Are College Football Fans Polytheistic Idolaters?

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Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

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We're your hosts, Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we'll seek to answer the age -old question, are college football fans polytheistic idolaters?

01:43

Now, this is one that hits pretty close to home for me, Tim. We did this episode for you.

01:49

Yeah, this is actually in honor of me. Actually, what you're seeing right now is going to be a live rebuke from Tim to me.

02:00

Well, so I don't normally, actually, I've never talked about this as long as we've been doing the show, but I am actually a college football fan myself.

02:13

We live in the state of Alabama, so there's no pro teams to root for, really.

02:20

Really, all we've got is college football, and so I poll for the

02:26

University of Alabama, the Crimson Tide, which they've been doing all right. They've been doing all right the last few years.

02:34

They've been doing all right, which has been fun. It wasn't fun for a long time.

02:40

To be fair, I was at least a fan when they were really bad, and they were really bad for a while there.

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You wouldn't have known. I mean, you wouldn't have known that they were so bad by listening to the fans for all those years.

02:56

Despite the fact that they had a horrible year, it was always that they were robbed, and this year was going to be the year, and just pervasive society -wide delusion that they were operating.

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That's normally the response from any of what you would call blue -blood teams, the ones that are typically pretty good consistently.

03:21

Whenever they have bad stretches, it's always, this next year, this one's our year, right?

03:27

That's right. That doesn't surprise me one bit. You guys are bad losers, and you're worse winners.

03:39

Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much, yeah. Look, Tim, Alabama lost to Auburn one time, and a fan went out and poisoned

03:50

Auburn's, I don't even remember what the name of that. The trees. The tree.

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The one that everyone rolls after Auburn wins a game, and has been there for,

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I mean, it's like a tradition. That tree's been there so long, and an

04:07

Alabama fan went out there and poisoned the tree because they lost. We live in the

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South, and college football is a big, big deal in the South.

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I think there's probably a time in my life definitely where football, I went on a weird journey because I didn't care at all about football while I was in middle school, while I was in high school, probably because our teams were so bad.

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Between my freshman year to my senior year in high school, I think across all four years, we won a total of four games.

04:50

And there was definitely a year where we won two games in that single year. So that also means that we had years where we didn't win any games at all.

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So I didn't really care about college football, but then I went to the University of Alabama, and I was in the marching band there.

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You pretty much just have to learn to like college football, because you're just in it all the time.

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You're practicing every day with the band. You're having to learn all this music. You're having to learn all these chants and these cheers.

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Your Saturday is totally dedicated to that game, unless it's a really, really early game, like an 11 o 'clock kickoff or something.

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So I ended up really getting attached to college football through that.

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And it helped, like I said, at the time. Before I started going to college, while I was in college, and then even now, they're still a really good team.

05:56

So that definitely helped get me into it. It wasn't a repeat of my high school years, where we just played the songs, and then stopped paying attention as soon as the song was over, and just talked amongst ourselves.

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But it's a big deal. People will spend thousands of dollars on tickets.

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They'll spend thousands of dollars on season tickets. They'll wait years just to get season tickets.

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People dress their babies up as their favorite team.

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They'll block out entire week. They won't go into work on Monday if their team loses the big game that they were supposed to win.

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You're just digging a hole. You're digging a hole. They won't go to church on Sunday. All season.

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Because what? Because they'll be going to the game, so they'll be traveling to Tuscaloosa every week.

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It's hard to travel, man. It wears you out, and you just got to take a Sabbath day. You got to rest.

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Even if your team does win, you see people come into church wearing their team's paraphernalia.

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College football is a big deal. In the

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South, it's treated as a big deal. Objection!

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My bias is showing. Like I told you guys, this is a live rebuke. You are seeing rebuke in action.

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One of the last episodes we did was all about it involved biblical counseling a lot.

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I mentioned that there have been times where Tim has been the friend who is wounding me because he cares about me.

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Right now, you are witnessing that in action. To the Alabama fans, I became an

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Alabama fan. Tim, why don't I change the question a little bit?

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Why don't I say, instead of our college football fans, polytheistic idolaters, I'll change it to, am

08:17

I a polytheistic idolater? It's a definite maybe. A definite maybe.

08:27

Do you want to answer that, really? No, I don't think I'm a polytheistic idolater.

08:36

I don't know. We'll see how it goes. I'm not convinced.

08:45

In general, we live in the South. You've observed a lot of college football fans.

