A New Testament professor cheers for the Texas Rangers

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I am ecstatic that my beloved Texas Rangers are in the MLB playoffs despite all odds and an extreme number of injuries. I grew up in Japan, in an environment that cherished baseball, and when I was six years old a pastor from Texas sent my parents a gift box from his church that included a team set of Texas Rangers baseball cards from 1985 (I remember Buddy Bell was shortstop then). When my parents and I returned home to America for furlough in 1993, I immediately latched on to the Texas Rangers as my team, despite never having lived in Texas (this was Nolan Ryan's last year). The two highlights of my fandom were in 1994 when, at a Rangers-Tigers game in Detroit, the great Juan Gonzalez autographed his 1990 rookie card for me, and October 2010, when the Rangers won the ALCS for the first time. The low point of my fandom was David Freese's walk-off homerun in the 2011 Word Series (with all due respect to all you Cardinals' fans out there!).

Now for a point of a more serious nature. In all honesty, this is the first time in my life that I have felt justified in actually praying for a particular sports team to win. The Texas Rangers are, apparently, the last team to not capitulate by celebrating Gay Pride month. To be clear, God loves everybody, including those of the LGBTQ persuasion, and Jesus died to save everybody. Yet God created two genders, and marriage is intended to be the only legitimate expression of sexuality: man and woman, in a committed relationship for as long as both of them are still alive. This is anchored first and foremost in God's creative act (Genesis 1:27) and the words of Jesus about the origins and intended permanence of marriage (Mark 10:5–9, answering a question about divorce), though many other scriptural passages abound on this topic. Anything that deviates from God's intended norm for sexuality is a sin (such sin, of course, includes heterosexual lust and pornography, not just homosexuality). So for Christians that take God's Word seriously, there can be no doubt about the issue.

Now, does God care about sports? Well, perhaps sometimes (exhibit A: Eric Liddell). I am claiming no prophetic word about how far the Rangers will go in the postseason. All I know is that sin grieves God, and that not capitulating to an idealogical worldview steeped in a sinful anthropology is a good thing, and that God said, "Them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed" (1 Samuel 2:30). Consequently, I am praying for the Texas Rangers, and I can do so with a clean conscious that I am not bringing a superfluous matter to my heavenly Father.  Whatever He wants to allow or not allow for the MLB playoffs is His business, but at least I know that my request has been heard.