Our Obsession With Sports (or things of little value)

"Train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come" (1 Tim 4:7b-8 ESV).

We often forget how radical the teachings of Scripture are. We have learned to justify away the rough edges and waterdown the tonic of truth. We want to be able to say that we're right with God without actually caring all that much about following God. We have adopted fun sayings like "I'm spiritual but not religious" to allow ourselves to make a god in our image and follow this made up creation however we want. We, the created, have a tendency to substitute the all-powerful, loving, and sustaining Creator for a fickle, imaginary, fun-loving god who conveniently loves everything that we love and believes everything that we believe.

In his letter to his protégé Timothy, Paul noted that "bodily training is of some value." For us who live in  small towns that exalt sports, this is a tough teaching. I see sports lifted on a pedestal all of the time. It's what many brag about on Facebook. We are inundated with the athletic achievements of people and their children. Many spend hours upon hours training their children for athletic greatness. It's true that those achievements are of "some" value. The word is translated as "little" in other translations. It can also be translated "small" or "brief."

There is nothing wrong with our children having great experiences on the field or court, spending time out in the yard playing with their parents, traveling around to places with the family, and having fun. But let's not take sports out of perspective. This training that we focus on to create great athletes out of ourselves and our children is only of little value and often becomes an idol.

Now, you may think it is of more value because they may get a college scholarship.

CBS recently did an article on this. Here are few of the paragraphs from 8 Things You Should Know About SportsScholarships.

The odds of winning a NCAA sports scholarship are miniscule. Only about 2 percent of high school athletes win sports scholarships every year at NCAA colleges and universities. Yes, the odds are that dismal. For those who do snag one, the average scholarship is less than $11,000.

Full-ride sports scholarships are scarce. There are only six sports where all the scholarships are full ride. These so-called head-count sports are football, men and women's basketball, and women's gymnastics, volleyball, and tennis. In these Division I sports, athletes receive a full ride or no ride.

Scholarships can be dinky. Beyond the head-count sports, all other sports are considered "equivalency" sports. NCAA rules dictate how much money a program, such as lacrosse or track, can spend on scholarships. Coaches can slice and dice these awards as they choose, which can lead to awfully small scholarships.

So the sports training we put our children through is of "little", "small", "brief", and "some" value. Maybe we're banking on a sports scholarship or them just becoming locally famous when they are in high school through their athletic prowess. Whatever the case, we need to just make sure they are having fun and realize that these athletics skills are relatively insignificant to developing their spiritual life.

Traning our children to be godly should be more important than training them to be athletic. Now, we can even use the insignificant sports to train our kids skills that are significant, but that is often forgotten during the heat of the game.

It is of more "value" or more "profitable", depending on the translation, to invest in our children's spiritual lives.  Send them to VBS as well as or instead of a sports camp. Skip a sport event to attend church with your children rather than skipping church to do sports. That right there would teach them that God is more important than sport, although the message we often send is the other way around.

And it isn't just sports. That's just the one idol that Paul picked on in his letter to Timothy. It can be anything. It can be education, entertainment, art, or something else. Whatever we place above God is not as important as God. And yet we do it time and time again.

We have a well-meaning generation raising kids who were raised in church but have decided that church isn't important for their children. There is something about church that the parents just don't like. They want their children to have that same spirituality, but they are trying to do it outside of church. It is proving to be a fruitless policy, and we are raising a godless generation. A generation who is selfish and arrogant. A generation who is like we would be without God. A generation, who like us, needs to place growing in God above everything else. Yet when we fail to do that, we make it harder for them.

Learning to Celebrate (Something Other Than Sports)

When I was in Liberia, I saw a whole community celebrate because they had easy access to clean drinking water. The joy was tangible. It filled the air like a fresh pie in the oven. It permeated my soul. God was happy. You could feel it. Real celebration. Real praise.

Psalm 149 is a powerful song of praise. It says at one point: "Let them praise his name with dancing, making melody to him with tambourine and lyre! For the Lord takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with salvation. Let the godly exult in glory; let them sing for joy on their beds" (Psalms 149:3-5 ESV).

In the middle of people celebrating water, it struck me. We don't celebrate like that. Ever. Except for when our team wins the Super Bowl, a national championship, a state championship, or something of that sort. I see it on Facebook. A team wins, and all of the fans celebrate. Publicly celebrates. Celebrates and they don't care who hears. They're happy. It's a great time.

Why do we celebrate sports in our society more than most anything else? Someone celebrating five years of a successful business that gives people jobs in a community is more important than someone sinking a game-winning basket. Someone turning their life around from meaninglessness to Jesus is more important than someone scoring a touchdown. Volunteering at a soup kitchen is more significant than a walk-off home run.