08:51

Are they the equivalent of polytheistic idolaters? Absolutely. As a generality, yes.

09:00

When we moved here, we moved to Alabama from South Florida. We watched more pro football because you had all the pro teams down there.

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In South Florida, where we're coming from. We came to Alabama. It was the weirdest thing in the world to come to a state to where the first thing that people would ask you when they realized you were the new kid in school or whatever is, who do you go for,

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Alabama or Auburn? You just kind of look at them like, are you mentally handicapped? There are other teams.

09:36

But those were the only two choices that you were allowed to... Forgive my ableism there.

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Those are the only two choices you're allowed to pick from.

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It's just like, well, I'm neither. It's just like when you say neither, you're looking at people who just fundamentally didn't know how to process the words that were coming out of your mouth at that point.

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As if you're just some person from the twilight zone, alien from another planet who's come here.

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But I remember growing up in high school and just seeing people engaging in conversations that consisted of one individual saying roll tide and then the other person saying war eagle and then going back and forth and back and forth.

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That was the whole conversation. It would just go on and on and on. And I've seen people who literally...

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And this is not uncommon. You see someone wearing an Auburn jersey or something out in public and then you see the guy slam on the brakes and roll the window down and start yelling at him for wearing the wrong shirt as he's narrowly missing getting in a wreck and that kind of thing.

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And these are normal things that happen in our state. And I worked an appliance delivery job for a while when

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I just got out of seminary and I came back to Alabama and I went in to deliver appliance into this lady's house and this lady was just totally serious.

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She's totally serious. She looked at me and she said... It was getting to be fall or whatever and she asked me if I was excited about fall coming.

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And I was like, yeah, I prefer to be cold than hot. So for me it was about the weather change but for her it was about college football season starting and she was just so excited about college football season starting.

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And she said, college football is our second God here in Alabama. Oh my gosh.

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And I just looked at her and I said, I don't know if it's your second. I don't know.

11:46

That's good. I don't know if it's your second. If you have a second God... That's the whole point of the question.

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Are they polytheistic, idolatrous? If you have a second God, it's not your second. That's the point.

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I've seen church members who miss entire... They're totally gone during college football season because they're out going to the game with their season tickets and everything else.

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They disappear for a few months at a time. It's that and hunting are the two kind of things where people kind of disappear that might normally show up on a regular basis but it's a problem.

12:23

It's certainly a problem at the very least. So whether they're polytheistic or monotheistic, they are idolaters.

12:32

Right. I mean, it could be that they're actually monotheistic idolaters but then in the South everyone believes in God so you have to go the polytheistic route.

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But as a generality, yeah. I mean, people are obsessed with it here, man. Yeah. Okay.

12:49

All right. So as a college football fan myself, as a self -professed non -idolatrous college football fan, am

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I allowed to like college football? Oh, man. Or am

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I going to be an idolater inherently? I think there's a lot of pressure in our society, in the culture you live in right now to not have an appropriate balance for these kind of things at the very least.

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At the very least. So you're living in a society that is obsessed with certain...

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It's obsessed with like college kids who are basically playing catch.

13:32

Yeah. No, no. Legitimate... I mean, football is essentially a child's game, right?

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Right, right, right. And you have grown men, 18, 19, all the way up into the

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NFL, 40 years old, getting paid millions of dollars to play this game. To play catch. Right.

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And the reason they're getting paid millions of dollars is because people are paying millions of dollars to go see these games, right?

13:58

Right. So I think in a certain sense, it's not really... We live in an entertainment -driven society across the board.

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So in some sense, the college football question is not... You can't divorce it from a discussion about entertainment in general.

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And we live in a society right now that is just obsessed with entertainment from start to finish. So the standard adult in our society watches like eight hours of entertainment a day on some kind of...

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Whether it's their phone or TV or whatever else. And so in a certain sense, it's like there's no...

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Whether you're talking about just binging Netflix, whether you're talking about college football, whether you're talking about video games, whether you're talking about other sports or music, we're a society that, across the board, is obsessed with entertainment.

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And we're not very productive as a society. And so it's a problem anyway you look at it, as far as that goes.

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And almost no one escapes this problem in general. Meaning the vast majority of people are addicted to entertainment of one form or another.

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And it's not a matter of whether or not they're addicted, it's what form are they addicted. So the kind of woman who's scandalized by men being addicted to college football or something, she has her own addictions.

15:27

They're just different. So it's just... Across the board, it's a problem.

