Helmets popping off at an alarming rate!

I had one of those “laugh-out-loud” (LOL) moments this morning when I read the above-titled article in USA Today. Through the first 7 weeks of this football season, there have been 1,152 instances of helmets coming off in the middle of play. No serious consequences yet, but the potential for injury is great.

The problem appears to be the fault of players who are keeping the four buckles on their chinstrap so loose, the helmet easily pops off when a 250 lb tackler hits them.  The NCAA Rules committee is in angst over what to do.  One suggestion is to give the players a ‘time-out’—sitting out the next play—to make insubordinate players take this seriously.

My regular readers will recall that I wrote a blog post last week about the helmet of salvation which protects our minds during spiritual battle. Today’s ‘story’ adds a witty wrinkle to it.  The secret to keeping your “spiritual” helmet is making sure it is securely fastened, or in biblical parlance, after "putting on" the Word, we must “hold fast” to it. Paul says, “you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you” (1 Cor. 15:2).  Jesus says, “ I am coming soon; hold fast to what you have, so that no one will take away your crown” (Rev. 3:11). When our helmet falls off, after an especially hard hit from the enemy, maybe it’s not such a bad idea to take a time-out to put our helmet back on and make sure it is securely fastened.

Keep Your Head

Rudyard Kipling once asked the question, ‘can you keep your head when all about you are losing theirs?’ His comment seems frighteningly fitting for our times. With the increasingly intense culture wars of our decade, has there ever been a time in history when we have been more sorely in need of keeping our heads?

To enable you and me to do so, Paul says (Eph. 6) God has given the “helmet of salvation.” The “helmet” is God’s way of protecting your mind and keeping your thoughts straight, i.e., keeping your head. It is a helmet of right thinking and a renewed mind (Rom. 12:2). Bible history is replete with those who, figuratively speaking, "lost their heads" because they were so much more mentally vulnerable than they thought they were. No surprise then that Jesus has given us a piece of armor to protect our minds!

Significantly, the “helmet” is one of the pieces of armor not fixed to the body, like the breastplate or belt. In other words, you have to put it on. And what soldier wouldn’t, if, in the throes of battle, he might lose his head? With the speed and intensity of anti-Christian arrows and spears coming at us, it is crucial to keep our helmet on, if we intend to keep our head.