By Rev. Chris Surber

I hate the Super Bowl.

No I’m not Canadian, and I did not grow up in Europe playing the other football. I am a real American, and yet I despise the Super Bowl. More specifically, I loathe the culture surrounding it.

In fact, if I hear one more person bring God into a Super Bowl discussion, I might kick them through a set of uprights.

Are we really going to pray for God to allow our team to win the Super Bowl? Does God grant His favor to the team with more faith? Perhaps He gets out His celestial calculator and crunches the numbers to see which team has more Christians?

I know, I sound ridiculous. I mean, He is God so of course He can do the math in His head without a calculator….

Perhaps in the grand scheme of His sovereignty there may be some reason for one team to win. Perhaps a specific player needs to learn humility to later be used by God. Maybe.

But I would contest the notion that the Lord of all creation is sitting in a recliner on Super Bowl Sunday, eating nachos, waving His hand so He can see Colin Kaepernick throw for 200 yards.

Perhaps I’m overstating my case. I guess I don’t really hate the Super Bowl. It’s our obsession with distraction that I really hate. While God’s creation groans under the weight of human sin, suffering and shame, we amuse ourselves into a dull-minded oblivion. And not just on Super Bowl Sunday. This mega sporting event just highlights the problem in our culture and in our churches.

To be honest, I’m not surprised those who have no interest in the things of God make a holy day of a sporting event. As a follower of Jesus, however, I find it vastly troubling that so many Christians do so.

My friend, what does it say of our faith that while millions of people perish without Christ, we pray for the ‘49ers, or whomever, to have a good game?

Someone asked two of my young sons recently if they would be watching the Super Bowl this Sunday. Their reply? “What’s the Super Bowl?” The man looked at them like they were from another planet.

In fact, they are not of this world. And neither are you if you claim Christ. “But our citizenship is in heaven — and we also await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 3:20 NET)

Yet sadly, I am certain that an all-expenses paid trip to the “Big Easy” to watch the Super Bowl would generate a great deal more excitement in most churches today than an all-expenses paid trip to Burma to preach the Gospel in the jungle to people who have never heard of Jesus.

I hate the Super Bowl, because it, like many other things, is a grand distraction to that fact of the Christian life. It is a glaring example of the ways that we celebrate the silly things in the world wholeheartedly, while halfheartedly serving Christ in the world.

There is nothing wrong with entertainment, but we are entertaining ourselves to death to the exclusion of shouting life to a dying world.

Chris Surber is pastor of Cypress Chapel Christian Church in Suffolk. Visit his website at www.chrissurber.com.