Maybe we're not invested in the important things of life like we are in sports. Maybe we care more about our children being athletic rather than spiritually mature. Often, we would much rather have him or her win a state championship rather than dedicate their life to serving the Lord. In a small town like ours, we don't have the obvious idols like they did in Bible times. In Ephesus, Paul faced the furor of the people who profited off of the temple to Artemis. But we do have idols that keep people away from church and being who God wants them to be. We sometimes veer into worshipping athletic accomplishment instead of God.

A friend of mine told me about a young man in the ministry. I interviewed this young man for this article, but his name will remain anonymous because what I am sharing does not portray his parents in a positive light.

A few years back, this young man had God interrupt his plans. He holds his state's record in the 800m dash. He went on to win nationals. And received a full ride to a division one college where he was on course to pursue his Olympic dream. If he wanted, he could have ran for a living, getting sponsors once he got out of college. Yet he gave up running a couple years before his prime.

In typical God fashion, tragedy struck and it made him reevaluate his life. He got in a car accident. There was some damage to his left side. That night, in the hospital bed, he prayed for the first time. The next day he was 100% fine but completely changed. His body hadn't changed one bit, but something happened to his soul in that accident. He then transferred to a smaller Christian college, being a tremendous blessing to the small school's track team. While he was there, he felt that he had to give up running for records and start running completely for God. He then transferred to another college - the college I went to - where they had no track and field program.

In completely pursuing God, he found a great amount of peace. But his parents didn't feel the same way. They had never missed a track meet, flying all the way across the country to cheer him on. Yet the first three times he preached in his home church - the church his parents go to, a church just a five minute drive from his home - they didn't make it. They would not attend to hear their son preach. The support that they show him being in the ministry is not even near the same support that they showed him in his running career.

Imagine investing your life - your time, your energy - in your kid being a star athlete. And then he gives it up to be a minister. How awesome would that be! Really, it's awesome! It might be tough to acknowledge how awesome it is because we misprioritized all of those years, but that type of spiritual commitment is what we should be striving for in our children.

I want to be clear. Sports are not evil. This is not an either/or situation all of the time although God made it that for this young minister. Our kids don't have to avoid sports to be who God wants them to be. There are many great Christian athletes out there. But we do need to realize the dangerous spiritual pitfall that sports can sometimes be. Sometimes we place sport above God. When we do this, a blessing such as sport can draw us away from God rather than supplement our total commitment to God. I see people choose sports over the kingdom of God time and time again. Let us be vigilant not to do that. Let us not celebrate or value sports over the most important things in our life. Let us praise God and become people who He takes pleasure in. Let us learn to celebrate!

A Christmas Story - Fra-gi-le. It must be Italian.

This is my final article spinning out of scenes from the Christmas cult classic, A Christmas Story. The Old Man, the name given to Ralphie’s father in the movie, entered a contest to win a prize. And he won! The prize came in a giant box labeled “fragile.” Upon seeing “fragile” on the box, the Old Man said, “Fra-gi-le. It must be Italian.” He was excited, barely able to contain his excitement. He clamored to open up the box.

When all the packing materials were removed out came a plastic leg. Not just your normal, everyday plastic leg. No, this leg was a leg lamp with fish net stockings. The Old Man wanted to put it right in the middle of the front room window, so that everybody going by the house could see it. After positioning the lamp exactly where he wanted it, the Old Man exclaimed, “Oh, look at that. Will you look at that? Isn’t that glorious? It’s indescribably beautiful. It reminds me of the 4^th of July!”

A little over the top. It’s easy for us to acknowledge that the old man’s behavior when he opened the leg lamp was utterly ridiculous, but we do the same thing. Only not with leg lamps. Our idols are much better disguised.

John wrote one of my favorite letters and the Bible. He concluded his letter, which we know as 1st John, with the statement that we are to keep ourselves from idols. John’s letter emphasizes love. It is one of the harshest letters in the Bible. Not because loving is harsh, but because he tells us what is the punishment for not loving. In it we see John tell the readers that if they don’t love the people around them then they don’t love God. And if they don’t love God, God has no room for them in His family.

It seems a little weird for the letter to end in a command to keep ourselves from idols when the rest of the letter didn’t even talk about idols, but John knew what he was doing. We cannot properly love when we have idols in our life. But let me clarify what an idol is. An idol doesn’t have to be some gold statue or special relic from long ago. An idol is anything that prevents us from focusing on what we’re supposed to be focused on.

This leads me to ask, “What is your leg lamp?” What is your idol? What is it that you have in your life that you focus on, that you find beautiful, and that really controls your life? Because if you are focused on the wrong thing, then you have an idol. It doesn’t matter how good that wrong thing is; if it’s not the right thing, then it’s an idol.

