“Concussion” Makes a Christian Argument Against Football

Last January, after the Seattle Seahawks staged an improbable comeback to beat the Green Bay Packers in the N.F.C. Championship Game, the Seahawks’ quarterback Russell Wilson told the football writer Peter King, “That’s God setting it up, to make it so dramatic, so rewarding, so special.” Wilson’s statement was a next-level version of the “all thanks to God” quotes that players regularly give to sideline reporters in the afterglow of a big win—God had not merely given him the strength to do the things he had practiced all his life but, in Wilson’s telling, had arranged the events of the game to provide for the greatest amount of narrative satisfaction. A day later, the Packers’ quarterback Aaron Rodgers, during a radio interview, offered a competing view. “I don’t think God cares a whole lot about the outcome,” he said. “He cares about the people involved, but I don’t think he’s a big football fan.”