Shoulda Woulda Coulda

I've witnessed my fair share of teams lose matches they probably should've won. Sometimes they underestimate an opponent, sometimes execution falls apart, sometimes preparation wasn't good enough, and sometimes a team walks into a match believing talent alone is going to take care of business. Joshua 7 records Israel suffering a shocking defeat against Ai after the much larger victory at Jericho, but if we're going to use that story in athletics, we have to be careful because Israel didn't lose at Ai because they had a bad game plan, failed to execute, or became too confident. Scripture gives us a much more serious reason.

Israel had broken God's command.

Joshua 7:1 (ESV) says, “But the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things, for Achan the son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of the devoted things. And the anger of the LORD burned against the people of Israel.”

That context changes the entire lesson because Joshua 7 isn't primarily a story about bouncing back from an upset. It's a story about sin, disobedience, corporate consequences, judgment, repentance, and the holiness of God. There are still principles Christian coaches and athletes can apply, but we shouldn't turn Israel's defeat into an ancient version of losing to an unranked opponent.

The Power of Humility

There is an interesting detail before the battle because the men sent to spy out Ai returned believing Israel wouldn't need its full force. Joshua 7:3 (ESV) says, “Do not have all the people go up, but let about two or three thousand men go up and attack Ai. Do not make the whole people toil up there, for they are few.”

It's reasonable to recognize confidence in their assessment, but Scripture never explicitly says pride caused Israel's defeat, so we shouldn't claim that it did. The chapter directly identifies Achan's sin and Israel's breach of God's covenant as the central problem. That doesn't mean humility has nothing to teach us here because what happens after the defeat requires Joshua and Israel to confront something they hadn't recognized before the battle.

Joshua responds to the loss by tearing his clothes and falling before the ark of the LORD, but God's response is direct. Joshua 7:10 through 11 (ESV) says, “Get up! Why have you fallen on your face? Israel has sinned; they have transgressed my covenant that I commanded them.”

That's where humility becomes more than feeling terrible after something goes wrong. Sometimes humility means getting up, looking directly at the problem, and admitting that something needs to change.

1 Peter 5:5 (ESV) says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” In context, Peter is teaching believers about humility toward one another and before God, not giving athletic programs a formula for recovering from losses. The principle still matters because pride makes honest evaluation almost impossible. If every loss is always the officials' fault, the opponent got lucky, somebody was injured, the schedule was unfair, or one player ruined everything, you're probably not learning much.

Good teams have enough humility to look at themselves honestly.

Recovering from Defeat

We also need to correct the idea that Joshua and Israel responded to Ai by evaluating their strategies, tactics, and individual performances. That's not what Joshua 7 says. Joshua grieved before God, God revealed that Israel had sinned, and an investigation eventually identified Achan as the person who had taken what God had forbidden.

The strategic adjustment actually comes in Joshua 8, after the sin described in Joshua 7 has been dealt with. God then tells Joshua to return to Ai and specifically instructs him to set an ambush.

That's an important distinction because we don't need to make the Bible sound more like a coaching manual than it is. Joshua wasn't breaking down film after the first Ai battle. God was exposing disobedience among His people.

There is still an application for teams because setbacks should make us willing to examine what's actually wrong instead of immediately treating the symptom. After a bad loss, coaches usually want to fix technique, rotations, serving, blocking assignments, communication, or whatever showed up on film, and sometimes that's exactly what needs to happen. Other times the problem underneath the performance is bigger.

Maybe preparation has become lazy, accountability has disappeared, communication is terrible, players don't trust each other, standards are being enforced inconsistently, or athletes are more concerned with their individual roles than whether the team succeeds. If you only fix the volleyball problem while ignoring the culture problem underneath it, don't be surprised when the same issues show up again.

That's where honest evaluation matters. Coaches need enough humility to examine their decisions, athletes need enough maturity to examine their preparation and execution, and everybody needs enough accountability to stop spending the entire film session identifying what somebody else did wrong.

Seeking counsel can be valuable too, but Proverbs 11:14 needs to be quoted and applied accurately. Proverbs 11:14 (ESV) says, “Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.”

The ESV doesn't say, “victory is won through many advisers.” That's NIV wording, and the verse isn't promising athletic victory when teams seek enough outside advice. Proverbs is teaching wisdom about the value and safety of good counsel.

For coaches, that means we shouldn't become so convinced of our own expertise that nobody can challenge us. Assistant coaches, strength staff, athletic trainers, mentors, administrators, and sometimes athletes themselves may see something we're missing. Leadership doesn't require pretending you always have the answer. Sometimes strong leadership means having enough confidence to ask somebody else what they see and enough humility to listen when the answer isn't flattering.

Lessons Israel Had to Learn

The central lesson in Joshua 7 is obedience to God, and that's where we need to be especially careful about making a direct comparison to athletics. A coach's instructions aren't equivalent to God's commands, and athletes disobeying a coach isn't spiritually equivalent to Israel violating God's covenant. Coaches have authority within their programs, but we're not God, and our team rules aren't Scripture.

