Prayer in Sports

This isn't a post of any of my own particular insights, but some really cool stuff that is worth seeing, if you haven't seen it before. In our day, praying in public seems discouraged, and telling (or "pressuring") others to pray with you is even more taboo. However, God's glory is often made the most public through sports. In the interview after every sporting event, almost always God is given glory before anything else. A full video montage of athletes giving God glory would probably be hours long. Many football teams have pre-game and post-game prayers, usually on the 50-yard line, and this happens quite often, even though most haven't seen or heard about it on television. When a devastating injury happens on the field, both teams usually bend the knee and have group prayers for the injured man on the field. To many athletes, God is an integral part of the game.

As with anything religion related, giving God glory in public has drawn wide criticism. Many anti-theists say that athletes are just shamelessly throwing religion into everything, and it's foolish to thank God for what is obviously the product of superior game-planning and execution, not some divine intervention. To these people I would argue: Why is it okay for athletes to thank their mom and their dad on national television, but not okay for them to thank the God they believe in? Mom and dad didn't do anything to win the game. The critique is based not only on the assumption that athletes hold the same beliefs that they do - that no God exists. Even if God didn't exist and athletes believed in such a non-existent God, how can you fault them for merely expressing their opinions?

Then there are the Christians who critique athletes for giving glory to God even though their lives don't reflect a "Christian lifestyle." To them, I would say: "Who are you to judge whether or not a person sincerely is thanking God? What makes you a better person, that your offering is more fragrant to God than this sinner's offering? Who are you to rob God of the glory he deserves?" I know that many players have done extremely sinful things, but when God is given the glory, rejoice! Don't be a Jonah! Be a Jesus!

That all said, here's the videos I wanted to share you. Prayer happens in high school, college, and even in the pros!

MCCC Retreat 2011

I wrote 90% of this post two weeks ago, but never really finished it. Well, here it is...

Overview

Last weekend (July 4th weekend), MCCC had it's church retreat at Sandy Cove in North East, Maryland (which to me is a horrible, horrible name for a city). It was an awesome time of relaxation, enjoyment, and development of friendships. I got a chance to spend time with people I don't normally spend much time with like Bryce, Alvin, and Jeff, and I got to see all of the church Shu-shu's and Ah-yi's that I don't see very often.


The Talks

The main reason I'm even posting about the retreat is that the speaker was very, very interesting and, in his own words, provacative. If you think you're conservative, wait until you meet this guy. Pastor Andy Tso is an extremely hilarious guy with laugh-out-loud jokes, impressions, and faces. He's an ABC that grew up in Chinatown, so he related well when it came to things like Chinese School, Asian mothers, and Chinese churches. Despite his likable personality and strong credentials (NYU undergrad majorring in economics, then went to become a lawyer) his talks were extremely strong, and for the most part, poorly accepted. If you were there, the controversy would be enormously obvious. But since you weren't, here's an overview.

Pastor Andy's Beliefs
The following is a brief summary of the various beliefs he shared. Some you may agree with, some you may not. The

• ESV is better than the NIV.
• You shouldn't use mobile devices as your Bible because the primary purpose of those devices isn't the Word of God.
• Being a godly Christian will make you smart. 75% of Nobel prizes go to Christians. 9% go to Jews. What you worship, you become. You worship idols, you become them.
• The root of the problem of the US economy is abortion and gay marriage. If abortion wasn't legalized in 1973, there would be around 65 million more people in the US, which means there would be more people pumping money into social security and the economy in general.If given a choice between Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, Pastor Andy would rather have Palin as president.
• "Do you believe you have the same authority to speak about politics as you do about Scripture?" "Yes."
  
• Job 40 is proof of dinosaurs. The Behemoth refers to the "Supercroc" and the leviathan refers to the blue whale. Christianity is the only religion in the world to include dinosaurs in its holy book.
• Atheism is a prerequisite to believe in evolution. Also, the earth is very young.
• Revelation 9:1 refers to missiles, Revelation 9:7 refers to military helicopter, and Revelation 9:17-19 refers to tanks.Also, the "200 million man army" in Revelation 9:15-16 could refer to the standing army in China.
• In Isaiah 49:12, Syene (or Sinim), refers to China, indicating a specific call for believers in China to bring the gospel "Back To Jerusalem." Israel will once again become a world power, experiencing revival both spiritually and socially. This Back to Jerusalem movement is needed to bring the spiritual and economic center back to Jerusalem because Jesus will come back only after the "fig tree" (aka Israel) sprouts again.
• According to Daniel 9, Jesus' exact birthday is some day in March (though I cannot remember which day). His reasoning is that we know the exact date Daniel said the prayer, and he just does the math according to the number of years provided, and voila! We have Jesus' birthday.

