IS THERE A LINK between football, Jesus, and Christian Science? The answer to that question has had a great deal to do with my spiritual development over the years.

My early interest in football came from being pummeled by my older brother and my cousin on weekends. They’d throw me the football and then quickly tackle me time and time again. In my tender years, I didn’t ever make it past them. However, it was fun. I learned to love the game—and I learned to persist under the most relentless odds.

It was natural for me to play football in high school, and I worked up to being a regular wingback on the first team. But I’ll have to admit that my motive in those days was mainly to wear the letterman’s sweater and achieve athletic recognition.

Then in my early teens, as I was coming to understand more of the meaning of Jesus’ teachings and the Christ Science that explains them, I came face to face with the recognition that I needed to go deeper in my life than just thinking about myself and my accomplishments. For example, I needed more unselfish motives for what I was doing—like glorifying God, the source of all good human capacities, and seeking God’s purpose for me and for others.

I turned to the chapter titled “Prayer” in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, where its author, Mary Baker Eddy, explains prayer, or communion with God—what it is, what aids it, and what hinders it. I marked every aid, such as references to gratitude and honesty, in green. And every hindrance, such as passages discussing insincerity and love of applause, in red. Then each day before going to school, I’d look over the green marks as reminders. After school and football practice, I’d check the red marks to see how I did that day.

The football field became the real schoolroom for practicing Christian Science. As my motives began to change, the red marks diminished. Accomplishing good as a proof of God’s presence and care became paramount (see Matt. 5:16 ; I Cor. 10:31 ). And I was discovering that the good I was accomplishing wasn’t my personal possession (see Science and Health, p. 260 ). As I gained more green marks in my check-off list, I became happier, and at the same time more skilled at football.

Then came the real lessons! In college, I started at the bottom of the heap. As I sat on the bench watching others play, I learned humility, cooperation, and the joy of encouraging others. I gained discipline and persistence, and I was learning to put down impatience and discouragement. But the real value of sports for me was that it pushed me into a deeper study of Christian Science, and this in turn led me to think more about understanding spiritual reality.

At each level I reached in football, I saw that I couldn’t just skim along, content with thinking of myself as a better athlete. Changes in character, as well as in achievement, were pointing to something higher—something far more than my eyes could see. They were pointing to the fact that I was actually a spiritual being, not merely a human being, helped and enabled by prayer. Christ Jesus’ teachings bring out the need to build on a bedrock spiritual foundation (see Matt. 7:24). And I began to dig deeper to find that foundation. I began to find God as divine Principle, as infinite Mind, the creator and source of all true being—my true being. I could sense that the creation of that perfect, divine Mind, infinite Love, had to be spiritual and mental.

I was coming to the realization that man (God’s expression) is actually the result of divine Mind knowing itself. Mind is self-conscious because there is nothing outside or beyond its allness. Since it knows itself, it has an image, idea, or likeness of itself—a likeness that isn’t flesh and blood. Spirit, knowing itself, could only have a spiritual idea of itself. That idea is man in his true being, as both the Bible and Christian Science teach.

In practical terms, what did that mean for me? The Apostle Paul wrote in one of his letters: “Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you” (Rom. 8:9). To me, that meant that to the degree any of us understands our true spiritual being, we can be freed from many of the daily fleshly limitations placed on us. Here’s how Science and Health explains this: “A knowledge of the Science of being develops the latent abilities and possibilities of man. It extends the atmosphere of thought, giving mortals access to broader and higher realms. It raises the thinker into his native air of insight and perspicacity” (Science and Health, p. 128 ). I could see that it would also “raise” me to express more of my natural ability as an athlete.

Yes, I still needed to block and tackle my opponents. I still needed to pass and catch the ball. But beneath those surface requirements were the bedrock endowments that belonged to me as a creation of that infinite Mind, divine Principle. Among those endowments were rhythm, timing, courage, strength, endurance, and intuition. They couldn’t be given to me by willfulness or by a physical regimen. They couldn’t be taken away by strain or accident. They couldn’t be pressured by competition.

