"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play…it is war minus the shooting."
Money
For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. 1Timothy 6:10The large sums of money which change hands within sport always attract the attention of the media. When a footballer, who earns more per week than the average person does in a year, demands more money the newspapers have a field day.
The reality is, of course, that most people who earn their living in sport are not millionaires. Some make a financial sacrifice to work in sport because they love it and feel called by God to work there.
It is part of human nature that we are not satisfied with what we have. We want more. Will Smith has said, “too many people spend money they have not earned, to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like”.
We compare what we earn with those who earn more than us, not with those who earn less. The Bible has much to say about the love of money (Matthew 6:24, 1 Timothy 6:10 or 1 Peter 5:2). Because sport can be a short career, professional sportspeople are perhaps more susceptible to this pressure than some.
The alternative, as our verse points out, is to seek contentment. Paul wrote in Philippians 4:12 that he had “learned the secret of being content in any and every situation”. That is a challenge for us.
The secret of contentment is letting the Bible determine how you feel, rather than the norms of our culture or our own sinful nature.
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