How 'bout that awful Patriots' D last night? Along the Mexican border, I mean...

Did you see the game last night?

The Patriots got smoked. They looked terrible. They couldn't score against the Kansas City Chiefs and they couldn't stop the Chiefs from scoring on them.

So bad was it, in fact, that Tom Brady's future has been called in question. "Is the Brady era over" is the question on the minds of millions today.

Make that tens of millions.

Maybe even hundred of millions globally...all while ISIS, ISIL, Ebola, and whatever else gets the urge to stroll on into the U.S. is freely allowed (and encouraged?) to do so by way of one of the most porous defenses in the history of defenses.

So how is it that we can be so zoned in and focused on the Chiefs, Patriots and Tom Brady while this sort of thing is going on? Why are we so prone to action and open demonstrations of passion where our favorite teams are concerned, but we've lost the appetite for serious, open debate and action over the things that actually matter to the life and death of people, families, and cultures?

Put another way: What are we smoking? (Colorado and Seattle residents need not respond to that one.)

Don't get me wrong - I do love me some football!

I think it's the best team sport ever. I could effortlessly write a loooong (and possibly never-ending) article as to why. But I won't do that here, for a variety of reasons, one of which I would like to thank God here in print for right now: Football does not consume me as it once did. It does not inspire my passion or command my attention as it once did. Nowhere close...and for that, I give God all the credit and glory.

Lord knows I would never have chosen the new and better passions and interests that now naturally inspire the level of attention that, only a few years back, would have been easily and happily spent instead fawning over the splendor, majesty, and significance of...football.

So it is that I wanted to take a moment to encourage my fellow football fans not to buy into our modern day take on Rome's bread and circuses. Keep your games in perspective and pray that God will give you new and better passions with each passing day.

Even the games we love only become better and more beautiful when kept in their proper, healthy context.

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When they are not kept in that place, they become idols, and the idol of sport in America is right now being used mightily to distract us from what matters most and what we are supposed to be doing with our time instead of...watching football and football coverage for hours on end.

Our culture is being murdered before our very eyes.

Let's do something about it...the only something that can actually save us from this incredible, growing darkness: Let's strive by the grace of God to faithfully proclaim His Gospel and advance His Great Commission, teaching everyone to obey all that He has lovingly commanded, so that we might have true, lasting peace, prosperity, joy...and even, Lord willing, football.

Until and unless we take that one and only route to restoration, we will continue to lose everything that was once even remotely good here in America.