I don’t follow golf very closely. L.P.G.A golf I follow even less closely, if that were possible. But last week, the female golf world, and its followers out there (I’m sure there are plenty of followers who just don’t run in my circles), received a shocking blow last week: Lorena Ochoa is retiring at the age of 28.

Now what makes it such a surprising departure is that she was currently ranked #1 in the world. And she is departing for a reason which has become so secondary in the world today: starting a family.

It’s not like Ochoa is taking a pay cut, marrying the CEO of AeroMexico. But I think any woman who would sacrifice the glory of a successful career for the sake of starting a family deserves at least a little pub on a small time blog-though I consider my followers “big time.”

Now I’m not saying that women can’t work and have families, but I can imagine being on the road with the L.P.G.A might make it a little difficult for a mom and child. Regardless, it is nice to see a woman who doesn’t HAVE to have a career in order to feel significant. Certainly a good reminder for both sexes in a career=identity world which we all live.

Last Friday night I was flipping through the channels. I love flipping. I can’t stay on one channel, especially during commercials. But this time it really paid off, as I came across a fascinating but quite sad interview on Larry King.

Jennifer Knapp, who I used to listen to while in college, (I even played her music while in a temporary makeshift band), just came out as a lesbian. She came out as a lesbian but professing Christian, though I really didn’t hear her actually use the name Jesus once. But maybe I just missed it.

The quality of her lyrics always astounded me as I had grown tired of lyrically bankrupt Christian music. And now she came out of the closet. The lyrics are still good, and I’ll still listen, but probably with some sadness now.

Things began to heat up as another evangelical pastor, who had blogged about her during the week, came on the scene to dialog and defend his views. I was thankful they got a mega-church pastor who had a head on his shoulders (I would have loved to see Tim Keller or John Piper though) and seemed truly motivated by love.

Then Ted Haggard, former mega-church pastor, who had to resign his pastorate because of his homosexual involvement, joined the party. Unfortunately he did nothing but muddy the waters of truth and just try to break down everything to “A Relationship with God. That’s what matters.” He glossed over Romans and completely missed the point. That made it even sadder and got me a bit riled up.

Anyhow, here are a few of my “takes” from the interview.

1. Lost in Translation: Jennifer Knapp recognized that the hang-up over homosexuality really hinges on what the bible really means when it refers to homosexuality. She argued there were even evangelical scholars who questioned whether we were truly translating this correctly. Supposedly this homosexuality really meant sodomy. I’ve not run across an evangelical scholar- who places himself below, not above the text-to land in this camp.

2. “This was not a choice.” This was more of Larry King’s take on homosexuality, though Knapp seemed to be OK with it. So in other words, if a feeling exists, then that’s who we really are. We should act on it. But such is the same reasoning for Sodomy, and for those who simply want to leave their spouses. If its a feeling, not a choice, you need to go for it. Probably a dangerous way to live.

There are a number of Christian resources out there who can help folks with same sex attraction, as well as a other sexual brokenness. One I highly recommend is Harvest USA.

3. Don’t elevate homosexuality. According to Paul in I Corinthians 6, neither the homosexual, nor slanderers, nor greedy, nor adulterers, nor swindlers will inherit the Kingdom of God….and such were some of you. Now I’m totally aware the difficulty of leaving a homosexual lifestyle behind, but let’s remember that we probably place more of a stigma on this particular sin and ignore other sins which the bible presents as equally as heinous.

4. Talking past. For the most part, the pastor and Jennifer Knapp seemed to be talking past each other. Jennifer claimed she wasn’t justifying her sin; the pastor continued to affirm she was. So if what she was doing WEREN’T a sin, then nothing really needed to be said.

I think the hardest part for a homosexual, or for most Americans for that matter, is that they’ve never seen someone who believes them to be wrong, yet still wants to be their close friend.

That’s just not many folks’ paradigm. Most haven’t seen someone who could disagree with their lifestyle, but still love them as a person, want to get to know them, and affirm their worth.
But if we’re never allowed to disagree and become friends with people who we don’t agree with, or we refuse to become friends with people we disagree with, the battle will just stalemate. And the scene from Larry King will just be a microcosm of Christian-Gay relations unless something changes. At least we have control over the latter.

Some of my pre-West VA blog followers respected this man Myron Rolle for choosing to go to Oxford instead of entering the NFL draft last year. I’m not sure I would have taken that route, but he’ll get to see exactly how much it helped/hurt him this weekend as the NFL draft starts tonight.

This former FSU Rhodes Scholar athlete, made smaller news this week by praising the NFL commissioner for punishing Ben Rothlesberger, calling the move “awesome.” Sheriff Goodell suspended “Big Ben” for 6 games this season for his involvement with an under-age lass in a Georgia nightclub. Since the law provides so many loopholes for wealthy athletes, and sometimes gets undercut by yahoo cops, who actually resign after investigations (that’s what happened with Rothlesberger’s latest case), it doesn’t always provide justice. At least one cannot escape a lesser justice from the NFL.

Maybe the Pope could get some pointers from Goodell in cleaning up the priesthood, as the NFL seem to be quite aggressive in filling in where the law falls short. Maybe the papacy should be his next stop?

Tim Tebow’s eye-black contained scripture verses which would be googled or searched for by thousands of fans following his football games last year. One announcer even read the scripture referenced by his eye-black.

This will not happen this year in college football (and probably not in the NFL because they have uniform nazi’s). Not because Tebow’s graduating and will soon be drafted by some fortunate NFL team. It will happen because the NCAA is now banning eye-black with any messages, logos, or scripture references.

