Sports Ob put my kids to bed, turn on Monday Night Football, and crank up my computer to see how my fantasy football teams are doing. I get an e-mail from Higher Things asking if I could write them a little something about people who are obsessed with sports.
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You have to love life's little ironies. Personally, I am mostly a football fan. I don't have much use for baseball (too slow), hockey (too low scoring), soccer (too un-American) and basketball (points don't matter except in the last two minutes). To me, football is the perfect sport. That is, until they invented fantasy football. Now I have a whole new way of enjoying the greatest sport on earth. But maybe you like some of those other sports too. (Is paintball a sport? How about chess?) It's not that hard to make a case that Americans are obsessed with sports. Every city has a bunch of teams in a bunch of different sports. We spend beaucoup bucks on tickets, memorabilia, jerseys, hats, and even little cards with our favorite players on them. We play sports. We watch sports. We play video games about sports (Madden, anyone?). We have TV channels devoted to sports in general and also to particular sports. We have pee-wee leagues so kids can start playing sports before they are potty trained. Kids dream about becoming professional athletes when they grow up. They look up to sports players as role models (and are all too often disappointed). And many pro players get paid more than pastors, teachers, doctors, lawyers, and even the President of the United States. You can tell what time of year it is by what sport is in season. We have created a new holiday in January known as the Super Bowl. And then there are college sports too. Americans are obsessed with sports. So sports are bad, right? Not so fast. There are certainly some problems with Americans and sports, but let's take a Scriptural approach instead of a knee-jerk, moralistic reaction. What does God's Word say? Does our catechism give any guidance here? In terms of Scripture, sporting events themselves are never directly condemned.The only reference to sports I could think of are passages like 1 Corinthians 9:24 where Paul uses running as a metaphor for Christian living. Hebrews 12:1 has a similar idea:“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Here sports are actually mentioned positively as we are encouraged to run and “win the prize.”
