Can you Pass the Salt?

Commitment, sacrifice, and dedication are words we throw around constantly in college athletics, but sometimes I wonder whether athletes really understand what they're saying when they claim they're committed to something. Everybody wants the jersey, the scholarship, the starting position, the travel, the wins, and the opportunity to say they played college sports. A whole lot fewer people want the early mornings, exhausted legs, hard coaching, limited free time, competition for playing time, academic pressure, and the reality that you can work your butt off without being guaranteed the role you wanted.

That's why Luke 14 hits a whole lot harder than the way we sometimes use it in sports. Jesus isn't giving motivational advice about setting goals or telling people to make sure they're committed before joining a team. He's talking about the cost of discipleship, and what He says is much more demanding than anything a coach could put in a team handbook.

Luke 14:28 (ESV) says, “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?” Jesus then gives another example involving a king considering whether ten thousand soldiers can meet an army of twenty thousand. Both illustrations sit inside a much bigger message about following Him. Luke 14:33 (ESV) says, “So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”

Jesus isn't asking for casual commitment. He's making it painfully clear that following Him comes with a cost, and anybody who thinks Christianity means adding Jesus to an already comfortable life without surrendering anything hasn't understood what He's saying.

That's where I think there's an appropriate application to athletics as long as we don't confuse the two commitments. Playing college volleyball isn't discipleship, and sacrificing for your sport isn't the same thing as sacrificing to follow Christ. Your sport should never receive the level of devotion that belongs to God. What athletes can learn from the passage is the seriousness of understanding what you're committing yourself to before saying you're committed.

College athletics has a cost, and athletes need to count it before they sign up for it.

If you want to play college volleyball, understand that your time isn't going to look exactly like everybody else's. There will be practices, lifts, conditioning, film, treatment, travel, meetings, classes, homework, study hall, and recovery, while everybody else seems to have plenty of time to do whatever the hell they want. You're going to miss things. You're going to be tired. You're going to have coaches tell you things you don't want to hear, and there will probably be moments when you wonder whether all of it is worth it.

That's part of counting the cost.

What you can't do is say you're committed and then act surprised every time commitment requires something from you. You can't say you want to play at the next level and then complain about every sacrifice required to compete there. You can't demand more playing time while avoiding the work that would make you better, and you can't tell everybody how badly you want something while constantly choosing whatever is easiest whenever the work becomes inconvenient.

Commitment gets really easy to talk about when it hasn't cost you anything yet.

The salt imagery later in Luke 14 needs to stay in its biblical context too. Luke 14:34 through 35 (ESV) says, “Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away.” In the context of Jesus' teaching about discipleship, this isn't about athletes losing their passion or competitive fire. Turning “saltiness” into athletic motivation misses what Jesus is actually saying. His warning follows a demanding call to discipleship and reinforces the seriousness of claiming to follow Him without the commitment His call requires.

That's actually more convicting for Christian athletes than turning salt into a metaphor for passion because you can be incredibly passionate about your sport and spiritually lukewarm at the same time. You can train six days a week, watch film, eat right, get extra reps, and organize your entire schedule around becoming a better athlete while giving God whatever ten minutes happen to be left.

If you're willing to sacrifice everything for your sport but almost nothing for your faith, that's worth examining.

1 Corinthians 4:2 gives us another important piece, but context matters here too. 1 Corinthians 4:2 (ESV) says, “Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.” Paul is specifically talking about himself and other ministers as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. He's not saying athletes have been entrusted with athletic talent and therefore have a biblical obligation to train harder. We can still draw a broader principle about stewardship from Scripture, but we shouldn't make the verse say something Paul wasn't saying.

The idea of faithfulness should still matter deeply to Christian athletes and coaches because we spend a lot of time talking about what we've been given and not nearly enough time asking what we're doing with it. If you've been given an opportunity to compete in college, how are you handling it? If you've been trusted with a leadership role, what kind of leader are you becoming? If you're representing a program and university, what does your behavior say about them? If you call yourself a Christian athlete, what does the way you compete, speak, respond to adversity, and treat people say about the faith you claim?

Faithfulness shows up when things stop being convenient.

That's one of the biggest concerns I have with the way commitment can be treated in athletics. There's an important distinction between quitting because something became difficult and making a legitimate decision that a situation is unhealthy, unsafe, or no longer appropriate. Athletes aren't required to remain in every situation forever just to prove they're tough, and leaving a team, transferring, changing goals, or walking away from a sport isn't automatically a character failure.

But we also shouldn't pretend quitting never comes from avoiding discomfort.

Sometimes the problem isn't toxic culture, unfair treatment, or some major circumstance outside your control. Sometimes somebody else earned the position you wanted. Sometimes the coach told you something you didn't like. Sometimes college volleyball is harder than you expected, and sometimes you're frustrated because you aren't immediately getting the same attention and success you had in high school.

That's when you need enough self awareness to ask whether the situation truly needs to change or whether you're trying to escape something difficult.

Christian coaches need to be careful with this too because Scripture should never become a weapon we use to guilt athletes into staying in our programs. Luke 14 isn't a recruiting retention strategy, and following through on a commitment doesn't mean submitting to mistreatment or ignoring legitimate concerns. Our responsibility is to teach athletes the value of faithfulness, perseverance, sacrifice, and integrity while also having enough wisdom to recognize when circumstances genuinely require a different decision.

And if we're going to preach commitment to athletes, coaches better be willing to examine our own.

Are we committed to athletes only while they can help us win? Are we still investing in the kid buried on the depth chart? Do our promises during recruiting still mean something after the athlete signs? Are we asking athletes to sacrifice for the program while protecting ourselves from every inconvenience? Do we preach loyalty and then immediately lose interest in somebody when a better recruit walks through the door?

Commitment can't be a standard we demand from everybody underneath us while conveniently excusing ourselves from it.

I also wouldn't use Abraham, Paul, and Jesus as interchangeable examples of people who “counted the cost and sacrificed everything.” Their stories, roles, and sacrifices aren't the same, and Jesus' sacrifice stands completely apart from ours. Jesus didn't just model extreme commitment. He gave Himself for sinners, and His death and resurrection are the foundation of Christian salvation. Reducing that to another example of working hard and sacrificing for a goal makes the gospel smaller than it is.

The challenge for Christian athletes isn't to become so committed to athletics that their dedication starts looking spiritual. It's actually the opposite. You need to know which commitment comes first.

Work your butt off at your sport. Honor the commitment you made to your teammates. Show up when you're tired, train when nobody is applauding, handle coaching without falling apart, and stop expecting every part of the experience to be comfortable. If you've committed to something, your actions should carry enough weight that people don't constantly need to hear you talk about how committed you are.

But don't ever confuse your sport with your Savior.

Volleyball can teach you discipline, perseverance, teamwork, sacrifice, and accountability, but it can't give you an identity that survives everything. Your career will end. Your role will change. Your body will eventually stop doing what it once did, and the jersey you sacrificed so much to wear will eventually hang in a closet.

Jesus' call doesn't end when your eligibility does.

So count the cost of the things you're committing yourself to, then be honest about whether your habits match your words. If you say your team matters, live like it. If you say excellence matters, prepare like it. If you say integrity matters, show it when doing the right thing costs you something. And if you say Christ comes first, make sure your life doesn't tell everybody He's actually somewhere behind your sport, your success, your comfort, and yourself.

Commitment is easy to claim. What you're willing to sacrifice, what you refuse to compromise, and what you remain faithful to when things get hard will tell the truth.