March Madness is here.
Millions of people will check their brackets daily, if not hourly (yes, both the “serious” bracket and the “for fun” bracket that becomes our serious bracket when it turns out better than the original). For three straight weekends, sports fans will be glued to their screens watching the unfolding drama of this American sports holiday.
For some, their enthusiasm looks religious in nature. Matt Chandler riffed on this in The Explicit Gospel:
All over the country, fans are nervous. I’m not joking. They’re nervous in their guts, they want their team to win so badly. They watch the games and yell at their televisions: “No! Yes!” Kids are crying in fear, wives are running for more nachos—it’s chaos. It’s madness.
Now, it’s not hard to find material lamenting “sport as idolatry.” I even wrote a guide to help Christians discern whether their loyalty to their favorite team crosses the line. We’re prone to care too deeply about things other than God, replacing his supremacy in our lives with some part of his creation.
But what if we viewed the experience through different lenses? What if we used the “madness” of the Big Dance to gain insight into our nature as humans created in the image of God? Surely our attraction to March Madness reveals at least four things about the way God has hardwired humanity.
1. We want to be part of something bigger than ourselves.
In 2019, fans filled out over 70 million brackets. For perspective, President Biden received over 81 million votes in 2020. In 2016, President Trump received 63 million. In 2012, President Obama received 66 million. If the NCAA Bracket ran as a third-party candidate, this would have been the first year in history it wouldn’t have won.
Why do we love it so much?
For one, March Madness allows us to participate in something bigger than ourselves. We’re not on the court, but filling out a bracket gives us some skin in the game, alongside millions of others.
God wired us this way from the beginning. He gave Eve to Adam so that together they would become something greater. Christians participate in the Great Commission, which requires we look past ourselves, lock arms with other believers, and speak gospel truth to our lost neighbors.
When we’re part of something bigger than ourselves, we experience life. It’s the way God made us.
2. We love to celebrate.
Picture this: your team drills a half-court shot to win the game. What happens next? The winning team sprints onto the court (sometimes accompanied by fans). They scream and jump around like it’s the biggest moment of their lives. You may do the same thing from the privacy of your living room.
Wouldn’t it be weird, though, if the winning team responded by sulking back to the bench before the post-game handshake?
God created us to celebrate when things go well. To resist celebration would leave us feeling like we had one last piece of a puzzle that we just decided not to fit into place.
Think about it: God designed good to be completed through celebration. What does that reveal about his character?
3. We crave hope.
You will hope during the tournament. It may be for dumb things relative to eternity, but you’ll hope nonetheless. You’ll hope this team loses and that team wins. You’ll hope that desperation, step-back three is nothing but net—or puts a crack in the backboard. Personally, I hope to end my wife’s seven-year run as the best bracket-picker in our house.
God designed good to be completed through celebration.
For the people of the world, hope is to want something to happen or be true—and to think that it could happen or be true. Watch how a month of basketball reveals what we hope in—all of us, from the most religious to the least. We are inescapably hopeful creatures.
For the Christian, hope rests in a sure thing: we trust that God’s promises will be fulfilled because he has promised them. God tells his people to “set your hope fully on . . . grace” (1 Pet. 1:13). The Christian’s hope rests in the knowledge that Jesus’s death and resurrection secured victory over sin and our relationship with God.
4. We love to see the underdog succeed.
You’ll probably see the clip of Bryce Drew’s 1998 shot to lift Valparaiso over Ole Miss a dozen times over the next few weeks. This iconic moment represents something most of us hope for—the triumph of the little guy. A school of 800 students felling the perennial powerhouse armed to the teeth with future pros.
Watch how a month of basketball reveals what we hope in—all of us, from the most religious to the least.
Why do we love this scenario? Because God made us to love a good underdog story.
We love hearing about David defeating mighty Goliath. Outgunned and outmanned, the 16th-seeded shepherd boy pulled off the upset.
But that story merely echoes history’s greatest underdog story. Separated from God because of our sin, humans had no shot to make it back into his good graces. But then came Jesus, in the form of a servant, to conquer sin and death by living a perfect life, dying a sacrificial death, and rising from the grave. Through repentance and faith, we partake of this great exchange—the righteous for the unrighteous.
The underdog wins. Madness!