Does God Care about Sports?

I want to start off by saying this is the kind of theological article I don’t like to write. I like to write things that have an unassailable proof from Scripture backing it up. That being said, I also like to write about  things that interest me, and this is certainly one of them. Feel free to comment if you disagree or want to discuss further.

I am a sports fan. I don’t watch or follow sports as much as I used to, but I still consider myself a fan. I grew up in southeast Missouri, where it seems the sun rises and sets on the St. Louis Cardinals. Some of my most treasured memories from my childhood involve sitting around the table with Grandpa or riding in the car with Dad listening to Jack Buck announcing the Cardinals games. Most of the time when I was a kid the Cardinals weren’t very good, but that didn’t seem to matter. It was more about sharing common bonds with family and people around you and spending time with a trusted friend. I can’t tell you how many times Jack Buck helped me with my homework, even in college, by saying just the right thing at the right time.

As a believer though, I (and all of us) have to ask myself if God cares about sports. Unfortunately in my experience this question usually arises from a well-meaning brother or sister in Christ who doesn’t like sports trying to criticize or demean those of us believers who do like sports. Most Christians I know have the idea that God does not care at all about sports. What happens in a particular game or season does not matter to God in any way. I think this thinking arose to keep people from praying for God to help their team win.

I think praying for your team to win is pretty much an exact definition of asking amiss that James warned us about in his epistIe. But I also think the idea that God never interferes in sports events is a flawed idea as well. I acknowledge that in the grand scheme of things as far as God is concerned, who wins or loses in a sporting event is very low on God’s priority list. But I want to propose to you that God can and does take an interest in sports when He can use them to build his Kingdom or bring joy to his people. I want to demonstrate this with a true story that happened 20 years ago today.

Tuesday, April 14, 1998, I was winding down my first year away at college. (I went to community college two years before.) It was a rough year for me. It was my first time being so far from home. By April I had been gone long enough that I had gotten over the raw emotions of being gone, but the feelings still nagged. April 14 happened to be a particularly rough day. I honestly don’t remember any particularly bad details - you’ll understand why in a moment - I just remember it as a bad day. I was really in a bad state of mind.

That night, I had the radio on, listening to the Cardinals game (so grateful for the massive signal of KMOX). Of course 1998 was the year that Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa broke the record for the most home runs in a season, but that was a long way into the future in April. I wasn’t paying very close attention to the game, but I did notice Mark McGwire hit a home run early in the game. Then later he hit another home run to give the Cardinals the lead, which made me happy.

By the eighth inning the game was a blowout, and the Cardinals certainly weren’t going to bat in the bottom of the ninth. So in the bottom of the eighth, McGwire came to bat one last time. I was listening pretty intently just to see if something would happen. Sure enough, a third homer for that night.

As I was quietly celebrating - I did have roommates after all, but they were used to me listening to baseball - celebrating the three home runs I heard a voice, clear as day, in my heart tell me, “That was for you.” To this day I believe that voice was from God. And why not? Looking at the box score for that game, the Cardinals were already up by 6 runs in the eighth when that third home run was hit. Would it really matter to God if the final score was 11-5 or 15-5? No. But do I matter to God? I am humbled and thankful that the answer is yes. And if the Lord knew he could raise my spirits by having that little ball go over the fence, why not give it a little extra breeze on the way out?

We evangelicals agree that God is in control of everything, don’t we? We agree that God works in big and small ways for our good and for the good of the church. Then why do some people think that the sports arena is so sacrosanct that God never gets involved? I think the people who think that God does not care are the ones who place sports on a higher pedestal than they should be. God can work in a myriad of other ways, but what happens on the sports field is always pure athleticism? Come on. Why do you limit God?

All I’m saying is this: when you’re watching your team lose a big game, it’s OK to be disappointed. But it might make you a little happier to know that in the opposing city there may be a dear old saint watching in a hospital bed surrounded by his family, and God is giving the family one last precious memory before he goes home to be with Jesus. Or maybe there is a genuine seeker in the stands who wants to know God is real. Or maybe it’s a thousand other scenarios.Those scenarios won’t get talked about the next morning on ESPN or in next week’s hometown newspaper, but I believe they are more real than the strategy points that people discuss.

God is at work in the big things and the tiny things in life all the time. He is bringing his Kingdom to fruition in more ways than we can imagine. God's sovereign power over the affairs of this world means he controls everything, including, as Jesus said, when a sparrow falls out of a tree. If God can bring something good into the lives of his people and even people who don't yet know him, through a sporting event, whether it is the Super Bowl or the local peewee football league, why wouldn't he? When we pretend these things don’t matter to God, all we really do is limit him in our own minds.