Those qualities were mine in a unique way because they originated in divine Mind, God, and led back to Mind, God. They were perpetually mine as an individual expression of that Mind. So I couldn’t be pushed out of a place or position that I should occupy, and I couldn’t push anyone else out of a place or position that they should occupy. So I wasn’t tempted to be jealous of others’ success, or fear their being jealous of my success. It became so much more important for me to express God and His qualities than it was to defeat an opponent.

The more I saw those qualities as naturally mine, the faster and better I became on the field. I could move with more agility, and intuitively would be in the right place at the right time—whether it was to receive or intercept a pass, anticipate where a runner was going, or sense my right path to the goal. I had no fear of harming anyone, or of being harmed. I just engaged in hard-hitting play. Athletics to me was no longer brute body against brute body. It was a schoolroom for proving the teachings of Jesus and their explanation in Christian Science. The result was that I was playing full time as first string during my senior year.

But the lessons of the sports schoolroom haven’t stopped with college. They have continued in what Mrs. Eddy calls “earth’s preparatory school” (Science and Health, p. 486 ). Healing in Christian Science requires, among other things: discipline (Science and Health, p. 496:15–19 ); persistence (Science and Health, p. 495:14–15 ); courage (Science and Health, p. 327:23–24 ); unselfishness (Science and Health, p. 480:30–32); patience (Science and Health, p. 454:22–24); focus (Science and Health, p. 426:5–8); following Jesus (Science and Health, p. 243:9–13); recognition of the author of Science and Health (Science and Health, p. 107:1–3); practical works (Science and Health, p. 37:16–17,22–25); obedience to rules (Science and Health, p. 462:13–15); love (Science and Health, p. 454:17–19).

Early training on the athletic field and the continued application of Christian Science have enabled me to build on those qualities and stood me in good stead over many years. Christian Science has guided me,  and healed me of minor and major disabilities.

At one time I was bedridden for an extended time. At a low ebb, I turned at random to Science and Health, and what I read brought a surge of comfort and love that touched the very fiber of my being. That surge was actually the result of what the Bible calls the Holy Ghost—the Spirit, or law, of God, which awakened my thought and enabled me to go back to the foundational truth that there is only one infinite Mind. That Mind is the one and only God, who forms and maintains His own creation. At that same moment, I saw more clearly that I was actually His creation, maintained and loved by Him. In that spiritually enlightened moment, I saw that the law of divine Principle rescinds diseased conditions and bodily malfunctions. The moving force of divine Principle couldn’t be replaced in my experience by inflammation, pain, or paralysis. That force of divine Principle was acting as a law of restoration to my body.

I remembered the account in the Bible of Noah building an ark to protect his family and possessions. He was told to coat the ark inside and outside with pitch. That awakened in me the need to shore up the inside of my “ark,” or my mental boat, by clearing out any disturbed or disturbing thoughts about anything or anyone that I might have been carrying along. But I also had to shore up the outside of my mental boat to be sure no disturbed or disturbing thoughts might be coming into my ark (see Gen. 6:14 ). I found myself being renovated both physically and mentally. My recovery from that time on was rapid and complete.

For me, now, the playing field has become the world, and thought has expanded to embrace all humanity. As I see it, the world’s present chaotic arena is not a contest pitting two teams, right and wrong, against each other. What I see actually going on is that matter, evil, the unreal, is in a battle with the spiritual, the good, the only real. The divinely derived spiritual and good—the real—has spiritual power and is enduring. It’s like light that finds only itself when it contacts darkness. The unreal must fade in the presence of the real. I see the same struggle taking place in my own individual consciousness. Jesus instructed, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). That truth, the Holy Ghost, the law of divine Principle that brought freedom to me in sickness, is the same truth that can bring freedom to struggling individuals and nations around the world.

Certainly, everyone has a right to the assurance that the law of God, divine Principle, is operative and effective to regulate, cause, and control every effect. Principle doesn’t have to battle with chaos, because Principle just naturally and inevitably destroys it.

I’m reminded of these words of Paul: “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13, 14) Persistence does win the prize!