The Super Bowl is one of modern America’s gods. Viewership peaked at 115 million in 2014, but it still remains at about 100 million. It is not just a football game, it is a forum for the promotion of moral wickedness and humanistic philosophy. It is purposefully held on Sunday, a brash affront to the God who designated Sunday as “the Lord’s Day.” For many years, the halftime show has been “essentially a celebration of gay pride.” This year, one of the commercial spots featured “pro-homosexual drag queens bent on indoctrinating your children into a pro-LGBTQ lifestyle” (whereas an anti-abortion commercial was deemed inappropriate). The game is primarily about greed, but the environment is permeated with foul speech, drinking, gambling, half-nakedness, rock & roll sensuality, a “live as you please” philosophy (with a thin veneer of “Jesus is my buddy and he helped me win” Christianity). Fox made $412 million in advertising revenue this year, and the host city, Miami, received a $500 million economic impact. The price of a single ticket is more than $6,000. Anheuser-Busch has spent $441 million on Super Bowl advertising since 2006. Super Bowl fans consume 52 million cases of beer. About 23 million people (7% of the population) place wagers on the game, totaling $6.8 BILLION. The Super Bowl does not stir up righteous affections. It’s all about “inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5). A pastor who stopped watching Super Bowl in 2008 said, “It has become an intensified concentration of vulgarity and ego, with enough athletics in the game and cleverness in the commercials to trick me into watching. It’s simply not what I’m living for.” To that we say, Amen. We would like to know how one can obey the following Scripture while participating in the Super Bowl. “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them” (Ephesians 5:11).
(Friday Church News Notes, February 7, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)