Acceptance

So uhh this week has been pretty solid. I ended up playing a lot of bball, most of the time with pretty good competition, but I need a few days break now since I played 5 days straight of games, so I'm pretty tired. Anyway, there are a few obvious things I need to work on, like finishing at the basket in traffic. Wow, not good. Well, on the positive side, I'm getting to the basket. I think I played pretty well most of the week, but today I played noon hoops and just sucked. I mean, sucked. I was a bit blown away, and then I realized that I wasn't playing with my regular confidence, my swag if you will. I realized that I was trying to look like I was good because I was playing with people I don't normally play with, so I wanted to impress. It hit me just how stupid that was. So as soon as I decided I would just play my game, without worrying about others, I started to do a lot better. Mind you, not great, it was just not a good day, but I picked it up quite a bit.
So I came home kind of disappointed in myself for looking stupid, and I read Andrew Schwab's new blog and watched Talladega Nights. Weird combo in the day, I know. They both had to do with the same thing though. Sort of. In Talladega Nights, Ricky Bobby has been racing to win so that others will like him, and he ends up learning that he needs to race because it is what he loves. He needs to race for him. Schwab's blog talked about how if we accept ourselves, that God has given us the abilities we have and has us right where he wants us, that we can be a lot more confident and content. So that was pretty cool to have that stuff apply right away. I am not saying that I play to impress all the time or anything, but it has happened before and it just leads to bad basketball, so it is something I am trying to work on.
So I have been watching some YouTube clips about spiritual stuff. Mostly Mark Driscoll right now for some reason. I don't agree with all of his beliefs, but overall he is pretty solid. Now I don't know if you are aware of this, but people on Youtube make some really dumb comments. Shocking, I know. I usually don't read many comments but on some spiritual vids people have nice little debates and stuff. It can be nice to see people's points of view, but it can be maddening sometimes. Oh another shocker, Driscoll has a few haters. People will accuse him on these videos of having a pigeonholed view of Christianity, because he calls for strong young men to step up and lead the next generation. People don't realize that they are pigeonholing him because they are only watching a 5 min clip and don't really look into what Driscoll preaches. People accuse the guy of not preaching the whole gospel, when he pretty much talked about it in the video. Even if he carefully explains something simple, like why "The Shack" is wrong, people get super mad about how he just likes to tear down other people in the church and how wrong that is. I won't even get into my opinion on "The Shack." I know that was a long rant for a guy that is definitely not perfect, and I'm not perfect, and no one commenting on these videos is perfect, but this subject raises several important points.
1. I can't say it enough, know what you believe and why you believe it. Ignorance is most certainly not bliss when you are trying to argue.
2. Look into what other people believing before you try to tear them apart. You may not like their style, but you might actually agree with what they said if you looked at more than one snippet. (especially if that bit is an absolutely horrible bit about Mars Hill on nightline. Just bad reporting.)
3. This goes back to point 1 again, but look up what you hear in the Bible, or at least make sure that the speaker is backing up what he says with what the Bible says(and then you should still make sure he is in context). Like if you like listening to Joel Osteen and Rob Bell a lot, and both guys have a lot of influence and do say a lot of good stuff, but if you listen to them and read their books and you don't have any red flags raised, you should probably spend some more time in the Word. (Ex. unlike what Bell's book Velvet Elvis says, we do need the virgin birth of Christ. Or an easier one, homosexuality is wrong.)
Alright that is enough for tonight. Please do not take me as attacking anyone, I just wanted to bring up some points I have been thinking about.
One more thing, please feel free to leave comments every once in a while, or text or talk to me about what I said in the blog if you have questions. It makes me happy.