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And whatever form it takes, it doesn't necessarily matter. It's just a problem across the board.

15:39

That's the point. Yeah, so the man might be addicted to entertainment through college football, and the woman might be addicted to entertainment through just binging on Netflix or watching

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Hallmark Christmas movies all year round or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To Hallmark.

15:58

Why would anyone want to do that? People want to do that for some reason. No, I think where it becomes kind of a thing is that your stereotypical man in the

16:11

South basically is devoting the entirety of his Saturday every week for college football.

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And then predominantly what he's listening to during the week is talk radio, sports radio.

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So it is kind of like a pervasive kind of obsession for him to where Dad is going to be in his man cave watching his sports literally all

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Saturday. He's not there. He's not there for the family. Then the exasperated wife in that kind of scenario is just looking at that and saying,

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Hey, I actually have to typically do things. And then you're just down there. Don't interrupt me.

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Not only don't interrupt me, but you're mad, and you're yelling and angry and upset, and if your team doesn't win, then everything is wrong, and you're depressed and irritable to be around and actively angry and mad and everything else.

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So I think those kind of things were things that I didn't really want to.

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When I'm looking at football and things like that, early on in my Christian life, I didn't really want anything to do with that because I didn't want to be that guy who was basically just, you know, my

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Saturdays had nothing to do with anyone but me watching a bunch of kids play catch, you know, that kind of thing.

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So I found that, personally, to be kind of a distasteful way of spending time, and I didn't want to go down that road.

17:40

So I haven't really. Part of my reaction to college football in general, as I just see, is such a pervasive idol that I haven't really pursued it.

17:50

I played a lot of sports in high school, and there is part of me that just doesn't like watching other people play sports.

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I'm not a good fan. It feels like sitting on the bench to me. I'd rather play myself, whatever the game is.

18:08

I'd rather go out and play. I have more fun in playing it than just watching it, as far as that goes.

18:16

So I think there's things like that, but I think largely what you're talking about is, it really is like, what is the place of Christian entertainment?

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What place does entertainment have for the Christian? That's kind of the broader discussion that college football is only an aspect of it, if that makes sense.

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So if you want to argue that college football is just totally off -limits, then you're going to have to basically, to be consistent, you're going to have to reject all entertainment.

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And I don't know that the Bible rejects all entertainment, but then it does relativize the importance of entertainment for the

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Christian to a great degree. It may be to such a degree that it's very hard just to be a rabid, foaming at the mouth college football fan and be faithful.

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That's probably going to be difficult. You're going to be pushing against the grain to a great degree, and it's going to be pretty hard with all that.

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One example of what you're talking about, as an Alabama fan, this is silly, and I'm going to make it even sillier with this next sentence.

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I've never actually told anybody this outside of my wife.

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Now you're blasting it on the internet. Now I'm putting it out there for everyone to see. This might be the most scandalous thing

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I've ever said on the podcast. As an Alabama fan, I absolutely hate saying roll tide.

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That phrase just makes me cringe. For good reason. There's been times where my wife and I have gone to a game because someone gave us some free tickets because they couldn't go or they didn't want to go.

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Whatever the situation was, they gave us some free tickets. We're like, all right, I guess we'll just go. You drive down to Tuscaloosa, and you're seeing all these people dressed up in their paraphernalia.

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They've got their hats, their red shirts and whatnot. You walk past everyone, and they're like, roll tide.

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Roll tide. Roll tide. You're just like, mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

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The funny thing is, my wife and I, we decided, okay, we're not going to say roll tide.

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I don't know why we decided this, but instead of saying roll tide, we're just going to say yes, sir. Yes, so roll tide.

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Yes, sir. You're in the middle of the game, and everyone, when the team runs out at the beginning of the game, everyone's cheering and losing their mind and screaming roll tide.

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The other team runs out, and everyone starts booing. We're like, well, that feels a little disrespectful.

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Instead of saying yes, sir, we'll just say no, sir, there. The other team runs out, you just say, no, sir.

21:33

No, sir. All that to say,

21:39

I think that is an example of... It's compelled speech, man. There's a lot of pressure to make it something that it shouldn't be from pagans in society.

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I have stories like that, too. It is compelled speech. In the

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South, it's compelled speech. Jordan Peterson would be rolling in his grave over this kind of thing. When I was in seminary, there would be people that I would meet that were from Alabama.

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When they saw me and they found out I was from Alabama, they got so excited. They would look at me and say, roll tide.