The Crook, the Clown Show and Mo Brooks

Today is the primary election day in Alabama for the race to fill the unexpired term of US Senator Jeff Sessions, who was appointed Attorney General by President Trump. The three main candidates in the Republican primary are Luther Strange, who was appointed by former Governor Bentley to temporarily fill the seat, Roy Moore, best known as the judge who tried to put a 10 Commandments monument in the state Supreme Court building, and Mo Brooks, a congressman from Huntsville.

Personally I'm not a fan of any of the three candidates. Ordinarily I would research the lesser known candidates on the ballot and vote for one of them. But the Alabama election rules mean there will in all likelihood be a runoff in a few weeks between the two top vote winners. That's why I am reluctantly casting my vote for Brooks. When it comes down to a choice between a run-of-the-mill politician, a crook and a clown show, the politician wins.

The Crook

Before his appointment, Luther Strange was the Alabama Attorney General. When Trump won the election in November, everyone knew that Jeff Sessions would be part of Trump’s Cabinet, which meant there would be an opening in the US Senate seat. At the same time, the Alabama Legislature was contemplating impeachment of Governor Bentley .

In November (but before the presidential election) Strange announced his office was investigating Bentley. The Legislature agreed to postpone action until Strange's investigation was complete. Before the investigation was complete, Bentley appointed Strange to Sessions' seat. Strange insists there was no quid pro quo, but it shouldn't take a law degree to see the obvious conflict of interest. At the press conference announcing his appointment, Strange denied that his office was investigating the governor, but his successor as Attorney General confirmed there was and recused himself because he was appointed by the governor. After this fiasco, the Legislature went ahead with its own impeachment proceedings. Bentley agreed to a plea bargain and resignation a few weeks later.

The Clown Show

Roy Moore is more principled person than Strange, I will grant him that. But his penchant for needlessly creating controversy disqualifies him as a candidate, in my mind. In 2001, while he was Alabama Chief Justice (an elected position in Alabama), Moore made national headlines by loudly and publicly erecting a 10 Commandments monument in the lobby of the Alabama Supreme Court building. The pompous way Moore did it (including selling videotapes featuring the installation and his speech) invited controversy. Atheist organizations sued and successfully persuaded a federal court that it should be removed. After Moore lost all appeals he still refused to remove it, resulting in his removal by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary in 2003.

After a few years in obscurity (which included losing a race for governor and flirting with a third-party run for president) Moore ran again for Chief Justice in 2012 and won again. Once again he couldn’t stay out of the headlines. After the US Supreme Court legalized homosexual marriage, Moore instructed county officials not to issue or honor them in Alabama. After numerous court proceedings, Moore was forced to resign earlier this year, just in time to run for Senate. The Senate would be a perfect platform for Moore’s brand of political opportunism: he could make speeches and vote however he wants without having to do any of those annoying things like obey the law as an officer of the court.

If doing public good was the only criterion for Senate, then I would probably vote for the leading Democratic candidate Doug Jones, a long-time prosecutor best known for successfully prosecuting numerous people who committed criminal acts during the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s and were never charged or had charges dropped. But I cannot vote for a candidate who proudly says on his Web site, “I stand with Planned Parenthood.”

So Mo Brooks it is. If Brooks makes the runoff against either Strange or Moore, I will vote for him again. If Strange and Moore make the runoff, I will not vote. If Strange or Moore win the GOP nomination, I will vote for the Libertarian candidate or push through an empty ballot. I am definitely a “never Strange” and a “never Moore” Alabama voter.

Can't We Be Anti-Porn AND Anti-Censorship?

Next time a politician tells you stuff
he thinks you want to hear, think
about Homer Stokes from
"O Brother Where Art Thou?"
(If I knew who to credit with this
awesome illustration I would gladly
do so.)

This week the Alabama State Legislature will hold public hearings on HB 428, a law which proposes to install a porn filter on every Internet-capable device sold in the state starting next year. The law allows for the filter to be removed if the buyer pays $20 to the state (the business is allowed to add a "reasonable" fee). Apparently there are similar laws being proposed in at least two other states.

Let me be perfectly clear: I am against pornography. It is a shame that it is so commonplace on the Internet. The law specifically mentions child pornography and revenge porn. I think all sensible people agree that those are specifically heinous. I am not against people voluntarily installing filter programs on their computers or their children's. In a lot of cases that's probably a wise idea.

