I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It - Charles Barkley [62]
And it’s just wrong, in my opinion, to act as if your religion is more important than somebody else’s. Just because one player is outnumbered doesn’t mean his religion is less important. That would cause resentment and all kinds of problems within a team.
And that’s not even the biggest problem with religion in sports in my opinion. You know what else bothers me about religion in sports? God doesn’t have a favorite team. I don’t like to hear guys after they win a match or a game or a fight go into an interview and say, “God was on my side.” How stupid is it to presume that God has a favorite team, or that he would take your side against your opponent? Where did that stuff come from? How religious are you really if you think God doesn’t care about the guy on the other side of the field, or the other side of the court, or in the other corner?
I just don’t think it’s fair that people assume they can determine the actions of others because of religion. Kevin Johnson, my teammate in Phoenix, is really religious. And before one of the Game 7s of a playoff series we played during my time with the Suns he and a couple of other guys talked the whole team into going to a prayer meeting. And I told them, “No, I’m not going.” I said, “Number one, God doesn’t have a favorite team. And number two, doesn’t it seem like we’re praying to God to win us a game when he must have more important things to worry about than this basketball game?” I hope and I pray God has more important things on his mind than some game. I can’t believe with all the serious stuff going on today in the world—terrorism, war, hunger, poverty, violence, hatred—that guys think their football or basketball game that day is the most important thing God might have to deal with.
It’s not like religion isn’t part of my life, because it is. I grew up going to church. I believe in prayer and treating people the way you would want to be treated. But the idea that God might help me beat another team never crossed my mind.
How come it’s often the most religious people who seem to forget the verse in the Bible which says that only God can judge men? I was reading something Lee Trevino said, that unless you’re a minister, preacher or rabbi you should never be pushing your religious beliefs on people. That’s pretty much the way I feel. Religion, to me, is your individual relationship with God, or whatever you call your Supreme Being. That’s it, plain and simple. My belief is that there is a Supreme Being. I don’t get into whether he’s black, white, man or woman.
I do think that God, by whatever name you want to use, gave me a special gift. One of my close friends who is an agnostic said to me, “Why do you thank God when you play well?” And I said, “I’m really thanking him for allowing me to be healthy and for giving me this gift, not that I played well in a specific game.” He said, “Then how is it that when something bad happens you never acknowledge God?” That really made me think. I said, “That’s fair. I don’t know the answer, but that’s fair.”
I’m just not going to walk around and talk about God all the time like a lot of players. I don’t think that proves to anybody how religious you are. A whole lot of people never talk openly about their religion; you don’t even know what, if any, religion or God they believe in. But they treat people the way they would like folks to treat them.
I know a lot of people don’t want to accept that, or they want organized religion to be more involved in everything. But to me, religion opens up the biggest can of worms, and I just try to keep it away from sports because the bottom line is, God doesn’t have a favorite team.
My Dad
My dad made me feel horrible when I didn’t graduate from high school. I had flunked my final exam in Spanish and couldn’t graduate until after I passed it in summer school. He flew all the way across the country to see me graduate, and when he couldn