sports

70:7.10The pu­berty ini­ti­a­tion cer­e­mony usu­ally ex­tended over a pe­riod of five years. Much self-tor­ture and painful cut­ting en­tered into these cer­e­monies. Cir­cum­ci­sion was first prac­ticed as a rite of ini­ti­a­tion into one of these se­cret fra­ter­ni­ties. The tribal marks were cut on the body as a part of the pu­berty ini­ti­a­tion; the tat­too orig­i­nated as such a badge of mem­ber­ship. Such tor­ture, to­gether with much pri­va­tion, was de­signed to harden these youths, to im­press them with the re­al­ity of life and its in­ev­i­ta­ble hard­ships. This pur­pose is bet­ter ac­com­plished by the later ap­pear­ing ath­letic games and phys­i­cal con­tests.

124:3.7It so hap­pened that just at this time the an­nual com­pet­i­tive games and pub­lic demon­stra­tions of phys­i­cal prowess be­tween the Greek cities of the De­capo­lis were in prog­ress at the Scythopo­lis am­phithe­ater, and Je­sus was in­sis­tent that his fa­ther take him to see the games, and he was so in­sis­tent that Joseph hes­i­tated to deny him. The boy was thrilled with the games and en­tered most heart­ily into the spirit of the demon­stra­tions of phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and ath­letic skill. Joseph was in­ex­press­ibly shocked to ob­serve his son’s en­thu­si­asm as he be­held these ex­hi­bi­tions of “hea­then” vain­glo­ri­ous­ness. Af­ter the games were fin­ished, Joseph re­ceived the sur­prise of his life when he heard Je­sus ex­press his ap­proval of them and sug­gest that it would be good for the young men of Naz­a­reth if they could be thus ben­e­fited by whole­some out­door phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties. Joseph talked earnestly and long with Je­sus con­cern­ing the evil na­ture of such prac­tices, but he well knew that the lad was un­con­vinced.

124:3.8The only time Je­sus ever saw his fa­ther an­gry with him was that night in their room at the inn when, in the course of their dis­cus­sions, the boy so far for­got the trends of Jew­ish thought as to sug­gest that they go back home and work for the build­ing of an am­phithe­ater at Naz­a­reth. When Joseph heard his first-born son ex­press such un-Jew­ish sen­ti­ments, he for­got his usual calm de­meanor and, seiz­ing Je­sus by the shoul­der, an­grily ex­claimed, “My son, never again let me hear you give ut­ter­ance to such an evil thought as long as you live.” Je­sus was star­tled by his fa­ther’s dis­play of emo­tion; he had never be­fore been made to feel the per­sonal sting of his fa­ther’s in­dig­na­tion and was as­ton­ished and shocked be­yond ex­pres­sion. He only replied, “Very well, my fa­ther, it shall be so.” And never again did the boy even in the slight­est man­ner al­lude to the games and other ath­letic ac­tiv­i­ties of the Greeks as long as his fa­ther lived.

124:3.9Later on, Je­sus saw the Greek am­phithe­ater at Je­ru­sa­lem and learned how hate­ful such things were from the Jew­ish point of view. Nev­er­the­less, through­out his life he en­deav­ored to in­tro­duce the idea of whole­some recre­ation into his per­sonal plans and, as far as Jew­ish prac­tice would per­mit, into the later pro­gram of reg­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties for his twelve apos­tles.

68:2.10If van­ity be en­larged to cover pride, am­bi­tion, and honor, then we may dis­cern not only how these propen­si­ties con­tribute to the for­ma­tion of hu­man as­so­ci­a­tions, but how they also hold men to­gether, since such emo­tions are fu­tile with­out an au­di­ence to pa­rade be­fore. Soon van­ity as­so­ci­ated with it­self other emo­tions and im­pulses which re­quired a so­cial arena wherein they might ex­hibit and grat­ify them­selves. This group of emo­tions gave ori­gin to the early be­gin­nings of all art, cer­e­mo­nial, and all forms of sportive games and con­tests.