But this law is so fraught with problems, loopholes and unexplained realities that if it passes (which it shouldn't, but the Alabama Legislature isn't exactly known for wisdom) it will create more problems than it solves and do way more harm than good.

First of all, the bill requires manufacturers to install the filter. This is really untenable. It is unreasonable to expect even big sellers like Apple, Dell, Samsung, etc., to design specific devices for Alabama, to say nothing of the smaller companies that produce cheaper phones and tablets. They would effectively be put out of business in this state, which would adversely affect the poorest residents who rely on the cheaper devices to access the Internet.

Secondly, the bill says nothing about online sales. There is nothing in the bill that says Amazon and other online retailers have to comply with this law. This is sure to hurt Alabama businesses, as will residents driving to Chattanooga, Pensacola
or somewhere else to buy their devices. There aren't that many places in Alabama that aren't within an hour and a half from some state line.

The law also doesn't address jailbreaking or rooting the device to get rid of the filter without paying the fee. The people who are the real targets of this bill are tech-savvy enough to get around this quite easily. Meanwhile very few will actually pay to get the filter off their device, because who wants to publicly hand their phone across the counter to someone and ask for the filter to be taken off? The public shame will be enough to keep most people away.

More importantly, the simple fact of the matter is that no filter program really works like it is promised to. Filtering software tends to overreach and harm honest users while the real bad guys quickly figure out ways around it. Filters are notorious for keeping helpful information away from people who are in sexually abusive or exploitative situations. If someone can't find a description of what they are experiencing because it is blocked by a filter, how will they know to get out? Believe me, it happens. Abusers have been known to keep filters on their victims' computers.

One thing that is provided for in the law is a means by which people can report offensive material that escapes the filter. Manufacturers are required to update the filter from time to time to meet the concerns raised by citizens. I don't know about you, but I for sure don't want this guy in charge of what I and my family can and cannot look at on the Internet.

Finally, we don't live in a perfect world. People need to be informed about what is going on in the world around them. And sometimes the things they do might not pass muster with an Internet filter. Take, for example, Governor Bentley's affair with a state employee. Several TV and radio stations in the state refused to play the tapes of the lurid conversations for fear of an FCC citation. I have heard a brief snippet of the tapes. 30 seconds was about all I could stomach. How many people are unaware of Bentley's wrongdoing because of those stations' decisions? Maybe that is the reason there isn't more public pressure to impeach him?

One would think the filter would at least be similar to the FCC standard, so ironically the details of the governor's lurid relationship would be off-limits to Alabama residents if this law were to pass. Maybe this is the whole point of the law: the primary sponsor of the bill is a Republican. But honestly, I don't give him or most of the Alabama GOP credit for enough smarts to come up with such a plan to keep the governor's indiscretions under wraps. I think it's simpler to say this law is just grandstanding to please religious conservatives. The GOP thinks they will not consider the real-world ramifications. Instead they will see the GOP standing up against porn and will shower them with support in next year's election. Sadly, they think that because of years of experience in seeing it work.

If you want to see grandstanding in action (or if you have no idea what the above picture is about, watch this clip from "O Brother Where Art Thou":

The fact of the matter is there are already laws against child porn, revenge porn, solicitation and all the other big problems this bill claims to address. Instead of creating a new law that has the potential to harm local businesses, harm the poor and do little to address the real issues, state and local law enforcement should do more to enforce those laws, and the legislature can adjust those laws as may prove necessary. I know that's easier said than done, but passing this particular bill
will help no one, at least no one in Alabama.

LG V20 Review: Two Great Screens and One Lousy Speaker

About three weeks ago my phone that I'd had for a year and a half bit the dust. I was expecting to get a few more weeks' use out of it before I bought something different with my own money and got out from under the purchase plan with T-Mobile. Unfortunately it went into full bootloop, so I had to get a new one right away from the phone store. There weren't a whole lot of choices for a guy like me who doesn't want Apple or Samsung, so I went with the LG V20.

My LG V20. Note particularly the "second screen" at the top with various function controls.

First Impressions

This phone is advertised as a bigger diagonal screen size than both the Apple iPhone Plus line and the Samsung Galaxy Edge. But thanks to its very small top and bottom bezels it doesn't feel that big in the hand or the pocket. The back of the phone is just a solid sheet of slippery plastic. I nearly dropped it a couple of times in the week before I got a case. The back needs texture or a curve or something.