No real reason is given for the ban in this article. The eye-black rule comes into play along with changes on kick-off coverages and taunting. Perhaps the NCAA didn’t want any sponsors getting free advertising? That’s understandable. Or they didn’t want players promoting things the NCAA didn’t want promoted? That’s understandable. Or they didn’t want Jesus to get any pub? That’s understandable from a non-Christian worldview, but it seems the ultimate motive might be to attempt to privatize religious expression.

Nevertheless ministry is much more than wearing Christian T-shirts, fish emblems on cars, or eye-black. It’s messy, life-on-life, self-sacrificial, loving, other-centered. As a result, we need not ever fear or even get overly frustrated with NCAA or government trying to curtail religious expression. Neither have the power to destroy ministry opportunities. They just may create new ones.

I haven’t rooted for the Red Sox since they came back and beat the Yankees and won their first world series. But I’ll be rooting for Red Sox outfielder Mike Cameron, who is on the Disabled List due to a kidney stone. After having a kidney stone last Friday, which I may/may not have already passed, I got re-acquainted with the power of these rocks. These tiny jagged boulders which barrel their way down through the ureter, in the end, produce a new kind non-combatant Band of Brothers. Stone Brothers. And you can’t, “go against the family.” I salute you Mike, and hope you do well this season, just not against the Tampa Bay Rays.

I watched a clever movie the other day called The Invention of Lying. The story takes place in a world where everyone only tells the whole truth all of the time. There is no tact or grace in that display of truth, but at least everything you see is what you get. With one exception. One person somehow develops the ability to lie and uses it to his advantage throughout the movie.

The liar, who ironically is the only one who can see the world as it truly is, finds himself fed up with a clearly materialistic-Darwinist worldview. His love interest, Jennifer Garner, looks not for love in a quest to marry, but simply to find a mate (Rob Lowe) who will ensure her the greatest possibility of reproducing good looking kids: in her words passing on the “best genetic code.”

Obviously the main character (Ricky Gervais, from the British series “The Office”), who has a plump face and “flat nose,” can’t deal with life in this world. But he also can’t stand to continue to prophetically perpetuate a Theistic worldview where “the big man in the sky” rewards and punishes people based upon what they have done.

I think the movie shows the ridiculousness of both Darwinist and stereotypical religious/ theistic worldviews. Yet in the end, it exposes the lack of any rationality which would justify rising above the materialistic world where wedding vows include the deep commitment to stay married “as long I feel like.”

A unique and clever movie indeed (it’s nothing like Liar, Liar) and worth the watch. Let me know if you saw things differently or had a different opinion.

I feel kind of bad posting this video, because it was taken very early in Connar’s basketball career. Because basically all he does these days is talk about “ball” and shoot “ball,” he’s actually now quite accurate from inside the 3 point line. Regardless, he makes a few shots here in his rookie debut.

I used to call West Virginia basketball coach Bob Huggins, “Thuggins.” That’s primarily who he recruited-in my opinion-while at the University of Cincinnati. With a sub-par graduation rate for his players, I never really thought too highly of him. Then I moved to West Va and began to follow his new team. And so I followed “Thuggins” too. My opinions of this coach changed drastically as he wisely coached players who did not bear any resemblance to the top athletes of other programs. Then the Final Four came and this happened.

All American Da’sean Butler tore his A.C.L. while trying to avoid a charge. He didn’t and his college career ended in agony. The video depicts Huggins intimately holding Butler’s head up and somewhat caressing his face with his fingers. Some folks like sports reporter Dan Patrick have called it “creepy.” And perhaps it was a bit over the top?

But there was never any doubt in Butler’s mind that he indeed had a coach who would be with him in his pain and suffering. I don’t see any in the NFL who care that much. They try to distance themselves from the players, with the exception of the Buc’s coach (who has won all of the 3 games).

Of all the religions, only Christianity has a God who suffered. And as a result, he is able to be right there with us in our suffering. Holding, and caressing, and whispering, “Behold, I am making all things new. And I’m right here with you as one who suffered too.”

Thanks Huggins. I guess you lived up to your name, so I’ll drop the “T.” Most of the time. I like the nickname too much to entirely get rid of it, but it will from now on, only be in jest. After all, any coach who visits coal miners families in the midst of their suffering is cool with me.

Brief Easter devotion here on the mysterious thief on the cross who had a “change of heart.” It’s a good one.

Last week, our senior pastor Barret mentioned the name “Good Friday” and how weird that name sounds. Right now its sunny in West VA-which I’m just loving now-and so the day looks “good” to me. But for that first Good Friday, it was anything but good for Jesus. And to be honest, because the disciples didn’t understand, it was anything but good for them. How could something so brutal, so devastating be “good?” Even the day looked anything but “good;” instead a darkness fell over the land (Matt 27:45).

But it was good for them that Jesus leave. His words, translated into English in the ESV, are “It is to your advantage that I go away….(John 16:7)” If he didn’t “go away” via the cross, we’d not have forgiveness, a new power, a new family, a new world one day, and of course a new Spirit within us.

And it was good for Jesus in that he purchased redemption of the whole cosmos (Col 1) and all death will one day be under his feet (I Cor 15), that every knee will bow and give glory to Him (Phil 2), and that the church he put His love on before the foundation of the world would cherish Him forever at a wedding feast (Rev 19).

It probably took the disciples a little while to consider that Friday a “Good Friday.” Maybe not by the next Friday, but perhaps the Friday after next? At the very latest it would have taken seven Fridays (till Pentecost-the giving of the Holy Spirit).

Good Friday is our example of how God can turn injustice into victory for His people. It is indeed a Good Friday.