Is God a Red Sox fan?

That question may have a different ring to it by the time this article sees print and we've seen games four and five. But at the moment, fresh from a miraculous win over Oakland and an unexpected win at Yankee Stadium, the question seems fitting. Before we could answer it, though, another question suggests itself first: would God, if there is a God, even care about a baseball team?

To answer that we'd need to consider what sort of creature God might be. And the first thing we remember is that God is no creature -- he's the Creator. Everything in the universe needs to get its existence from something else, and the universe itself must get its existence from something outside of it, and that is God. The existence God gives must be his own natural possession (because by definition he is that which needs no existence given to him). For this reason we say that God was, is, and is to come. There never was a time when God was not, nor can there ever be a time he ceases to exist. For he is the uncaused cause, and his nature is to be.

What follows from this? Well, if time and space (which are parts of the universe) get their very existence from God, then he cannot be limited by them. He has no age, and no size -- God is infinite.

If God is unlimited by time, God is eternal. To be eternal is to not be subject to change. For change requires time to pass, but for God all time is Now.

Also, if God were to change, he would have to go from being what he is to being something he was not before. But if God gains in being in that way, it means God was lacking in being, or "under-developed." But God is infinite and the source of all existence, all being. How can he lack anything?

Now if God lacks nothing, he needs nothing. And if God is eternal, he never lacked anything. God has never needed anything, and he never will.

What does this mean for us? If the Creator did not need anything, then he did not need creation. God could have been God, and perfectly content, without it. The universe is superfluous. God does not even need us! Our question about the Red Sox seems a bit out of place now. Compared to all the beauties of the world, the planets and the stars whirling in the vast expanse of the cosmos, what is baseball? How could an infinite, eternal God, existing in himself before all worlds and beyond all galaxies, possibly care about a two-run homer in the eighth? Everything in our thinking so far suggests he couldn't. The line engraved atop Harvard's Philosophy building is apt: "What is Man, that Thou art mindful of him?" God, so far above his own creation, is the ultimate Other to human beings.

Is that then, our answer? So far we've only considered an idea and its consequences, or what ought to be true. We haven't let God speak for God's self. As it turns out, that inscription at Harvard about man's insignificance is from an ancient book of songs called Psalms, written by the Jewish people. The Jews were really the first people to declare that the true God was of the kind we have been describing. Yet, oddly enough, they were also the first to speak of a real intimacy with this God. Notice the second half of that line: "that Thou art mindful of him". The writer is not just reflecting on man's insignificance, he's marveling that God (despite that) still cares about him. The writer would only know that God cares if God himself said so, and that is precisely what the Jews said he did, through a special revealing of himself. So particular is God's revealed concern that when he instructed his people, he explicitly sided himself with the obscurest of the obscure among them, the rejected ones: the orphan, the widow, and the foreigner. No one was beyond God's interest, whether Jewish or not.

This is unexpected of such a transcendent God, but it does not contradict anything we have said. In fact, to hear that God is so profoundly interested in the condition of people helps explain an unanswered question: why create? There seems to be no other answer than that God wanted to. He did not need, but desired to have, people. There was no reason. Now we already understand such non-rational affection -- it's called love.

A friend of mine remarked to me the other day, "You know, even if the Red Sox lose the World Series, I'll still love them -- they're the Red Sox!" This is unconditional love, and it mirrors the kind of love God has for the people he's created. This is the love that sustains the creation that has once been made.

For if God is the source of all existence, he must be continually giving out that existence, as a piano note rings out only as long as the musician's finger remains on the key. If the finger leaves, the note stops. From every bird that falls from the sky to every hair that falls from your head, God is aware of it all, because God keeps it going. If God so chose, we'd stop. But for now God does not stop, because he loves. And he's waiting for that love to be returned by all, whether Trot Nixon or Derek Jeter. He's willing to be a fan of both.

To ask whether God cares about the World Series is, in light of this, as non-essential as asking whether he cares about the World Bank. Both are, for different reasons, "big things" in our eyes. We think of each as very important in and of itself, and whomever either affects as inconsequential. God is just the opposite. His concern is first for people, and the Big Things they play with are secondary. Nations, kingdoms, empires; these last merely centuries. God has made people to last forever. It matters less to God that Pedro Martinez is a great pitcher than that he is a good man. In the same way, I do think God is pleased by our pleasure in being "non-rational" fans of good things, like the Red Sox. It is training ground for loving unconditionally, and that is what God loves to see in us.

But is God himself a fan? Whether God may have a secret partiality for the Sox, I do not know, but considering his fondness for the obscure and the rejected, how could he root for the Yankees?