Our society is so fixated on sports without ever pausing to consider the premise behind the games. The only way I can win is if you lose. The point is less to play well than to play better than the other guy/s. Even if your team only made one foul shot in an entire basketball game [which is beyond pathetic] - if the other team didn't score you won. You win - I lose. I win - you lose. And one is supposed do everything he can to win.
How SHOULD a Jew live his life? By being razor focused in his life to make sure that his friend WINS without paying too much attention as to whether he himself is winning. You properly learn mussar for a while and find yourself in disbelief that the world is so involved in an endeavor that is [on various levels] so anti-mussar.
They never told me this when I was a kid. They just brainwashed me [and an entire culture] that a] the game matters and b] that I should win without giving thought for a moment how it feels for the other guy to lose. This creates an unhealthy sense of competition among people who are not here to compete. We are here to make a Tikkun Olam Bimalchus Sha-dai by bringing chesed and ahava wherever we go.
The Messianic vision of the ideal world is [per Rambam Melachim 12-5] that there is no תחרות - competition [which is lumped with רעב מלחמה and קנאה!!] and so is our state in Olam Haba - no תחרות [Brachos 17]. So competition is a sign of an incomplete and flawed reality. We just magnify that reality when we actually encourage competition instead of teaching our youth [and ourselves] that we are not here to beat "yenem" but to empower him in every which way.
Is there value to sports? There is value to almost everything. We have to know how to use it in the most effective and spiritually impactful way.
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Comment section:
Ehrman already started drinking a week before Purim. He's nuts.
Justaguy from Flatbush
I see what youre saying but I agree with justaguy.
Rationalist Jew
