Does God care who wins? Pope Leo, Villanova, Notre Dame and what the Bible says about sports

What the Bible says

The Bible does not mention team sports as we know them, but Paul knew athletes. Corinth lay near the site of the Isthmian Games, and he wrote to the church there:

²⁴ Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way as to take the prize. ²⁵ Everyone who competes in the games trains with strict discipline. They do it for a crown that is perishable, but we do it for a crown that is imperishable. ²⁶ Therefore I do not run aimlessly; I do not fight like I am beating the air. ²⁷ No, I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.

Leo seems to be echoing this passage when he says Christians run “with the objective of winning an imperishable crown of glory,” as Vatican News reports. Notice how Paul uses it. He does not say God chooses the winner. He takes for granted that the race is real, that training is hard and that only one takes the prize, then he points beyond it to a crown that does not perish. Competition is treated as a good picture, not as an evil to be avoided. The same language returns at the end of his life: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7). There are rules too: “a competitor does not receive the crown unless he competes according to the rules” (2 Timothy 2:5).

Sport gets a modest place, and an honest one: “physical exercise is of limited value, but godliness is valuable in every way” (1 Timothy 4:8). Limited does not mean none. Whatever you do, Paul says, “work at it with your whole being, as for the Lord and not for men” (Colossians 3:23), and do it “all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Those are about daily life and work, but a free throw is part of daily life.

Then there are the verses that make people think God does decide. Jesus says not one sparrow falls “apart from the will of your Father” (Matthew 10:29). Proverbs says, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD” (Proverbs 16:33). If a roll of the dice is in God’s hands, so, it seems, is a ball on the rim. Set beside them this: “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong… For time and chance happen to all” (Ecclesiastes 9:11). The Bible holds both. God is not absent from anything, and from where we stand plenty looks like chance.

What it does not say

It does not promise that better believers win their games. The Old Testament does tie obedience to success (Deuteronomy 28:1–7) and says of battle that “victory is of the LORD” (Proverbs 21:31), and prosperity teachers lean on such verses. Many Christian readers take Deuteronomy’s promises as addressed to Israel in its covenant life, not as a rule for individuals, and our reading is that Jesus points the other way. He says the Father “causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good” (Matthew 5:45). The sparrow passage makes this point well, because the sparrow still falls: God’s care in that text is what you have when it falls, not a promise it will not. “So do not be afraid,” Jesus says (Matthew 10:31). The Psalms are blunter about human strength: God “takes no pleasure in the legs of a man” and is pleased instead “with those who fear Him” (Psalm 147:10–11).

Nor is “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength” a promise of victory, though it turns up on a lot of athletic gear. Paul wrote it from custody about contentment in both “having plenty and having need” (Philippians 4:12–13). In context it is closer to “I can lose, or win, and be content through Christ.”

Is it wrong to pray for a win?

No verse forbids it. Paul tells us to pray “in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving” (Philippians 4:6), and “everything” is a wide word. A nervous teenager who prays to win is talking to God, which is more than most of us do before work. The warning comes from James: “you ask with wrong motives, that you may squander it on your pleasures” (James 4:3). A prayer can be honest and still be small, and when both teams pray the same prayer, one of them will hear no.

How Christians differ

Catholic. Leo’s speech fits a 2018 Vatican document on sport, Giving the Best of Yourself, which warns that when sport is played with the attitude of “winning at all costs,” sport “is seriously threatened” (4.1) and suggests courage is “seen more often before, during and after defeats and losses” (3.7). It treats sport as a place to learn virtue, not as a way of reading God’s favour.

Reformed. This tradition speaks strongly of God’s rule. The Westminster Shorter Catechism (Q. 11) calls providence God’s “preserving and governing all his creatures, and all their actions.” On that view the final score is not outside his rule, so God “decides” it in the same sense he decides everything. It does not follow that the winners are his favourites. On Sunday games, the Westminster Confession (21.8) asks for rest from worldly “recreations” for the whole day.

Evangelical and Pentecostal. Athletes in these churches are often the ones who pray on the field and thank God at the microphone. Many would say that is gratitude, not a claim of favour. The belief PRRI measured, that God rewards athletes who have faith with good health and success, was held in 2014 by 62% of white evangelical Protestants and 50% of Catholics, and it sits close to prosperity teaching.

Playing on the Lord’s Day. These games fall on a Sunday and on All Saints. The Catholic Catechism says believers should avoid “work or activities that hinder the worship owed to God” on Sundays (no. 2185), which is about worship coming first, and the 2018 document notes that medieval Catholics played games on feast days and Sundays. Elsewhere it warns that sport can “diminish the sanctity of Sunday,” but adds that this “does not mean that sport matches should not take place on Sundays”; they “must not excuse families from attending Mass.” Eric Liddell, the Scottish Olympic champion, refused to run the 100 metres at the 1924 Paris Games, months in advance, because the heats fell on a Sunday, and won the 400 metres on a weekday. Paul leaves room for conscience: “One person regards a certain day above the others, while someone else considers every day alike” (Romans 14:5).

These are summaries in general terms, not statements by any church about this game.

Our take

This is our opinion, not a report. God cares about the players and not about the scoreboard, and the popular idea that he rewards the faithful with wins does real harm.

It sounds harmless when a winner thanks God. Follow it through and it is cruel. If faith brings success, then the injured player and the team that lost had too little of it, and the Bible has a whole book, Job, written against his friends’ version of that argument. The cross itself is the worst result on record for anyone who keeps score that way. Paul finished his race in chains (2 Timothy 2:9), and that is the man who told us to run to win.

So should you pray before a game? Yes, and we would go further: leave the win out of it. We do not think a prayer to win is a sin. We think it is a waste of a good chance. Pray to play with everything you have, to keep the rules when nobody is looking, to protect the opponent’s body as you would your own, and to be the same person at the final whistle whichever way it went. We believe that is a prayer God wants to answer (1 John 5:14), and both teams can pray it at once.

Leo’s joke is the right posture. He jokes about his old school, the room laughs, and he does not pretend heaven agrees with him. A Christian can want to win badly. That is part of the fun, and rivalry between people who are “not enemies” may be one of the small goods God made for us to enjoy. Just do not take the score for his verdict.

Over to you

What is the most honest thing you have ever prayed before a game, or in the stands, and how did you feel about it when the final whistle went? Tell us below.

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