Making the Team

An excerpt from Voddie Baucham's book called "Family Driven Faith”

Making the Team

Pastor Voddie Baucham

Another full-screen issue is found in the ever-so-popular arena of sports. Not long ago I had the privilege of sharing my views on Biblical parenting with several classes at one of the world’s largest seminaries. One of the things the students found most intriguing was the fact that my wife and I homeschool our children (more about that later). Several students asked me the same question: “What about sports?” Their curiosity was piqued even more when I responded, “Who cares?” They didn’t know if I was being provocative or if I had simply taken leave of my senses. Inevitably they would follow up with something like, “How do your kids learn teamwork and sportsmanship?” Or “How do your children learn to be competitive?” At this point I answered their question with another question. “How did Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, or George Washington learn those things?” Better yet, since Jesus is our ultimate model of Christian manhood, how did He learn those things? Was Jesus in Little League?

I’m not trying to say that it is necessarily wrong for children to play organized sports. My point is simply this: Being a member of an organized traveling baseball squad at age ten doesn’t add a single day to one’s life. In fact, many of these activities get in the way of much loftier pursuits. People turned boys into men and girls into women for most of recorded history without dragging them around town with their tongues hanging out in an effort to keep up with their overachieving, undereducated, theologically illiterate peers as they try to win trophies that will eventually gather dust in a basement somewhere.

If I teach my son to keep his eye on the ball but fail to teach him to keep his eyes on Christ, I have failed as a father. We must refuse to allow trivial, temporal pursuits to interfere with the main thing. Making the team is a tremendous achievement; however, it must be put in its proper perspective. No sports endeavor will ever be as important as becoming a man or woman of God.