God and the Super Bowl

The Super Bowl was last Sunday.  I watched the game—maybe you did, too.  If you’re an Eagles fan, I’m sure you were pretty happy about the outcome.  If you’re a Patriots fan, I’m sure you weren’t.  If you’re just a football fan, you probably enjoyed what was a close, interesting game.  If you’re not a football fan, maybe you didn’t watch it at all.  Maybe you couldn’t care less about the Super Bowl, had no idea who’s even playing, and had no desire to watch even one minute of it.

Whatever your feelings, it’s okay.  There’s nothing wrong with watching the Super Bowl, but there’s nothing wrong with not watching it, too.  We’re all different.  To each his own.  There are a lot of people who do watch it, though.  This year is was around one hundred eight million.  That’s a lot of people.

One of the things people will wonder about sometimes is whether God cares about the Super Bowl.  My answer is yes, but let me explain.  I’m not suggesting that God is a sports fan.  Nor am I suggesting that God is sitting in heaven rooting for one of the teams.  I also suspect that God thinks we devote more time and money and passion to sports generally, and the Super Bowl particularly, than we should.  I still think God cares about the Super bowl, though, and here’s why.

I start from the fact that God loves us.  Because God loves us, the things that are important to us become important to God.  God may not care about the Super Bowl because it’s the Super Bowl, but God cares about us, and so God cares about the things we care about.

Here’s what I mean.  My wife, Wanda, has zero interest in watching sports.  I don’t think she’d ever watched a ball game of any sort before she met me, and should I meet an untimely demise she will probably never watch another one.  Yet, because Wanda loves me, she watched the Super Bowl with me.  And she rooted for the team I rooted for.  In the same way, she wants the Minnesota Twins and the Minnesota Vikings to win their games.  Not because she cares about the games or about those teams, but because she cares about me.  She knows these things are important to me, and so they become important to her.

If Wanda, who is a mere human being (although clearly an exceptional one), can have that much love, how much more love must God have?  God, after all, is love.  All love comes from God, as it says in 1 John 4:7.  God has more love than any human being could ever have.  So, because so many people care about the Super Bowl, I think God loves us enough to care about it, too.

That’s true of all the other things people care about, too.  I think God is interested in music and art and all the other things people enjoy.  That’s why God gave us those things--so we can enjoy them.  God wants us to enjoy our lives.  God wants to enjoy them in certain ways, of course.  God wants us to enjoy them in ways that are good for us and for others, not in ways that are harmful to ourselves or others.  But God still wants us to enjoy our lives.  That’s why God gave us things that would help us enjoy them, such as music and art and, yes, sports.

So, if you watched the Super Bowl, I hope you enjoyed it.  If you didn’t watch it, I hope you enjoyed doing whatever you did.  But know that, whatever you’re interested in, God is probably interested in it, too.  Because God loves you.