The back is dangerously
slippery. Also note
the dual rear cameras.

When I first powered up the phone, I was disappointed to see no app drawer. Thankfully with a quick Google search I was able to find out how to change the settings to bring it back where it belongs. This setting should be the default.

Typical for a carrier-store Android phone, there is some bloatware to deal with. Thankfully T-Mobile is not as heavy-handed with the useless apps as is Verizon, and it is worth noting some can actually be uninstalled rather than disabled, including manufacturer apps like LG Health and carrier apps like T-Mobile TV. Thanks, T-Mo and LG!

The swappable battery is not as important a selling point as it used to be. Few phones have them anymore, and if rumors are true this may be one of the last top-of-the-line Android phones to have one. It is handy to be able to swap out a dead battery for a fresh one, but that requires a lot of planning ahead, unless you spring for the additional charging station. The most important advantage to having a swappable battery is it provides a surefire way to reboot the phone if you ever run into serious trouble. I was able to rescue my data off my old phone because the swappable battery enabled me to forcibly turn off the phone.

Second Screen

When the phone is off, the second screen shows the time and
your notifications without having to fire up the whole phone.

The big selling point of this phone is the "second screen," a strip at the top of the phone separate from the rest of the screen. This screen is most useful when the phone is not in use. All you have to do is pick up the phone and the second screen shows the time and any notifications. How many times a day do we smartphone users fire up the whole phone just to check the time or to see if we missed a call or text? With the second screen,  this step is unnecessary. It saves lots of wear on the battery. A swipe on the second screen will reveal a small control panel, enabling you to turn on/off wifi, Bluetooth and the flashlight as well as turning off the sound. A third swipe gives you access to your media controls, meaning you can quickly skip that song you used to like before Pandora started playing it over and over again. This is all done without turning on the whole phone and without signing in. Every phone should have something similar.

When the phone is actually in use, the second screen is less useful, other than the quick access to the controls. It also provides recent apps, but this is just as easily reached from the square button at the bottom of the screen, so it's redundant at best. One interesting feature is that if you get a call while you are doing something in an app, the option to accept or decline the call appears in the second screen, enabling you to decline the call if you wish without switching apps.

Hardware

The sound is disappointing: one single speaker at the bottom. I found a hack that will allow you to set up stereo sound through the earpiece speaker, but I'm not so adventurous as to download software from murky sources onto my phone. With the earphone jack, I ran into an issue with the phone turning down the earphone volume by itself. Maybe that was because of the old jack on the adapter I use on the tape deck in my car. My next project is to install a new car radio with Bluetooth, but for now it's a concern.

I don't really use my phone camera all that much. If I know I'm going to need to take good pictures, I'm bringing along my digital SLR. This phone's camera is fine for what I need. The dual camera setup is pretty cool, actually. I like the dual setup on the selfie camera even better though. It's great for taking group pictures without having to obviously stretch your arm and mess up the picture.

The battery consistently provides a full day's use for me. That might be a little unfair because I can't use my phone at work, so that cuts 8 hours out of the day, but I do use it quite heavily when I'm not on the job. But even on weekends I haven't had to charge it before the end of the day yet. I have frequently got the phone to go a day and a half on a full charge during the week.

Software

The V20 ships with Android 7.0 Nougat. The most important new capability of Nougat is the ability to have two apps open and active at the same time. I haven't actually used it very much because I'm used to multi-tasking using the navigation buttons at the bottom of the screen. The feature did come in handy once when I needed to dial a number I had taken a picture of. No back-and-forth or writing the number down necessary - just open the picture on the top half of the screen and dial the number with the dialer open on the bottom half.

LG has certainly dialed back the customization of its user interface. I remember reading recently that Google was cracking down on the wildly different UIs on various companies' phones with Nougat. It certainly seems to be true with this one, and that's a good thing. LG still has the Apple-esque red notification dots on certain app icons, but that's really the only thing I noticed that differentiated the UI from stock Android - well, once you fix the app drawer.

The 64 GB of storage is plenty for my needs. But if that's not enough, memory is easily expandable with the SD card slot, which reportedly can handle up to 2 TB(!!). I've never seen an SD card bigger than 256 GB, but I guess bigger ones are out there. Like the swappable battery, an SD card may not be necessary with this much standard storage, but I'm not going to complain that it's available.

Conclusion

The chintzy speaker is the one thing keeping me from giving the V20 a fully positive review. Three weeks may be a little early to tell, but so far this seems to be the best phone I've ever used. Definitely a keeper. So far I love the second screen. LG deserves credit for developing a unique idea for a smartphone that's actually useful and enhances the overall experience.

