John Wooden was the most dominant basketball coach in the history of the game, a coach who achieved legendary status. The reason is simple: no coach will ever approach his record, as John Finstein writes:
"There's one men's college basketball record that not only will never be broken, but the likelihood is also it will never even be threatened: 10 national titles. That's how many NCAA championships John Wooden won at UCLA. No other coach -- not Mike Krzyzewski, not Adolph Rupp, not Bob Knight, not Dean Smith -- has even gotten halfway to that mark. In fact, those four generally considered the four greatest college basketball coaches in the game's history not named Wooden, have won 13 titles combined. Perhaps even more remarkable: Wooden won those 10 championships during a 12-season span, beginning in 1964 and ending in 1975 when he retired after UCLA beat Kentucky in that year's national championship game."
His UCLA Bruins won 88 games in a row. Can you imagine 88? Week after week, month after month, at home and on the road, 88.
Coach Wooden must have liked that number; it had symmetry and he loved balance and symmetry. He never had any of his players wear #31 because a three and a one have no symmetry. His number in his playing days was 99. That number had symmetry.
WOODEN'S RULES
Coach Wooden had his rules for the players, every player without exception. Among those rules were, "No profanity." Profanity would get the player a sit-down on the bench. The strongest language Wooden used were phrases like "Goodness gracious!" and "Goodness gracious me!" Something like that.
He had rules that governed every player on the proper way to put on socks. Each player was to put them on the coach's way, just as Wooden demonstrated and each player was to wear two pair during the games and at practice. He had rules for their pregame meal; it never varied. Each player was to take a nap after the meal for a certain length of time. During a game, no player was to pass behind his back. That was showboating. That was a player's saying, "Look at me!"
THE CASTLE
We have a saying: "A man's home is his castle." The saying is based on a legal principle that goes back to the 1700s. It means that, no matter what the Constitution says, each home has a right to set its own rules. For example, in the home in which I grew up, there were certain rules, rules that violated the Constitution of the United States. There were no First Amendment rights in our house. Just as in Wooden's "castle," the gym, there was no profanity. Never. Speech was regulated in our house.
In our house, no one was free to use the word, "ain't." If anyone said, "ain't," the offender would be corrected to use proper grammar. Nor one could ask, "Where's he at?" without the stated correction of "Between the "a" and the "t." Proper grammar demands, "Where is he?" not, "Where's he at?" "At" is a preposition and one doesn't end a sentence with a preposition. (This is why I need a T-shirt that says, "I'm silently correcting your grammar.")
SARTORIAL SPLENDOR
Every castle has its rules. Your castle did and still does. A castle without rules is chaos. Schools have rules, seminaries have rules. One rule at Dallas Seminary used to be: coats and ties are the proper attire and only attire for every class. A class syllabus sets the rules for the semester. "The class begins at 1 PM." "Late work will be penalized one letter grade for each day late." Things like that. Then there are unwritten rules: during the lecture by the professor, students aren't to stand up, jump up and down, screaming.
THE QUESTION
This brings us to the question of the day: are rules legalism? Was Coach Wooden a legalist when it came to profanity? Of course not. Abiding by rules or setting rules don't make a person a legalist. Paul gave us many commands--"Be filled with the Spirit," "Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church," "If a man doesn't work, he doesn't eat," and "Be not drunk with wine." Christ gave rules for the Christian life: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you." The Bible has rules governing the Lord's Supper.
Then what makes legalism legalism? Legalism is taking the commands of the grace age and making them into rules to keep to get to heaven, rules to earn God's favor, rules to be considered spiritual. Grace reorients everything. When the Christian reads one of the commands of the epistles, he should understand that the command is not something God gives for the believer to try to keep to earn God's blessing.
Under grace, the command is something the believer wants to obey because he's already saved. He obeys Christ out of love and gratitude as his response to what Christ has done for him. The legalist takes a command and thinks he and everyone else must obey it to get to heaven. The Christian, liberated from a works-oriented-go-out-and-earn-it-life, delights to do God's will because he has already been blessed with every spiritual blessing in existence (Eph. 1:3; the command of Romans 12:1-2 is based on the blessings of chapters 1-11).
To use the basketball analogy, look at the player who does as his coach says because he loves the game. His motivation is the opposite of the player who hates the coach's rules and looks upon the hours of practice as a drudgery to be endured to earn the coach's favor. Which player is the legalist?
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