May 9, 2008
By Rebecca Gladden
If any driver seemed destined to win a NASCAR race, it was Denny Hamlin at Richmond last Saturday night.
CIA Stock Photo
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After claiming victory in the Nationwide Series event on Friday, Hamlin started the Cup race on the pole in front of a supportive hometown crowd. He led a record 381 of the scheduled 400 laps - every green flag lap, in fact, to that point.
Suddenly, without warning, Hamlin felt his right front tire going down. He stayed on the track for several laps, moving backwards through the field, until the tire was finally flat.
What looked to be an almost certain win evaporated faster than the air that had leaked out of his wounded Goodyear. He finished 24th.
In his post-race interview, a deflated Hamlin tried to put his feelings into words. "It's tough to say. You can't whine about it. It just wasn't meant to be. God didn't want me to win today, and there's a better time for us to win, evidently. Today is just not our day."
After hearing Hamlin's comments, I thought long and hard before writing this column. I'd like to say up front that I am not questioning Denny's faith, or anyone else's for that matter. And I realize that drivers say things in the heat of the moment that they may or may not voice under calmer circumstances.
But Hamlin's statement really makes me wonder -- does God decide who wins NASCAR races?
The controversial mixing of sports and religion is not a new topic. For the past few decades, Christian-based athletic organizations have been highly visible at the high school, college, and professional levels, recruiting members and promoting Christian values among athletes. Prayers before sporting events have spawned protests, lawsuits, and demonstrations of support.
In his 1999 book Controversies of the Sports World, author Douglas T. Putnam devotes an entire chapter to the topic of God in sports. Putnam notes that some Christian athletes are told to keep their beliefs to themselves, admonished that "God has no interest in whether they win or lose their contests and that it is wrong to pray for victory because praying for victory means praying for other human beings to suffer defeat."
The overriding question of the extent of God's involvement in our daily lives is both a complex theological issue and a deeply personal one.
For some believers, nothing in life happens without the intimate participation of an all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present deity.
Others subscribe to the belief that while God oversees the big picture, he leaves the minor details of our day-to-day activities to the free will of man.
If God, in fact, preordains the winner of every NASCAR race, one must assume that He alone is responsible for every circumstance that affects a race's outcome - every loose lug nut, fender rub, cut tire, pit road error, failed pass, missed set-up, engine problem, crew chief decision, spotter mistake, debris caution, and the million other variables that must coalesce each week with perfect (divine?) precision to bring about a predetermined result.
Similarly, if we follow this line of thinking to its extreme, we can only conclude that nothing that happens during a race (good or bad) is a consequence of the efforts of the participants, since the race winner has already been chosen by God. He alone effectuates the exact set of circumstances needed to produce the desired result. In other words, every racing mishap and instance of human error in a race happens because God wanted it to happen.
Does God decide who wins NASCAR races? I don't claim to have the answer.
But in light of Denny Hamlin's statement at Richmond, I wanted to ask the question.
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