Lessons in Fatherhood from Tiger's Fall

Last week, USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham asked a question surrounding the recent Tiger Woods revelations (sadly, his marital infidelity most of you surely know by now) that I have not seen posed elsewhere: How did Tiger's golf-obsessed father prepare him for life? Wickham set up his question by summarizing Earl Woods' obsessive drive to make his son a hall of fame golfer:

Shooting a 48 at age 3 must have both pleased Tiger and whetted the voracious appetite of his father, Earl Woods, to push the young Woods to reach golf's loftiest heights. At 8, Woods won the Optimist International Junior World Golf Championships, the first of a long list of amateur and professional titles. For now, that run has ended, at least until Woods straightens out the part of his life he was least prepared for by his father, or apparently anyone else.

Wickham's most compelling line, one that should strike a cord in Christian fathers, is this one: "It does not take a psychiatrist to appreciate that a childhood spent under the iron fist of a determined father in obsessive pursuit of the mastery of sports, music, or other such parental passion, comes at a great cost."

Wickham's thoughts are personally relative (and I suspect for many fathers reading this post) for two reasons: 1. I have two sons. 2. My family is possessed of a deep love for the games people play. These thoughts certainly apply to fathers with daughters as well; as a former sports journalist, I have seen many fathers living beyond the bounds of reality, living and dying (read: idolatry) with every swing of the bat, every tackle, every smooth backhand or every three-point shot undertaken by their high school sons and/or daughters. Above all, as a broken down actor living on a broken down stage, I can see it in myself. Thus, Wickham's question has deep relevance for all fathers and here are some of my answers to Wickham's important question, or they might best be called five fatherhood lessons I want to take from the Tiger Woods affair and teach my sons (my daughters still think sports are "yucky") at the intersection of sports and the Christian life:

1. Sports, like all other parts of the created order, are a good gift from God, but they must not serve as a Christ-replacement. See Romans 1.

2. Winning isn't everything. The Gospel is.

3. Play hard at all times, play to win, play sports (or a musical instrument or do math or fill in the blank) to the glory of God, but lose with grace because you have learned the wisdom of lessons 1 and 2.

4. Do not dream of playing sports for a living; the life of a professional athlete is mostly unsettled and fraught with unimaginable temptations. The athlete spends much of his time away from his family and away from the body of Christ. The athlete's family desperately needs him and he desperately needs the body of Christ.

5. If your children have no talent or interest in sports, do not push them to play. Do not live vicariously through them. God is the giver of gifts and all his gifts are good. For boys, participating in sports must not be confused with authentic manhood. Many of the best athletes I have known, covered or watched over the years, have also exhibited an ungodly, female-objectifying, hubristic, chest-thumping machismo that is the opposite of genuine, Christ-exalting manhood. I know carpenters and realtors and musicians and teachers and writers and brick masons and ministers and salesmen and truck drivers and professors and plumbers who possess little to no athletic ability, but who shine forth a glorious picture of biblical manhood.

I pray that God will be pleased to use Tiger Woods' circumstances to awaken him to the reality of his deepest need (the Gospel), one which his own father may have neglected, and to remind fathers like me that teaching their sons how to throw a curveball is a great thing, but not the best thing.