RE: NFL - Sports Role Models
DeepSix > 04-09-2019, 12:15 PM
Sorry for coming late to the party on this topic. I was looking over the forum today, saw this thread, and remembered I had intended to write a reply to it a long time ago. But forgot.
But anyway, in regards to the OP - I agree. Professional athletes and entertainers make very poor role models. And they are lifted up as such far too often. Generally for all the wrong reasons.
And yet, I can remember a time when even those of us in the world of Fundamentalist Christianity did exactly the same thing. In fact we did it with enthusiasm.
At the churches I attended during the late 60s and early 70s we had special Sundays every few months where professional athletes, entertainers, and other famous people who claimed to be born again Christians, were invited to come and give their personal testimonies. Some even gave sensational demonstrations of their skills. And the more sensational the whole thing was the better we liked it.
During those years I saw the coach of a Super Bowl winning NFL team. The Heisman winning quarterback of the same team. The strongest man in the world. The tallest man in the world, who also happened to be an actor. The shortest actor in Hollywood at the time, who had starred in Cowboy and Western movies. A former Miss America. Just to name a few.
After I left for college I heard they brought in a martial arts expert who laid on a bed of nails while an assistant took a sledge hammer and smashed a block of ice resting on his chest.
Each of these people gave a brief testimony of how they came to be saved. And each was held up to the young people of the church as a potential role model.
But unfortunately, just like many worldly parents, Christian parents who made athletes and other celebrities, roll models for their own children, ended up regretting it in the end. They frequently found themselves having to do extensive damage control with their children after said lifted up athlete or celeb' fell into debauchery and depravity.
- or was discovered doing somethings Christians might have frowned upon at the time, that would be equivalent to the NFL players of today, refusing to stand for the National Anthem.
I am not condemning the parents. I understand why it was done. At the time teenagers, even in Christian churches, were becoming obsessed with rock and roll music, rock and roll musicians, and other negative aspects of the worlds culture. Rock and roll had become raunchy to the point even liberal politicians were alarmed.
For most teenagers, even many Christian teenagers, the most debased of the rock stars were becoming their roll models, even their idols. And it didn't even seem to matter to them that one of the biggest rock stars of that time, Alice Cooper, even admitted in a comment on live television that rock and roll music was nothing more than sex, drugs and violence, put to music.
Parents and Pastors alike wanted something, or someone, that could compete for their young peoples hearts and minds, draw their attention away from the carnality of the world, yet also convey a measure of decency and spirituality. Professional athletes and a few other famous types who claimed a Christian background seemed a perfect choice.
Looking back, did it do any of us any good? Did it do Christianity or the world of Fundamentalism any good?
On the contrary, at my public high school I remember hearing our church and others like it mocked and criticized for having such people "perform" at our church. The most frequent comment was that churches had now substituted showmanship and sensationalism for spirituality. Church had become a place for entertainment rather than worship.
Keep in mind this criticism was coming from public high school teenagers at the time.. in a decade prior to the increase in popularity of CCM or "Christian" Rock and Roll, and long before the first set of drums and bands with electric guitars appeared behind the pulpit as a regular part of the Sunday morning service.
Americans, like no other culture of the present age, are obsessed with entertainment.
And sadly, that includes American churches.