SUPER BOWL LII
As I sit down to pen this article, Super Bowl LII is but a few days away. This was made all too sadly and tragically apparent by the sign outside of the large, local, denominational church building which I passed by just yesterday. It read:
Youth outreach, couples outreach, financial outreach, Seniors outreach, Super Bowl outreach… had enough outreach yet? How about worship and service as we are drawn by God?
How sad is that? If that isn’t sacrilegious to say the least, then I don’t know what is. By the way, the fourth edition of Webster’s New World College Dictionary (© 1999 by Macmillan USA), defines the word ‘sacrilege,’ in part as:
Temple robber… 1 the act of appropriating to oneself or to secular use, or of violating, what is consecrated to God or religion 2 the intentional desecration, or disrespectful treatment of a person, place, thing, or idea held sacred.
SYN. – sacrilege implies a violation of something sacred, as by appropriating to oneself or to a secular use something that has been dedicated to a religious purpose; profanation suggests a lack of reverence or a positive contempt for things regarded as sacred; desecration implies a removal of the sacredness of some object or place, as by defiling or polluting it.
And so, here is a congregation of the man-made Protestant denomination born of men in 1607, appearing at least to me, to be sacrilegiously ‘taking a page out of the pre-medieval Catholic Church’s playbook’ (the Catholic Church which this denomination was later, supposedly formed in protestation of), when they confiscated, sought to re-make, and absconded with the pagan celebration of Estra, the false goddess of fertility, seeking to take advantage of and capitalize on its popularity amongst the masses by re-forming it into something that might supposedly help their particular brand of ‘Christianity’ to become more popular, appealing, and/or widespread as well. How so? Here’s how…
Apparently, the grace-laden, life-giving, soul-saving gospel of the living God and the Lord Jesus Christ is no longer good enough, pure enough, or powerful enough in the eyes of many of the man-made denominations all around us, to attract the lost and sin-ravaged souls of the masses any longer anyway. Some now appear to believe that they have to resort to the partial replacing or perhaps supposedly ‘enhancing’ or ‘improving’ of its sacred attractiveness – with such things as a sporting event?!? INCREDIBLE! But certainly not unbelievable… Tragically, it’s all too believable. After all, it is this particular man-made division or denomination (1 Cor. 1:10) which also routinely hosts rodeo-style events in the arenas on their premises in yet another sacrilegious and foreign to scripture event, known as “Cowboy Church”; once again appealing far, far more to the fleeting and adrenalin-driven entertainment mentality of the fickle and misled masses, than to the divinely-inspired and all-authoritative directives of almighty God (Psa. 19:7-11;Matt. 28:18-20; 2 Tim. 3:12-4:4).
But what else should one expect? After all, did not Jesus indicate that if anyone truly loves Him, they would then submit themselves to His will – the will and word of almighty God (Jn. 14:15)? And if anyone really does that, then they could not refer to themselves by any name or term foreign to or not found in God’s word; nor would they preach, teach, or practice any other doctrine than that which is found in the New Testament in places like Acts 2:38-41, 22:16; Eph. 4:4-6; Gal. 3:26-27, 5:4; 1 Peter 3:21; and/or many others to begin with, would they?
But, back to the whole Super Bowl/gospel ‘attractiveness/enhancement’ thing… Do you remember almighty God’s fiery revulsion for, and utter and complete rejection and condemnation of, all of the idols, idolatry, and idolatrous worship practices which the people repeatedly resorted back to, instead of worshipping Him in spirit and truth as He commanded in the Scriptures? It was constant, consistent, continual, and catastrophic! Condemning idolatry (or the worship of false gods) and idolatrous worship was the first, top, and utmost priority of the Ten Commandments (Deut. 5:6-11), as well as the Apostle Paul’s top priority to address in his oratories to the pagans in places like Athens (Acts 17:16-31).
And yet, here we are today, with at least one group of religious people – and God forbid that it should ever be joined by one of the congregations of His Son’s one, New Testament church as seen in the Scriptures – still idolatrously seeking to superimpose the ‘worship’ of the ‘false gods’ and ‘idols’ of sports entertainment, over and above (or at the very least, to somehow, at least in their minds, ‘enhance’ or improve the attractiveness of) even any half-informed attempt to perhaps try to practice some semblance of first-century, scripturally-demanded, spirit and truth worship! What a shame.
Now; for anyone who might possibly wish to judge me and/or this article for being too ‘judgmental’ or ‘unloving,’ might I humbly and lovingly suggest that they first go back and read the words of the Lord Jesus Christ as recorded in Jn. 7:24; and then look up what John, the so-called ‘apostle of love’ had to say as it relates to this article’s contents in 1 Jn. 2:15-17 & 4:1-6?
And so, in conclusion… do you know what God’s faithful people will be doing on the Sunday of the so-called Super Bowl? The same thing they’ve been doing every Sunday since the first century church of Christ (Rom. 16:16) came into existence! Gathering to worship God in spirit and truth at each and every opportunity of course – and not needing any extra or added incentive from sports idols and/or worldly sporting events to spark or enhance their worship service’s attractiveness, attendance, or their worship service experience. God is still enough and more for them – and that is exactly what makes them the kind of worshippers the scriptures clearly tell us that the Father is still seeking (Jn. 4:23-24)! After all, that is what makes every Sunday ‘super’ to them!