There is still a legitimate leadership principle around accountability because choices have consequences, and individual choices can affect an entire group. Anybody who's been around a team long enough knows that's true. One athlete's repeated lateness affects practice, one person's selfishness can damage trust, one player's refusal to communicate can create tension, and one person's reckless decision away from competition can affect far more people than themselves.

That's why accountability matters.

It also matters for coaches because we can't demand discipline from athletes while being undisciplined ourselves. If athletes are expected to be prepared, coaches better be prepared. If players are expected to communicate, coaches better communicate. If athletes are expected to accept responsibility after mistakes, coaches don't get to blame everybody else every time a decision backfires.

Standards become culture when everybody is accountable to them.

Dealing With Destructive Team Behavior

Achan's story is probably where we need the biggest correction because calling him a “bad seed athlete” or comparing him directly to a locker room vampire minimizes what's actually happening in Joshua 7. Achan knowingly took items God had explicitly forbidden Israel to take from Jericho and then hid them. His actions weren't merely negative energy, a bad attitude, selfish playing, or being difficult in the locker room. He violated God's command, and the consequences in Israel's covenant setting were severe.

Joshua 7:20 through 21 (ESV) records Achan's confession: “Truly I have sinned against the LORD God of Israel, and this is what I did: when I saw among the spoil a beautiful cloak from Shinar, and 200 shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing 50 shekels, then I coveted them and took them.”

Notice the progression because it's painfully human. He saw something, coveted it, took it, and hid it.

We shouldn't use Achan's punishment as a model for how coaches remove difficult athletes from teams, but his story does reinforce something Scripture teaches repeatedly: hidden sin doesn't become harmless because nobody else knows about it.

There's an appropriate team lesson there because destructive behavior rarely stays contained forever. Selfishness spreads, constant negativity wears people down, gossip destroys trust, entitlement creates resentment, and unchecked anger can change the atmosphere of an entire team. Coaches shouldn't label every frustrated athlete a “bad seed,” though, because once we put that label on somebody, it's pretty easy to stop coaching them and start blaming them for everything that's wrong.

There's a difference between an athlete who's struggling and an athlete who's repeatedly choosing destructive behavior.

That's why Proverbs 22:24 through 25 (ESV) can help us think about influence, although it isn't specifically about removing negative people from a team. It says, “Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.”

The warning is about how closely associating with uncontrolled anger can influence us. That's a legitimate concern in team culture because behavior spreads. Attitudes spread. Work habits spread. Accountability spreads, and unfortunately excuses spread pretty damn quickly too.

Coaches need enough wisdom to recognize the difference between somebody having a rough season and somebody repeatedly poisoning the environment around them. The first person may need patience, support, clearer communication, or stronger mentoring. The second may eventually need consequences, boundaries, reduced responsibility, or removal from the program if the behavior is serious enough and continues despite appropriate intervention.

Accountability shouldn't be cruel, but refusing to address destructive behavior isn't compassion either.

Joshua 7 and 8 also give us something important that gets lost if we stop the story at Israel's failure. After the sin was addressed, God told Joshua to go back to Ai.

Joshua 8:1 (ESV) says, “Do not fear and do not be dismayed. Take all the fighting men with you, and arise, go up to Ai.”

They went back to the place where they'd just been embarrassed.

That's where I see one of the strongest applications for athletes and coaches. A loss doesn't have to become an identity, and failure doesn't mean you stay down forever. Deal honestly with what caused the problem, correct what needs correcting, take responsibility where responsibility belongs, and then get your ass back to work.

Sometimes teams lose matches they should've won, and sometimes the explanation isn't deep. You played badly, the opponent played better, or sports did what sports do and produced an outcome nobody expected. We shouldn't force every athletic loss into Joshua 7 and start searching for some hidden sin that explains why God allowed us to lose. That's terrible theology, and competition doesn't work that way.

What Joshua 7 does teach us is much more serious than how to recover from a bad volleyball match. It teaches us not to minimize disobedience, not to assume problems disappear because they're hidden, and not to confuse grief over consequences with actually dealing with what caused them.

For teams, the application is to become ruthless about honest evaluation without becoming ruthless toward people. Don't excuse what needs to be corrected, don't blame somebody else for everything that goes wrong, and don't allow pride to keep you from admitting when your preparation, leadership, execution, or culture wasn't good enough.

Then make the correction and move forward.

Strong teams aren't teams that never get embarrassed, never underperform, or never deal with internal problems. They're teams with enough humility to admit when something is wrong, enough accountability to deal with it, enough wisdom to make the necessary changes, and enough resilience to walk back into the gym afterward ready to compete again.

You can't change the match you already lost, but you better make damn sure you don't waste what it exposed.