I’ve played a lot of different sports through my life. I’ll admit that I wasn’t all that great at any of them. Basketball, baseball, tennis, racquetball, etc.. As the kids came along, we briefly practiced a martial art discipline called Aikido. One of the first things that we were to learn in Aikido is to never give up your center. If someone is fighting you, always maintain your control and balance. If a person attacks you, they have to take an offensive posture, and if you maintain your center, that leaves them at a disadvantage.
I notice this as a theme for all the other sports I have ever been involved in. For instance, how silly it looks when a novice batter chases a pitch that is 2 feet outside of the strike zone. What’s the cause of 95% of the offensive fouls in basketball? The ball-handler is out of control, in other words, they have lost their center. I think there is a key social lesson here.
The lesson is a biblical principle that we as mature Christians should maintain our center, staying on course and being steady. In 2 Timothy 1:7, Paul says “for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” In sports there are all manner of things that try to knock us out of kilter. Maybe someone is waving their hand in our face during a pass of the ball or heckling while we shoot a foul shot. Sometimes these insults to our skill come from our own team, such as a bad pass from the pitcher to the first baseman. When those things happen, we have to be careful to not let ourselves get so far out of control that we ruin the rest of the game.
In life and business, there will be all categories of challenges that could pull us off center emotionally, mentally, spiritually or physically. We may be struggling from insults from a dissatisfied customer, or a demeaning comment from a boss, or a degrading insult from our spouse. These all evoke reactions. It is really challenging to stand there and love the offender when this is occurring. Maybe this is why so much of biblical teaching is dedicated to the subject, in that we need to learn to control our center, no matter what the opposition brings.