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I was like, oh, okay. You're supposed to say it back. You're supposed to say it back.

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It's like, oh, okay. Okay. No. I can't.

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I can't bring my... The fact is that that is wildly offensive in this state.

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The fact that that's wildly offensive to not say it back is like, you guys are just as crazy as the radical left who are demanding that I say whatever pronouns.

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Use preferred pronouns. I was about to say that. It's the same thing. It's like, no, I'm good.

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I'm not even trying to be rude. It's just like I'm not a fan. I don't know what to tell you. That's weird to me. I guess

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I'll just be rude. That's probably the most scandalous thing I've ever said on the show. Knowing where we live, there's probably going to be people coming after me after this.

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I guess for the college football fan,

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I don't know... Well, there are certainly a lot of people who would say probably proudly so they would say, yes,

23:32

I am addicted to college football. Like the lady you mentioned, it's a second

23:39

God. Well, actually, it's probably not the second God. There's probably still plenty of other people who are college football fans but would never say that they're idolizing college football.

23:59

That may be true or it may not be. I think for a lot of people, it is hard to admit that there's sin in your life.

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Even if deep down you know it, sometimes we like to convince ourselves that it's not sin.

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What should someone look for to determine whether or not they've idolized college football?

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If you have to watch every game, if everything has to be put on hold and you have to watch every game, the

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Bible says all things are lawful but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me but I will not be mastered by anything.

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It's become a mastery issue. This is the thing that you have to do in order to be okay. If you don't get to do it, then you're not going to be okay.

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You can't go to the baby shower or whatever.

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You can't go to the birthday party thing. There's a game there that's happening.

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You have to watch. When you're watching it, everyone must leave you alone, give you space, not talk to you, that kind of stuff.

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All that is if you have to do it, there's a mastery kind of issue there.

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If you're going to let your entire mood be affected by the outcome of some silly sports game, then you may need to take a break and not watch it.

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The Bible says let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. If this is some sort of temptation to lose your temper, some temptation to be frustrated, irritable.

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For many people, it's not just a temptation. It's a temptation that they think is perfectly understandable and allowable.

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It's a free pass. Free pass, yeah, just to be a grouch and a grump. If they lose,

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I'm not going to be very nice to be around, that kind of thing. There's that.

26:04

I think the Bible says whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is noble, think on these things.

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If your mind is constantly fixated on sports, if that's the thing that's running around in the background in your life to where it's just keeping track of everything that's happening, what teams are playing, who, all that stuff.

26:25

That's the thing that you get up and that's the thing that you're thinking about when you wake up. You're thinking about it as you go to bed.

26:32

That can really hinder a person's prayer life. It can really hinder a person's ability to read the

26:37

Bible, to study the Bible, to learn about God. It can hinder their ability to listen and pay attention to their spouse or their kids because in their mind they're constantly distracted by this entertainment thing that's running around in the background.

26:54

If they don't get to scratch that itch, they're going to be frustrated and grumpy. All those things are issues.

27:02

There's also just an issue of time investment. The Bible says we need to make the best use of our time because the days are evil.

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Let us think about how we walk, not as unwise but as wise, redeeming the kind for the days are evil.

27:20

God's created us. It says six days He's created us to work or to rest one day.

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There's a very real sense in which we should be working hard, engaging in productive things, spending the bulk of our time doing things that matter for this life and for the next.

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Engaging not in just trivial things that don't matter and filling the vast majority of our time with trivial things that don't matter.

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Because we live in such a prosperous society right now, most of us are spending a lot of our time being engaged in frivolity and everything else.

28:00

I think that most people need to learn to work harder and do more and accomplish more and make better use of our time.

28:10

That's not to say that there's no place for entertainment in general. It's just to say that those are some things to be thinking about as it relates to those things.

28:19

I do think there is some kind of place for entertainment. Maybe that's something to be said too as it relates to these things.

28:29

I could just say this. When I went to seminary, I basically had to spend so much of my time in Bible College and seminary learning and reading that I went through a period where I totally rejected entertainment for a while.

28:45

But I will say that there's a limit to the amount of information that you can cram in your head. If you're just constantly working non -stop.

28:54

Most people aren't in that situation. That's just a very rare situation that people are finding themselves in to where you're just pushing yourself.

29:01

You're a workaholic. You're constantly cramming in. You do have to have some kind of chance to relax.

29:07

I think there is some kind of place for entertainment. Ecclesiastes 3 .1 says for everything there's a season.

