What started this for me was something a friend said Sunday morning.

We bumped into each other at a restaurant after church. He said, “I’ll miss your sermon tonight. I’ll be in such-and-such a city.” Oh? what’s going on there?

“Fantasy football. Our statewide meeting.”

I said, “You have meetings for these things? If they’re fantasy, can’t you just fantasize you’re there?”

He could tell in a heartbeat that I have no knowledge of how fantasy football works and absolutely zero appreciation for the sport. After all, is it a sport if it exists only in the fantasy world?

He smiled, “I have to be there. I’m the reigning champ.”

Might as well have remarked about weather conditions on Mars.  He lost me.

Readers will understand if I say you fantasy-football people have lost your cotton-picking minds.

Now, real football–well, that’s something else!

Or, then again, is it?

The hard fact of the matter is that real football–or baseball or most other competitive sports–exists in a zone completely separate from and unrelated to reality. Such games have nothing whatsoever to do with real life.

It’s true we can draw parallels about life from these activities. Football is a team sport which teaches discipline and excellence. Baseball is a team sport too but it relies more on individual effort. In golf, you compete not against the other players so much as against the course. That sort of thing.

However, at the end of the day (after the World Series or the Super Bowl or the college football championship), who won all the marbles has very little to do with anything. The other teams pack up their equipment and board their buses and head back home. The family is there waiting for them, they eat dinner at Mama’s and next day, the kids go to school.

As a pastor doing children’s sermons, I used to tell the little ones gathered near the pulpit that one indication a person is growing up is that he/she can tell the difference in reality and make-believe. That’s how I got into trouble.

I said, “The Easter bunny–is he real or make believe?” They shouted, “Make believe!” “Okay, how about Frosty the snowman and Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer?” “Make believe!”

“And how about Santa Claus and his elves?” Most called out a hearty, “Make believe!” However, a surprising number of children stared at me as though they were not believing their ears. (I had to have a called meeting with some upset parents after that. They felt–rightly so–that it was their privilege to introduce this aspect of reality to their little ones, and to do so in their own timing. It was not to be done in a public setting by the pastor without their approval.)

I went on with the children, “And how about Joseph and Mary and Baby Jesus in the manger?” “Real!” They got that one right.

So, having offended not only the parents of little Santa-believers but every sports-lover in the house, let me hasten to add that I love football in the fall and baseball in the summer.

But at the end of the day–when the game ends and we head home–we’d better know what is real and what is make believe.

If we don’t know the difference, we’ll make some serious mistakes in our choices and throw our private lives into turmoil.

If we do not know the difference in real and make believe, we will spend money we do not have (or should be directing toward other things) on tickets to ball games and all the trappings of our favorite teams.  I’m remembering at the conclusion of one Mississippi State-Ole Miss game we were attending, a well-dressed man stood there as though in shock. Someone heard him say to himself, “I just lost the house.”

If we do not know the difference in real and make believe, we will abandon our family to sit in the stands and cheer our team on at crucial times when our loved ones need us. Or, we’ll coerce them into coming along against their will in order to ease our guilt.  There is a father in Angola prison who murdered his son some years back.  The newspaper said they were arguing about the outcome of a football game.

If we do not know the difference in real and make believe, we will go to all kinds of trouble to get to Saturday’s games and then skip church on Sunday because we’re too tired.

If we do not know the difference in real and make believe, we will spend God’s money–His tithes and offerings–on material things that will soon be old and outdated so we can identify with the crowd around us.

If we do not know the difference in real and make believe, we will proudly wear our team shirts to school or to work, but shy away from anything in our appearance that would identify us as a follower of Jesus Christ.

I don’t know if I am able to say this strongly enough. But here goes:

Church is reality. The message of the Gospel is reality.  Your standing before God and your relationship with Jesus Christ is reality.

Sadly, even pastors sometimes get it wrong and relate to their teams as though all this is real and really matters. They then offer up shoddy service to God on Sunday as though this is make-believe.

I’m not denying that church services can be boring and shallow and insulting in their content. Not everyone who leads a worship service gets it.

But, look around at the stadium. It’s the same way there. Not everyone who paid big money for a seat is following the game or even cares about the outcome. Some are there with a friend, some are people-watchers, some come out of school loyalty or for the atmosphere. But that does not stop the players from giving their all or the true fans from enjoying the competition.  (My wife and I were in Camden Yards baseball stadium some years ago, and were surprised to find fans hanging out in the lounges watching the game on television monitors, something presumably they could have done in their living rooms at home. Go figure.)

Don’t let the occasional boring sermon or stale service fool you. Just because they’re poorly done at times does not cancel the reality they’re dealing with.

One way you can tell you are mature is by your appreciation for the vast gulf between make believe and reality.

“If you extract the precious from the worthless, you shall become my spokesman” (Jeremiah 15:19). 

Performing this operation–extracting the precious from the worthless–requires being able to tell the difference, then having the self-discipline to make the hard choices.

Finally, just to drive home the point,, how did the time you spent in God’s Word this morning compare with the amount of time you spent reading the sports pages?

Case dismissed.