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God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.
Eric Liddell

Rookie Quaterback Sam Bradford just inked a record deal that guarantees him $50 million.  It is now routine for the top QBs in the NFL to garner $15-20 million a year.  Salary caps?  What salary caps? 

Friends, as long as our culture worships sports teams, sports stars, and sports period, America will continue to witness  professional atheletes' gargantuan wallets expand ever more.  We love to make millionaires out of boys, and we'll pay hundreds of our own hard earned dollars to go watch over-grown boys rake in the dough playing a game. 

This is the new "manhood" in America.  As Voddie Baucham put it recently, we define manhood in our culture now with the three B's: ballfield, boardroom and bedroom. 

Now, I am not violently anti-sports.  I enjoy kicking back in the recliner to marvel at the skills of golfers as much as the next guy.  And, from time to time, I even toss around a ball in the back yard with my daughters, or kick a soccor ball, or throw a frisbee . . . you get the idea.  

Growing up, I loved football.  Only problem is, I should not have loved a game.  Liking it and loving it are two different animals.  But, in time God has brought me to see how warped my priorities were as a young man.  Like most kids playing high school football, I dreamed of the NFL.  Why?  Fame and fortune, why else?!  The American Dream . . . playing a game for a living and making sick money doing it. 

I am not sure how I tried to line up those aspirations back then with the words of Jesus: "You cannot love both God and money."  But one thing is sure, I was living out the truth of Jesus' words, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." 

And this is what so concerns me for Christian parents today.  Far too many are demonstrating to children by their actions (and behavior in the stands) that their hearts belong to sports.  Christian parents fill pews each Sunday and they've spent far more time traveling to ballfields, and coaching and watching and cheering than they have reading the Word, teaching it to their children, actually worshipping together in the home, praying together and serving their neighbors together in the Name of Christ.  We are making our treasure obvious.

Add to it the Christian parents who think little of allowing their child to skip a scheduled worship service or Bible study in order to practice or play a game, and you've got the makings for raising the next generation of American Dream-chasers.  But American Dream-chasers rarely turn the world upside down for Jesus.  In fact, several generations of Dream-chasers have gutted our churches leaving beautiful, empty, steepled buildings in their wake.

As I think of the NFL, a League where most games are played on Sunday, I wonder where all the Eric Liddell's have gone.  While I do believe there are genuinely born again followers of Christ in the NFL, I am just eagerly awaiting a bunch of them to get some spine and demand the NFL play their games on some day other than Sunday.  Where do these NFL Christians worship each week?  What local churches do they serve in and what ministries of the local church are benefitting from their spiritual gifts?  How are they living out 1 Corinthians 12?  Can they even live it out given their immensely demanding training and playing routines? 

I am afraid the pandemic of professional sports "owning" the Day of Corporate Worship in America is only deepening the horrific plague of "churchless Christianity" among young adults.  They worship just fine at the ballfield, thank you very much. 

But when their little boy or girl finally gets that college scholarship they have spent their entire youth pursuing on the ballfields, it will be worth it all . . . or will it?

"For how should My Name be profaned?  My glory I will not give to another" (Isaiah 48:11).