Understanding Sin Through Hockey

After years of playing hockey, a question finally occurred to me: “Where is the overlap with my faith as a Catholic?” The inspiration for this essay comes from a former hockey teammate who is slowly in the process of converting to Christianity, desiring to understand sin and God’s response to sin. 

Doing so through this wonderful game, I hope to shine light on what students here at Boston College experience each weekend at Conte Forum, and how they too may see Christ in the game.

To start, hockey is a game. It has rules that were established by a creator and that have been adjusted over time. What has remained continuous in the sport is the freedom of the players to skate, pass, shoot, hit, and even fight. The most fundamental goal is to outscore the opposing team. 

An end goal exists, but there are guidelines to follow in the rule book. If one would like to oppose these guidelines, they can, but they may end up punished with a penalty or even giving up a goal. 

This relates to Christianity. Christians have a Creator, God, whose end goal is an eternal relationship with His creations. He provides these creations with an outline of how to grow in relationship with Him and even rules that will prevent us from ruining this relationship. 

However, the creation, as is the case in hockey with the player, still has the freedom to do as they please, whether good or bad. Therefore, the glories of scoring a goal, winning a game in hockey, or, in terms of Christianity, being united with God, are not possible if people are not freely able to choose this path. 

There could not really be glory to scoring a goal if the puck were one inch away from the net, and that was the only thing physically possible a player could do, and the creator did not allow for any sort of passing, skating, or communication with others. The game would be miserable. 

Free will for God can be viewed the same way. If God forced us to choose Him, if it was the only thing that God instilled in us and even allowed us to do, we would be slaves or robots lacking a true relationship with our Creator. We would not intimately choose Him.

Like all sports, hockey is a game of inches. The precision of a pass, a short, or even a stride can change the trajectory of the whole game and whether one’s team wins or not. Within these small split-second decisions or actions, the IQ of a hockey player enables them to efficiently and effectively choose the best option possible that will either prevent a goal from happening or allow a score. 

But what about the moments where a player’s perception is off? The moments where years upon years of learning and studying the game and understanding the best possible decisions to be made in given circumstances are suddenly thrown out the window? 

Whether it is with complete awareness or because of a misunderstanding of the situation they are in, they make the wrong decision. The costliest mistakes in this sport are the ones that lead to the puck being in the back of your own net, conceding a goal, and as a result, having to make up for that goal by scoring one of your own or defending a smaller lead. 

Such decisions are mistakes are either, as mentioned before, due to misunderstandings or made with full knowledge. For instance, a misunderstanding would be if I made a pass to my teammate but could not see the person about to intercept it and take the puck the other way. In this instance, certainly I made a wrong decision and should have not made that play. At the same time, my understanding of the play was slightly blinded or misrepresented from the beginning. 

As for the play where I intentionally make the wrong decision, this might be when, faced with a player right in front of me, thinking myself Superman, I still try to do the unthinkable…and they end up stealing it from me. It is the ignorant and prideful thought that I could make a play that is nearly impossible. 

Regardless, both plays, whether we are blinded from the truth or fully aware of it, represent sin. It is Christians who knowingly go against God’s will or because the sin is disguised, in gift wrapping as it were, appearing to be something else. It is either the temptation to think that we can do it on our own, or the error that some sort of “happiness” or “peace” will be greater than God’s eternal perfect gifts He gives to us. 

The end goal of the player who makes a mistake is still to score and to win the game. Their intention is not to concede a goal or lose the game; they are in the “pursuit of some good” as Lewis says, but the way in which they are going about this is lacking. This gap between rightful and pure action on the one hand and errant action that falls short of the truth or misinterprets it on the other hand is sin. 

After sin or a costly error in hockey, the story is not over! That’s why the position of goalkeeper exists. The goalkeeper, regardless of how bad the misplay is, has the one job of stopping this mistake from being reflected on the scoreboard. It may seem unfair that the goalie must make up for this mistake of another, but it is their love for their teammates and willingness to forgive them so they may win the game that makes their job worth it. 

Successfully preventing the other team from scoring is reflective of the sacrificial love of Christ! His love and care for sinners, regardless of how badly they mess up, is fully displayed in His crucifixion, but also in the new life He provides sinners. 

Despite the teammate or the sinner who does not deserve their butt to be saved since they alone messed up, the goaltender, or Christ, is ready, waiting to take up their sins and love them or stop the mistake from being final. Christ even supplies the sinners with new life and new hope, as a goalie does when they make a save after a costly error. 

A goalie’s save will instill in the errant player a hope of recovering from the mistake and obtaining a new chance, of firing to win. Likewise, Christ’s new hope and new life for sinners is that they can be free from sin because Christ has borne their sins on the cross and has enabled the possibility of an eternal relationship with God in Heaven.

In the Catholic faith, those who make mistakes, or fail in abiding by God’s loving rules, can seek healing for their shortcomings. This is present in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where the priest who hears the confessor’s sins is “in persona Christi,” allowing for the confession to be a conversation and forgiveness from Jesus himself.

Although this analogy may fall short in the instances where the goalie fails to stop the puck, the point remains that there is a player who willingly forgives those around them, and whom all of their teammates should be offering thanks and the highest amount of love for what they do after every mistake they make.

It almost seems irrational that a goalie would forgive their teammate for making a horrible play that resulted in a difficult save having to be made. But such is the manner of the forgiver. In terms of Christ, He is victorious over death and the sin that leads to death, meaning no mistake will ever be too grave for His healing. Christ’s victory always remains. What really counts is how a person responds to sin: hopefully by seeking forgiveness, asking for help, being in gratitude for His healing, and then learning from his sin to realize where his love of God fell short so it may never happen again.