All of us use our smartphones in different ways. If the single speaker is a problem for you, you might want to pass on this one. It also might be troublesome if you really don't want a big phone. But if neither of those are an issue, I would definitely recommend you consider the LG V20. It is blazing fast, has a great camera, expandable storage galore, and is unique enough thanks to its second screen to stand out in a world of slabs that all look about the same.

Beauty and the Beast, Sports Illustrated and Lessons Learned

"For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light." ~ Jesus, Luke 16:8


I think it's safe to say Disney's marketing strategy promoting Beauty and the Beast was a runaway success. The movie opened with the biggest opening weekend ever for a PG-rated movie and the biggest opening weekend for any movie in March.

A big part of the that strategy was the quote a couple of weeks ago from the director about there being a “gay moment” in the movie. The article was perfectly timed so that the resulting furor would have maximum impact in social media in the week and a half prior to its release date. And a furor they got. It was impossible not to miss the impact of the quote in the week following the article's publishing.

I don't have any doubt that it was intentional. The media have learned their lesson well: get the Christians sufficiently riled up, and you're in for a bonanza. It's too bad many Christians haven't yet learned the same lesson.

One of the most striking examples of this phenomenon is the story of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. The issue is by this time an American institution for better and for worse, mostly worse. For those of us under the age of 60, it's just always been there. But its origins lie at a place where happenstance and Christian outrage met.


Sports Illustrated was not always the behemoth I remember when I was growing up. (Print magazines are so 20th century). In 1964 SI was struggling to find a focus and an audience. It was far behind the largest sports weekly of the day, The Sporting News. And it had difficulty in determining exactly what it wanted to be all the time.

When there wasn't any baseball or football to cover, the magazine looked more like an outdoors or a lifestyle magazine. There were cover stories on hunting, travel, outdoors activities, even yachting with John and Jackie Kennedy.


It was anticipated to be a slow news week in mid-January 1964 (the NFL playoffs were usually over by Christmas back then). The managing editor, Andre Laguerre, planned a Caribbean travel story and told the photographer to hire a model to pose in a bikini for the cover. It was a brazen choice at the time, but Laguerre liked to push the boundaries and had little taste for American moralism. 

The cover (see it at this link if you wish) featured the picture with the following caption: "A Skin Diver's Guide to the Caribbean - Fun in the Sun on Cozumel." There was nothing about "annual swimsuit issue" or anything like that. Inside was a travel story with one more picture of the model and some other pictures of beach scenery.

Three SI covers from the 50s
and 60s that have nothing
to do with sports.

The cover created controversy. The magazine received thousands of angry letters and cancellations. At the same time, newsstand sales of the issue exceeded all expectations for a slow news week. Whether those sales were directly related to the anger expressed I have know way of knowing, but that is what happened.

Any time there is reaction, that is gold to marketers. They really don't care if it is positive or negative, as long as there is a reaction. A single issue which generated this kind of controversy and sales made everyone take notice. In the weeks that followed it was Laguerre who came up with the idea to put another girl in a bathing suit on the cover next year and bill it as the "second annual swimsuit issue."

Thus was born one of the most influential publications in American history. By all rights it should have been another one of those early SI issues that seem so weird to us who remember the magazine's heyday in the 70s-90s. But it lives on because of a firestorm of negative reaction from well-meaning folks.

I'm not saying those folks were wrong about the particular issue. I'm sure it was a shock to many subscribers looking for stories about basketball, hockey or perhaps the upcoming Winter Olympics. But if enough of them had simply and quietly pitched the magazine into the trash can and went on with their lives, the Swimsuit Issue wouldn't be around today. 

More than 50 years later, many Christians still haven't learned this lesson while the world has. The world eagerly lays out plans, knowing many Christians will quickly share anything that irritates them on social media without ever considering if they are being manipulated by either powerful media moguls looking for free publicity or by struggling Web publishers looking for cheap clicks. Either way, the manipulation is real and, unfortunately, easy to pull off. If Christians would just once not take the manipulation bait, the people pulling the strings might think twice about it. Personally I think it'd be nice to see Christians be the manipulators for once instead of the manipulatees. 

Note: The information for this article came mostly from an interview I saw a few years ago on TV with Frank DeFord, longtime writer and editor at Sports Illustrated. Unfortunately I could not find a link with the interview, but the basics of what I remember from the interview are confirmed in this article.