Let’s test it with a completely good thing, the Bible. The Bible is a tool for us to get to know God. Unfortunately, I’ve seen many people turn the Bible into an idol. It transforms from being a great tool to show us God and relay His will for our life to being the end all of our faith. When the Bible becomes more important than Jesus—when the Bible becomes more important than loving our neighbor—when knowledge of the Bible becomes an end to itself, we have missed the point. We have turned the word of God, which we are so richly blessed with, into an idol.

Now if this can happen with the word of God, then it can also happen to anything else in our life. We have to be careful.

The idols in our life don’t come wrapped in a giant box and appear to be a useless leg lamp. The tricks Satan uses on us and our own self-deception are more covert than that.

Jesus came into this world, as we remember this time of year, to free us from sin. We might not have a leg lamp, but I guarantee that we do have idols. As John concluded in his letter, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21 ESV).

God Has No Grandchildren - A Challenge to Raise Our Children In Jesus

As a pastor, I run across people who want their children to be spiritually-minded, loving toward their neighbors, and in love with God.  These are great and noble goals for a parent to have.  They are better than wanting your child to be smart, a great athlete, or the most popular.  But when it comes down to it, we, as parents, invest in the lesser goals rather than the more important ones.  Unwittingly, due to the pressure of society, we do this to the detriment of our children’s souls.  We must remember that the most dangerous distractions are usually not the most obvious actions.  Danger waits in the good things, for when we focus on them, at the exclusion of the great things, we stray off course. 

We have been steered off course into thinking that the spirituality that was passed on to us will automatically transfer to our children without the investment that our parents, grandparents, neighbors, and teachers made in us.  On the other hand, maybe we didn’t have a spiritual life growing up, but we want our children to.  The harsh truth is that they will not be spiritually-minded unless we make the investment and model it ourselves. 

God has no grandchildren.  He only has children.

John wrote, “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.  He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” [John 1:9-13 (ESV)].

To be born of God.  This is what must happen to our children for them to be called “children of God.”  Total rebirth, dying to their old self, is the investment that it takes.  And it starts with us.  We must die to our old selves, the one where we believe that our intelligence, our sports, our cars, our house, our money, our job, and our popularity are the most important aspects to our life.  We must be born of God. 

Throughout history, churches have argued and fought over exactly what it takes to be born of God.  I am not going to go into that here.  What I want to briefly show is what your life will look like after you have been born of God. 

Jesus tells a story of the final judgment in Matthew 25.  In the story he talks about people who thought they were in with God.  I can imagine the dire face that many scornful churchgoers will face some day.  They will be like those people in Matthew 25 who are told that they do not know God because they have not fed the hungry, given water to the thirsty, helped the immigrant, given clothes to the naked, nourished the sick, and visited prisoners.  On the other hand are those who do know God and done those things. 

So if you want your children to be God’s children, take time out and invest in them spiritually.  Take them to church with you.  Study the Bible with them.  Pray with them.  Feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, help immigrants, give clothes away, nourish the sick, and visit prisoners with them.  They won’t just learn to be God’s child through wishful thinking.  It’s going to take hard work on your part.  Invest in your children spiritually more than you invest in their sports, their careers, or their education.  All of those things will fall in their proper place in a life that has its highest priority properly aligned. 

A Swiss government study published in 2000 showed that if a mother and father go to church regularly, 74% of their children will attend church as adults, with 33% of them regularly attending.  But if the mother goes without the father, only 39% of their children will attend church as adults, with only 2% of them regularly attending.  Where neither father nor mother attend church, only 19% of their children will attend church, with only 4% of them regularly attending.  What that tells me is that we, fathers, must step up. (from “The demographic characteristics of the linguistic and religious groups in Switzerland” by Werner Haug and Phillipe Warner of the Federal Statistical Office, Neuchatel. It appears in Volume 2 of Population Studies No. 31, a book titled The Demographic Characteristics of National Minorities in Certain European States, edited by Werner Haug and others, published by the Council of Europe Directorate General III, Social Cohesion, Strasbourg, January 2000.)

Now some will be thinking church attendance is irrelevant to spiritual growth.  That might be true at an unhealthy church.  But the writer of Hebrews wrote that the purpose of gathering together is to spur one another on toward love and good works.  If that is what happens at church, which is what should be happening at church, then the church gathering together is an  irreplaceable tool to encourage one another on to be who God destined for us to be.

God has no grandchildren, but he does want your grandchildren and children to be His children.  This happens through parents and grandparents stepping up and being the people God wants them to be.  I pray that you will find the strength to do that.