My children have been in Christian school all of their lives save for just a couple of years when they were very young, years that we homeschooled them. For our family, it was worth every sacrifice along the way to make this possible, and we are thrilled both with the superb education they received and the godly environment they were in while they received it.
Sports always played a big role in the lives of my kids. Both Christian schools they attended and attend had great athletic programs, and my kids enjoyed basketball, volleyball and other sports along the way.
Due to these sports programs, we have had many home games and have also traveled far and wide to other Christian schools for games. This is to say that I have seen tens of thousands of Christian parents and family and friends in the tense environment of athletic contests through the years. And it is in the midst of all of those games that I have perhaps come to understand why a rather persnickety old man from the days of my youth usually called sports either basket-Baal or foot-Baal or base-Baal or some other form of the name of that idolatrous deity of yore.
I am fairly certain that when he spoke of sports in those terms, he was noticing the propensity people had to place sports above attendance in the house of God. But in Christian school that is never the issue. No, my thoughts along those lines deal with how very common it seems for professing Christians (even preachers!) to make absolute heathens of themselves while attending an athletic contest in which their children or their school or their church is engaged.
I literally cannot print many of the words I have heard people shriek.