My Problem with Pastor Andy's Talks

He spoke them as irrefutable truth.
I understand that if you believe something, you need to really believe it as truth. In my opinion, Pastor Andy went one step further than that. About his views on science, society, and politics, he said, "You can fight with me if you want. But you won't be fighting against me. You'll be fighting against God." This makes disagreement and discussion quite difficult - what can a mere college graduate say to a pastor who claims to hold this ultimate truth? This truth isn't even the essentials of the faith, but merely non-essential, controversial issues that aren't even held as strongly by most Christians. While Pastor Andy spoke about politics, science, and homosexuality and abortion with this in-your-face absolute certainty, (sort of to his credit) he didn't go so far as to claim his interpretations of prophecies to be absolute truth.

He was speaking to uneducated kids.
Pastor Andy was talking who "didn't know any better" when it came to the end time prophecies and much of his evolution talks. As people, when we don't really have an opinion or knowledge about something, we accept when seemingly credible people tell us what to think about them. I don't like how Pastor Andy took such a strong stand on controversial issues in front of kids who have no experience or opportunity to test and examine the things he was saying. Many of the college and post-college kids reasonably had questions or objections to many of the ideas presented, but I don't think it's possible for young middle and high school Christians who don't have any alternative answers or logical arguments against what he said, forcing them to take it for truth. I felt like he was taking advantage of their youth, and that this talk would be more suited for older Christians who can meaningfully respond to his talk.

His talks would be wildly offensive to most non-Christians.
Many of the well-intentioned things that Pastor Andy said when comparing Christianity with other religions were very condescending and insulting of other religions, making me cringe when I heard them. It isn't that what he said was false, but if I had brought a Muslim friend to the retreat, he probably would have gotten up and left and refused to listen to him anymore. Political correctness can often be a problem with modern day Christians, but perhaps my annoyance with his brazen bashing of other religions comes from the more evangelistic perspective I've gained from being in college. That said, I think that it is important to respect every individual, even if you disagree with his beliefs [Pastor Andy did an impression of Steven Hawking that I thought was quite inappropriate].

What I gained from his talks.

Despite all the things I disliked about Pastor Andy's beliefs and talks, it is our responsibility as students in the congregation to attempt to learn something from a visiting pastor. The main lesson I learned is:

I need to hate evil the way God hates evil.

In general, I think we as Christians have become tolerant to sin and evil, simply because the rest of the world doesn't see it as bad. While Pastor Andy's hatred of evil could almost be taken as over-the-top, it was a good reminder for me that I really am to be set apart for Christ. This is something that I've been thinking more and more about, and maybe I'll post more about it at some time in the future.


I often underestimate the importance of Biblical holiness to a society's health.
Currently, people hate the idea of other people "forcing" their beliefs on others and are equally cautious to not push their own religious beliefs onto others. As a result, Christianity has all of a sudden become a strictly personal decision and religion, and it's involvement in other areas of your work, such as your social, work, or political life, is greatly discouraged. I think we've forgotten that God cares about and is involved in society. God isn't merely interested in my own personal salvation, but He's interested in redeeming all aspects of culture in our society. We also know that God's laws aren't arbitrary, and that we are blessed by following them - not because God is giving us treats for doing Christian tricks, but that God's laws are inherently beneficial for those who follow them. Therefore, the more we as a society follow God's law, the more we have a chance to prosper. Unlike Pastor Andy, I don't believe that abortion and same-sex marriage is the root of our country's economic problems, but his strong stance has forced me to examine the way I view God's law in relation to society.

Nice family picture at the retreat center!

My Summer

As most of you know, I'm currently working in Columbia, Maryland for a co-op with Harris Corporation. This is just a short little post about my summer so far.

My Job

I'm currently interning at Harris Corporation, which is communications company based in Florida. Even though the company itself is pretty big (16,000 employees), I work in a small satellite office which only has 40 people. I'm one of only two interns, but the people at Harris are extremely friendly and make for a pretty comfortable and homey work environment. Ever since I got real work to do (around two weeks into the internship), work has been pretty fun, and I've gotten a chance to learn a lot of new things and work with a lot of cool tools. I've learned C#, done a bunch of automated testing, used new hardware I've never seen before, and got a real taste of how agile development works in the real world. Work is actually pretty fun, and I don't dread going to work in the morning. Yay!

Random: I'm surprised at how prevalent cursing is in the office. Maybe it's just how young most of the people in this office are, but I expected all workplaces to be pretty clean when it comes to language.