29:14

There's a time for every matter under heaven. A time to be born. A time to die. A time to plant. A time to pluck up what is planted.

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A time to kill. A time to heal. A time to break down. A time to build up. A time to weep. A time to laugh.

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A time to mourn. A time to dance. A time to laugh and a time to dance kind of thing. Those are kind of entertainment.

29:33

There's a time for that, but it shouldn't be the life -dominating pursuit that you have.

29:39

It shouldn't dominate your thoughts. It shouldn't dominate your feelings. It shouldn't dominate your time.

29:45

It shouldn't get the priority over your family and work and church and all of your various responsibilities.

29:53

Yeah, there's a time to feast. The Bible says essentially don't be overly wise.

30:00

Don't be overly righteous. There's a time for relaxing. God's given us all things richly to enjoy.

30:07

There's a time for these things, but the vast majority of Americans are spending so much time doing these.

30:13

If you're going to adopt some kind of hobby that really it's hard to do in moderation, you might want to think about getting a different kind of hobby.

30:22

How wise is it if every Saturday you have to do it? It'd be better just to not feed that obsession and addiction.

30:34

There may be some kind of wisdom in that, but if you can keep it in moderation, keep it in proportion, it's something you can take up and put down.

30:43

It's something that if your life doesn't revolve around, then it's no different than any other form of entertainment.

30:49

I think that's a good place to stop. I do think it is good to say still keep the entertainment does have its place in life.

31:03

Most people should be less. The pendulum definitely needs to swing back, but then you don't want to swing it so hard that you take it in the other direction and say all entertainment is off limits if you want to be a faithful Christian.

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But certainly for most people, entertainment in general is an idol, but then related to college football, it's a massive idol for so many people.

31:34

And there are very few people who have swung the other way. Most people need to cut it back significantly.

31:42

Right. So the lesson to be taken from this is whether it's college football, whether it's Netflix, Hallmark Christmas movies, video games,

31:53

I think even reading as entertainment, and here's one, listening to well, maybe you won't agree with me on this one, and that's fine if you don't, but I think there is listening to theological things like sermons, spiritual things like sermons and podcasts and whatnot as entertainment.

32:22

And I found myself in times before where I'll click on some podcast that I want to listen to that's about God, it's about some sort of theological concept, and I'll get five minutes into an hour -long thing and decide, well,

32:38

I'm bored, and then close it out. I think that can be I think it's still helpful to listen to those things, and that's probably better than the football thing, but I think that is a little that can be

32:53

I'd much rather people do that. Any day, but then there is a problem when if people have no place for if they're constantly being stimulated, whether it's good things or bad things or whatever else, let's say that you're constantly you can't function without listening to the sermons or whatever else on your phone, that would be a great problem to have that most people aren't having, but then you do, to that 0 .001

33:25

% of the population, I would say, you do have to have there are good things that happen when you turn everything off and think with your brain, and you pray, and there's good things that can happen there, too, but I would say that is a problem that is so rare but I do know people who have it, but it's just very, very rare, which

33:47

I wish you could replace the one with the other, but then, yeah, I agree with what you're saying. Okay, well,

33:53

I think that's a good place to end this episode on. Hopefully this has been encouraging for you to hear, and maybe some of you are even thinking,

34:01

I don't even like college football, why are you talking about this? Well, I think there is still something to be said about entertainment in general, and this conversation about college football that we tried to mostly contain to college football, it does apply to all other areas of entertainment.

34:22

Yeah, it's no good to criticize college football psychopaths if you're doing the same thing with Netflix.

34:27

Right, right. So we have to realize that they're the same thing, and then treat them both appropriately the way the

34:34

Bible would expect, the way God would expect us to. So that's the challenge for you guys listening, whether it's college football, whether it's

34:41

Netflix, Hallmark Christmas movies, video games, even sermons. If we're listening to sermons as entertainment to try and keep us from having to have moments of peace and think for ourselves and pray for ourselves and whatnot, then we do need to take that seriously.

34:58

So hopefully this has been encouraging for you guys. We want to thank all you guys for listening week in and week out and supporting the show, and we look forward to having you on the next one.

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This has been another episode of Bible Bashed. We hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion.

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We thank you for all your support and ask you to continue to like and subscribe to Bible Bashed and share our podcast with your friends and on social media.

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Please reach out to us with your questions, pushback, and potential topics for us to discuss in future episodes at BibleBashedPodcast at gmail .com

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35:42

Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.