Ball or Baal

Our Christian culture is highly aware that child sacrifice is an awful thing. No one today will take their child to a temple full of strangers, throw them on an alter, dump lighter fluid on them, and then light. (Deuteronomy 12:31) We have enough sense not to worship the murder of innocent children, but that does not mean we have much more sense than this.

Have we not sacrificed our children to another god? How many of our children's self esteems have been sacrificed because they are not jocks? How many are not good enough to make the team? How many are not good enough to get off the bench? How many are not good enough to be champions? Our entire sporting systems are designed to build up one team, the winning team at the end of the season, and if you are not it tough, there is always next season, sacrifice more.

Ball games, leagues, sporting events would not be problematic if they held their original place in our society: entertainment. Playing for fun and past time can have a wonderful health benefit for our children not to mention the development of their social skills. But what happens when we begin to worship our sports instead of God. The glory and feeling of a win is quite a rush, a drug that can match any illegal substance, and what a price we are willing to pay for it. The shift from worshiping God to sports comes slowly, stealthily: Satan is not so stupid as to advertise it all at once. There must be a gradual change, worshiping God is fulfilling, right, uplifting, emotionally gratifying, the devil can't compete with that head on. Rather what he does is slowly press us for time.

At first all major games in our culture were scheduled around church, and then the times crept closer and closer to worship services. Eventually one could not make the distance between the game and church in enough time to see the game. The deception is subtle, looks as if the world still respects church, but they do not. One now has to choose who they will worship on game day. Since our worship is now focused on winning, we press it upon our children and sacrifice much of their childhoods on our ideas of what fulfillment looks like. Doesn't every parent want their child to be a star?