I’m not a big fan of sports analogies or metaphors, especially from the pulpit and in reference to matters spiritual. I find them at least irksome and at times insufferable. When in seminary a local church pastor (whose church we visited often only because of proximity to the seminary) used sports analogies as a staple in his sermons. After a while it was evident that he probably spent more time consulting ESPN than the ISBE.* However, it seems that sports analogies have a long history.
Peter J. Leithart, in “Give & Take” in the July/August issue of Touchstone magazine, cites Seneca as an early user of sports metaphors for rhetorical purposes:
In his treatise on benefits, Seneca returns again and again to the image of a ball game. A benefactor tosses a favor to another, and the recipient has to find a way to toss it back.
Giving too much, in the wrong way, or at the wrong time, is like throwing a ball too hard to be caught. Returning a gift too soon is like tossing a ball back when it’s not expected. If we give, receive, and return thoughtlessly, somebody’s going to end up with a nasty bump on the head.
Seneca sees giving, receiving, and returning as the stuff of social life. Conversation is a game of giving and returning, and so is hospitality, and sex, and child-rearing, and helping a neighbor.
Social life is harmonious when we give and receive the right things at the right time in the right way. Next time you see a game of catch, remember that you’ve seen a glimpse of utopia.
While a nice sentiment, Leithart’s entry borders on falling into a typically danger when using sports analogies: running the risk of trivializing what you are trying to illustrate. Child-rearing, for example, is not a game (and not even like one), though every once it a while it helps to be playful about it.
As Leithart shows, sports analogies have a long history, and likely they are here to stay. But that will not diminish my tendency to cringe every time I hear one from the pulpit.
