Category: christian living

The NBA, Sterling, Race and Gay Marriage?

On By joshnnomiIn christian living, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Yesterday NBA Commissioner, Adam Silver delivered a much needed decision against LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling for racial comments he made. I whole heartedly agree with this decision, there is no room for racism in our communities, churches, states or nation. Furthermore, we should not tolerate it in the public square and although the comments were made in private, it is foolish to think his beliefs and views don’t seep into his public life.

With that being said, as I was listening to the decision come across the air waves I immediately thought “could this happen to an owner who is a proponent of traditional marriage?” Now if an owner made bigoted and hateful remarks about the LGBT community like Sterling did with race then yes. But if an owner treats all people with respect, but because of his Christian faith is proponent of traditional marriage and therefore against gay marriage, would that be enough to strip an owner of his team? Furthermore should holding to a Biblical view of marriage be considered on the same level as Sterling’s comments?

Why even bring this up? Dr. Russell Moore makes a great point in his article Same-Sex Marriage and the Future,

Above all, we must prepare people for what the future holds, when Christian beliefs about marriage and sexuality aren’t part of the cultural consensus but are seen to be strange and freakish and even subversive

As Christians we need to be prepared to answer these sort of questions not because they are coming, but because they are here now.

As this topic marinated in my mind for the rest of the afternoon and again this morning. I was reminded as I was listening to the sports radio show “The Herd” hosted by Colin Cowherd that such an owner does exist. Rich DeVos, owner of the Orlando Magic is a Christian and a proponent of traditional marriage. As Colin pointed out, it well be interesting to see how far the NBA will go with this. I too think it will be interesting how something like this plays out. The culture and society we live in, is increasingly pushing for the acceptance of gay marriage. We have already seen Mozilla let go of their CEO for supporting traditional marriage, could the same happen to an owner of a sports franchise? What do you think?

The Search For New and Meaningful

On By joshnnomiIn christian living2 Comments

One of the books I am currently reading is Captivated: Beholding the Mystery of Jesus Death and Resurrection and in the book Thabiti Anyabwile makes a thought provoking statement. “New and meaningful are often two different things. Many of us have accustomed to thinking that meaning comes from newness.”

In our society we have seemed to attach meaningful to newness. Our culture seems to be looking for the new way to lose weight, new way to get rich, new way to you fill in the blank. But just because something is new doesn’t mean it is meaningful and just because something works doesn’t make it ethical.

Some in the Church have seem to bought into this idea that new equals meaningful. We are always looking for that new book to take us to the next level. Looking forward to retreats, camps and conferences for a new experience. Even buy into some personalities that say they have a new word from God. But new isn’t always meaningful and in some cases the new that some people get involved in is down right dangerous.

We have seen in the Scriptures people get deceived by some that claim newness. Jude points to the fact that the false teachers in his day were relying on dreams and visions to proclaim their new revelation (Jude 8). The Apostle John encourages us to test the spirit (1 John 4). We are to discern weather the newness we are reading, listening to, or watching is true or false.

The call to discern makes the assumption we know truth. In order to discern truth from error, we need to know the truth. As believers we need to become so familiar with God and his Word that were not sucked in by the empty promises of the new.

Now, I read new books all the time, reading is one of my passions, especially when it comes to learning about God and his Word. But godly books will not point to new revelation but to God’s revealed Word. They will expound on the old truths in the Scripture that are very meaningful. They will point us to the words of truth which in turn point us to the Person of truth, Jesus Christ.