BY BILL KNOTT

he great ribbed vault soars heavenward, and beneath its gray immensity, 500 devotees find words of praise--nay, worship--on their lips. We move in reverent shuffles 'round the crowded porches, murmuring our awe. A shoe, a shirt, a piece of floor upon which a great one trod: each fragment of the famous describes a life of superhuman merit. Would that we could be more than we are. Would that we could be more like Nathaniel, David, Moses, or Isiah.*

I'm not sure which sociologist first called our collective attention to the ways in which our culture's contemporary fascination with sport so nearly echoes its historic fascination with religion. Whoever he was, he would certainly feel vindicated in this place--the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame--a gleaming glass and chrome cathedral in which, as the brochure puts it aptly, the legends of the game are "enshrined." In this new temple we scan the distance between our lives and those who flicker on our television screens--gigantic men and women (many of them tall) who make us view our backyard game with laughable disgust. They soared where all too frequently we plod. They scored before the final buzzer rang. Too often, we have fouled out.

The gaps between our skills and theirs make all this grandeur seem more plausible, as though the sweat on Julius Erving's jersey was not much the same as mine, as though the monster sneakers worn by Kareem do not resemble the ones my 14-year-old requires from Sports Authority. For many of the thousands who visit halls like this, these men and women are true modern "saints," whose stats and trades and brushes with the law are much more real and immediate than stories of virtue from millennia ago. Whatever a professional athlete's moral choices, they are celebrated with a passion once reserved for those who filled their lives with holiness.

This would be just one more instance of an ongoing Adventist critique of contemporary culture were it not for the fact that our lives and those of our children are swept up in this passion, too. Listen to the conversation on the bench or in the back of the minivan when next you take your turn at driving. Hear the gleeful evocation of smash-mouth tactics, "muscling in," of thinly veiled violence masquerading as "game." Note how they're drawn--not to the elegant and graceful practitioners of the sport, but to those who walk the narrow line between thuggery and organized sport. And most of all, be wary that your children call these "good," that in their eyes a moral disconnection has occurred that allows for actions on a court or field that they and you might never tolerate on a street.

This moral ambiguity does not arrive on some cosmic moonbeam. No, it is transmitted into our homes--and increasingly, even into Adventist schools--by cable, satellite, and endless loops of TiVo, by leagues, tournaments, and coaches, who now cover the church's landscape. The last 15 years have seen the systematic removal of virtually all the barriers that once kept Seventh-day Adventists wary of involvement with professional athletics, either as participants or spectators. But the assumption that professional sports, with all its sanctification of immense wealth, barely contained aggression, and moral turpitude are compatible with the goals of a remnant people waiting for the coming of a Saviour, must now be questioned, and with greatest urgency. It is plum foolishness to expect our kids to stand like the brave when they have been schooled to swagger with Terrell, to be like Daniel when all their peers are cheering for the lions.

This is no tower from which I preach, nor can I claim some line of steadfast moral clarity on this matter through the years. My heart still warms to Celtic green, to Cowboy gray and blue, to those unlucky lads at Fenway. But the boys I care the most about are not the ones of summer, nor is it chiefly games I see ahead of them. There may be courts and fields in the future for my sons, but I suspect the contests will be real, and payment made in destinies, not dollars.

For them, I bend the knee--all the way to the parquet floor--and for all other Adventist kids who need more guidance than they're getting in this age of sport.

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*Nathaniel ("Nate") Archibald, David Cowens, Moses Malone, Isiah Thomas

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Bill Knott is an associate editor of the Adventist Review.