The Most Important Least Important Things
Jurgen Klopp, manager of Liverpool Football Club in England, said last year that [sports are] “the most important of the least important things.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about that statement these days. I doubt I’m the only one who finds himself just bone weary of the constant culture war arguments to which all things are currently reduced by the algorithms and editors that we allow to control us these days. The sense that EVERYTHING IS IMPORTANT AND AN OUTRAGE AND YOU MUST PAY ATTENTION TO IT AND MUST HAVE THE (CORRECT) OPINION ABOUT IT AND IF YOU DO NOT YOU ARE THE PROBLEM just wears a man down. It was there in the early Obama years, but I felt it increase during the second Obama administration (no doubt rising in direct proportion to the spread of the smartphone) until it reached a rolling boil during the Trump administration until (and I wouldn’t have believed it possible) it has become like a pressure cooker during this pandemic.
As I’ve been preaching recently, however, I’m out. I’ve over it. I’m taking back my attention and my heart and my focus from the howling voices that demand I respond to them. It’s not that the issues we’re fighting about don’t matter, it’s that I no longer want to cede my attention to the control of the howling voices. I want to decide when to react, when to be outraged, when to be obsessed.
And so I’ve been thinking recently about where I direct my attention on my own terms.
I’ve been thinking, therefore, about “the most important least important things”.
Thank God for the NBA
I think our obsession with sports can be unhealthy and idolatrous, and yet these days I’ve come to really appreciate the arguments and petty obsessions that are part of being a sports fan.
I’ll go further:
Thank you God for the NBA!
Yes, sports won’t stop the plague, they won’t cure cancer, they won’t get the right person elected, they won’t fix our city streets.
But you know what they do accomplish? They offer us a safe place to be obsessive, a safe place to have heated arguments when nothing is at stake, a place to channel the passion and intensity that come along with human nature.
Stephen A. Cuts My Hair
The place where I go for a haircut has sports channels blaring all day long, and most of that time they aren’t showing live sports, but rather what “30 Rock” called “sports shouting” shows—the ones where they just yell and argue (look up Stephen A. Smith on YouTube for a million examples). All those shows used to annoy me.
(See 30 Rock’s version of “Sports Shouting” 3:23-3:31 in the above clip. Such a funny sitcom—I miss it.)
Nowadays, I Much Prefer “Sports Shouting” and “Cookiejar Enthusiast”, Thank You Very Much
Nowadays, however, I think I’m grateful for the pointless arguments and petty obsessions that make up shows like “Sports Shouting”. Long may they continue. In fact, I think one of the purposes of civilization is to permit men and women to devote their energies to “unimportant” things like sports and all the other most important least important things we care about, like dog shows and garage bands and dollhouse-collecting and bridge tournaments and arguments over which scope on which hunting rifle firing which type of ammunition would be best to take down an elk at 400 yards in high elevation.
I’ve called the examples above “unimportant”, but that’s not really accurate, is it? Those examples are not unimportant because they are things that we care about and for which we use our God-given creativities. Yes, the examples above might not all be life-and-death and they may not speak to the immigration crisis at the border or how to pass the infrastructure bill or how to cure cancer, but I actually think the point of life is to not have to constantly think about the point of life.
It seems to me that one of the characteristics of a healthy, prosperous civilization is that men and women have the energy to direct at “unimportant” things, rather than worrying about how to make it through the next winter. In light of starvation, a sonnet seems frivolous, but I’m wondering if frivolity—in the highest sense—is one of the purposes of Creation.
After all, Jesus told us to consider the lilies, and what could be less relevant to our current crises than that?
Some Of My Most Important Least Important Things
Above is a screenshot of the front-page of today’s Sports section from The Dallas Morning News, which I look at most days. (I’m old-fashioned and get both the paper delivered and use the e-paper app, which I love.) I like reading about the Cowboys, I like talking to other people about the Cowboys, and I like listening to local talk radio talk about the Cowboys. None of it matters, but I like thinking about it:
How did everyone else miss on Dak when he came out of Mississippi State?
How did Jerry get two great quarterbacks in a row that no one else thought were good enough?
Is Zeke finally going to justify his huge contract this year? Etc.
I also like reading about and watching English soccer, which my brother and I started following on a low budget highlight show on a local sports channel in about 1993. We’d come home from school and tape it on our VCR. I’ve been an inconsistent fan at times in these last nearly 30 years (thirty years (!)—time moves so quickly), but I’ve been much more attentive these last several years, particularly because of the availability of NBC’s Saturday morning Premier League coverage. I like listening to podcasts—especially Men in Blazers—and following the soap opera of the season.
Can Pep succeed without a true “number 9”?
Does Ole have what it takes?
Does the return of Ronaldo actually make Man United a worse team? Etc.
And though I don’t actually care about the NBA much at all, I’m still grateful for it (even when I find its deliberate embrace of woke politics grating). Sometimes it’s just good for us to care about tall men putting a round ball in a metal ring.
When Most Important and Most Important Least Important Collide
Yesterday, my most important and some of my most important least important loves came together in a lovely way. We went as a family to the last Rangers game of the season—our first time to the new ballpark in Arlington.
A very generous family in church gave us amazing seats—3 rows behind home plate—it was a beautiful Texas Indian summer afternoon under a blue sky, the roof was open—it is a marvel to behold it slide open along its massive rails— and the entire afternoon was a delight.
The Rangers lost 6-0 despite my daughter’s applause for “our team”, and since it’s been a miserable losing season for Texas, nothing hung on the outcome.
Or maybe that’s the wrong way to look at it.
See, I got to sit with my family and focus on something together in the brief time we have before my children are grown and gone, in the brief time before all of this is gone, me included. Maybe the most important least important things are God’s way of pointing us to what’s actually important. See, I’ve come to believe that this may be the purpose behind God’s gift to us of the most important least important things:
They give us an excuse to just sit and be and love.
“Consider the lilies....”
So, what are some of your most important least important things?