There is very little literature reconciling heaven and this-worldly sports. My intuition tells me this is a problem because of the centrality and importance sports competition have played in every culture in history. The unstated Christian accusation is that sports are inherently evil to one degree of another. This accusation focuses on the dominance a winner has over the loser, along with the other potential vices like pride, arrogance, boasting, envy, jealously, and disdain. Thinking about certain verses in Scripture makes me hesitate that this accusation is accurate. In Proverbs, we learn that iron sharpens iron and so one friend sharpens another. What is implied in this Proverb is that one friend is indeed better than another in terms of his sharpness. Being better leads to pushing or challenging the other friend to improve. This friend that needs to improve recognizes that the other friend is better, and so sets out to learn from and reach a higher standard of sharpness. There is a lot here: humility, self-awareness, objective realization of being deficient, being challenged, and growing. The question we should ask is if the lower performer must entertain envy to see his friend as better than him and seek to achieve a similar standard of excellence.

Is all competition evil? This is the root question, but from this question we can expand into other questions. Is hope implied in competition? Is challenge different than competition, and, if so, how so? Can competition serve celebration or does competition only serve and feed envy? Let’s go deeper. Do different levels of excellence always invite sin and evil? Must that someone is better than me always lead to envy, jealousy, and the will to dominant that person? We can preempt these questions with Paul’s vision of heavenly future, where he discusses each saint shining like a star, but some will glow more brightly than others (1 Cor. 15). He goes own to note that those shining less bright will rejoice in the brightness of those more luminous. We should ask, what does “rejoice in” invoice? Is it merely spectatorial or is it participatory? It is one thing to enjoy a song and sit in a recliner and listen to it; it is quite another to dance to that music as it plays. The former is spectatorial; the latter participatory. Can someone being sharper than me in soccer lead me to wanting to be sharper in a rejoicing way? Can “iron sharpening iron” be a matter of celebration and rejoicing? A better question still, is there a way to avoid difference among humans’ degrees of excellence given we are limited? There seems to be two issues here.

Firstly, can heaven be a place where we have a cap to our growth and abilities and still be heavenly? Second, let’s say God made heaven’s residents perfect in a way that is identical to His perfection; what would distinguish God from us? Would this be idolatry since heaven’s residents would have all of God’s perfections to the degree that each one could be god? Let’s analyze the second issue and then move back to the first issue. That Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 lays out that fact that there are differences in luminosity among heaven’s residents tells us that God does not make heaven’s residents equally perfect. That some of heaven’s residents have diminished brightness compared to other residents indicates that heaven’s residents are not made complete in the sense that they have arrived. Difference and limitations remain; this also means hope remains forever as 1 Cor. 13 claims. God’s great making property of Aseity is not shared with saints right now or in the heavenly future. Aseity simply means sufficient in oneself, which also implies that God is philosophically necessary. God and God alone has the property of Aseity since He “has life in Himself” and as such is not dependent on anyone or anything outside of Himself for sustenance. No heavenly residents share this property since none of them are necessary in themselves or self-sufficient. Another property heavenly residents will never share is Eternality. Humans are eternal only in the sense that they are endless; God has Eternality because He is both beginning-less and endless. A final verse to remember in all this is 1 Tim. 6:16 which outlines that God “possesses immorality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen nor can see.” When we pair this with 1 Cor. 13:12’s famous “now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known,” we should slowly consider how we understand it. I’ve argued in other posts that 1 Cor. 13:12 is about access not about having whole or perfect knowledge. When we look at these verses side by side, we have good reason to lean towards 1 Cor. 13:12 being about access since we do not want to interpret it to make it contradict another equally famous verse, 1 Tim. 6:16. Although we could try to push 1 Tim. 6:16 to being only applicable to the fallen and sinful world, the formality of the verse and that it is discussing “immorality” suggests that it is speaking about the state of God perpetually. Whether in heaven or now, humankind cannot see God the Father nor are we capable. This of course proposes powerfully the importance of Trinitarian theology and just how critical the incarnation of Christ was. We can see God in Jesus because God took on or assumed humanity, as The Theologian, Gregory Nazianzen puts it, “For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved (Epistle 101 to Cledonius).”

1 Cor. 13:13 notes that “faith, hope, and love remain forever. . .” and so we must ask what is proper to “hope.” Since hope endures forever, how does hope function for heavenly residents who dwells with God? We spent lots of time on this in the last post. For now, however, I want to close this by detailing the questions we have asked along with short answers mined from the earlier discussion.

Does hope imply something to be reached that is not yet attained? Yes, it does.

Life in heaven therefore will mean ever new attainments.

Does competition imply hope. Yes, it does.

Does competition have to have inherent evil in it? No, it does not. Competition can be reformed as celebration as 1 Cor. 15 intimates.

Hope in heaven solves the problem of evil. If ongoing growth in heaven is not possible–if God is infinite, does this not imply that humans must always be arriving at new knowledge of Him–then boredom is inevitable. If boredom sets in, then heaven becomes hell. The problem of boredom in heaven is a problem of evil, and hope remaining forever dispels the problem.

Dr. Scalise