we're running every day here on earth and the imperishable crown that we will soon receive. YouTube . com. If you could please subscribe to that.
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