My Apartment

Harris is paying for a fully furnished apartment for my enjoyment. Management sent me the lease by accident instead of the company, and I saw that the rent is $1653 per month! This doesn't even include all the furniture and awesomeness that was already provided for me! I recorded the video below for my mother, but I'm posting it anyways just to show off my living space and hopefully entice you to come visit me here in Maryland. [Sorry about the wobbliness. I was tired.]

Dining table! I only use it to eat breakfast. 

This is where I am most of the time I'm awake...

My enormous bed. I can sleep sideways on this thing. 

I also have a TV in my room, so I can fall asleep watching The Office, baseball, soccer, etc. 

My Free Time

I don't have much free time because my work hours are from 7:45 - 5:30, but I spend most of my time eating, watching TV, reading books , and playing a game called Mount & Blade. Then I go to sleep. Every Thursday night , I attend a Bible study, but that's about the only weeknight that I actually have something to do, as I've been coming home on Fridays. Last Thursday I got to play ultimate and then go play mini-golf and go to batting cages with the people from the Bible study. That was probably the most exciting day I've spent here in Maryland, not including the retreat last week.

All in all, I'm blessed to have an enjoyable internship, a flippin sweet apartment, and a little bit of community to keep my company.

Google+ Immediate Reaction

Thanks to an awesome friend, I just got a Google+ invite, and I've been messing around with it for a little bit. Here are some quick thoughts.

Brief intro to Google+:


Con: Google+ works with the assumption that most of the things you share are meant for only a certain group of friends.

For kids who don't want to let their parents see they were drunk last night, this is nice. However, in my experience, the majority of the posts on our social networking sites aren't about getting drunk or kicking babies. They are about sports, school, frustrations, and general emotions - things that most people won't have a problem sharing with other people.Google+ makes you make the conscious decision who to share things with, which is a good thing in most cases, but really just ends up being extra clicks when you don't really care.

Con: Assuming Google+ gains some momentum, the content shared to us will be very limited.

One of the awesome time-wasting qualities about Facebook is that when you go on it, there is almost always a new update. There's always something to look at or comments on or read. Because others select what groups to share their update with, if you aren't in a group that someone shares with often, you may just end up not ever getting updates from that person. This seems intuitive (because that's generally how friendships work in real life), but it really takes away from the general feeling of connectedness I feel with my friends on Facebook. There are many times when I see an update from an acquaintance about something random that is interesting or beneficial to me. There are times when an acquaintance posts pictures of travel somewhere, and even though I may not know the person well, I could go look at the photos just to see what New Zealand looks like. It is equally satisfying when someone seemingly random "Likes" a post of mine, even if it wasn't necessarily intended for them.

My prediction is that Google+ will end up as everyone sharing things to only one or two groups, and just neglecting the other ones. This may connect us to maybe around 40-50 people, which is far less than who we are connected to Facebook on. Say what you will about Facebook, but there is always stuff to do and things to look at on Facebook, which is why we keep going back. I doubt Google+ have enough content to keep us interested and coming back.

Con: Lack of features

This is something I'm willing to give Google a pass on, simply because it is still so new and in development. That said, one of the things people like about Google+ over Facebook is how uncluttered it looks. I hate to say it, people, but if you want more features, there inevitably is going to be more clutter. Do you want to integrate Google Groups, or create events, or even integrate Google Calender? Do you want any sort of applications, the ability to play games with friends, see others' birthdays, or sell football tickets at a Marketplace? All those features need to be put somewhere, and Google+ will need to make a decision on how many features it wants to integrate.

Also, don't forget that there will definitely be ads. Where are those going to go? All I'm saying is not to expect Google+ to be this simple and bare for a while. And if it remains this way, we may be deprived of some basic and essential features.

Hopefully it doesn't end up looking like iGoogle:

Pro: Integration

This is probably the only reason I can see Google+ succeeding. Integrating Gchat and video chat into one nice spot is very nice and convenient. Could this be the Skype killer? Who knows. That said, Google Buzz and Google Wave were also pretty well-integrated, but those failed majorly too.

Really cool: Google+ integrated in your Google search menu

Conclusion

All in all, Google+ looks like a nice tool for video chat and very specific kinds of updates, but I don't see it replacing all the features and friends of Facebook. I can see people use Google+ to stay in touch with a close group of friends or a very specific network, such as a frat or a fellowship, but I doubt that anyone with over 100 friends on Facebook will find Google+ comparable to the real social networking that happens on Facebook. In the end, Google+ could be a good tool to keep in touch with friends you already know and people you normally keep in touch with, but I don't think that it will be as effective for branching out to acquaintances and people you just met (aka social networking).