Youth Sports Spending

Pastor Tim Keller defines an idol as anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God. It’s anything you seek to give you what only God can give. One way to discover our own personal counterfeit gods is to see where we are spending our time and our money. One idol that’s fairly unique to our culture and times is youth sports. According to the recent state of play report from the Aspen Institute, the average family pays out eight hundred and eighty three dollars a year in one child’s primary sport per season. Families with a household income over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year are spending over two thousand dollars on one child’s primary sport per season. All told, an estimated thirty to forty billion dollars a year is spent in the U.S. on children’s sports activities. Parents, sports are a good thing and we want our kids to exercise their abilities, but we don’t want to teach them that sports is the ultimate thing. Raise your children to worship God alone.