Faith

Dear Dave Deckard,
I want to start by saying that I was fascinated by your article. As an athlete myself, I was interested to hear what you had to say on the topic.
First, I thought your introduction was far to long. While I understand you wanted to settle the ground before expressing your opinions, it was long and defensive. I started to get bored as I was more interested in your thoughts on religious proclamations in sports than your ideas on the two sides of the spectrum of responses. To me, it came off a bit arrogant and angry. I totally understand where you were coming from, but it made me less interested in what you had to say because I started to lose interest and respect for you.
I feel like you continued a negative tone throughout the whole article. I understand you don’t like these particular actions, but the way you presented it was of complete annoyance. It made me doubt your understanding and view of the topic.
Personally, I believe these proclamations of faith do more good than they do bad. But, that isn’t entirely the point. I think your argument would have been better if you had connected to your audience and more gently talked them through your views.
You made some statements that were far to generalized. Such as your thought that people in tragedy link there thoughts of God not being with them to his being with these athletes instead. While I believe that could be a thought, I don’t think it’s typical at all. Statements such as these made you lose credibility.
You repeatedly say you don’t mind if faith comes out in an interview, during a convention and so on, but that its more harmful than helpful during a game. I would argue that God is supposed to be a part of everything we do. For that reason, playing sports should be a way of honoring God. For a lot of athletes, its hard to not get caught up in all the hype and it’s easy to start believing you, as a person, deserve the praise. For people, including me, doing some sign would keep reminding me that my playing is for God. Also, I would hope people would know me enough to know the meaning of my sign. If they don’t, they probably don’t care about my doing it.
As a huge sports fan, I like to see people acknowledging God when they are playing. It makes me more interested in the player and their faith. Despite what you said, faith does come up more in discussion due to players being forward about their faith on the court or field. If the player is well liked, their proclamation of faith can spark an interest in someone else. People get really into their sports players. Most of the time, people chose their favorite players on their talent or what kind of athlete they are. If they really respect an athlete and that athlete always gives a sign or gesture, someone is bound to find out more about it and could even find themselves looking into their faith.
For these reasons and others, I think such proclamations in sports are actually a good thing. I would challenge you to think more into the positive side of this topic and see what you find.
Thanks,
Mary