Scranton, PA

There’s a lot of beauty in ordinary things.  Isn’t that kind of the point?

-Pam Halpert

For a long time, I didn’t know why I liked The Office.  It was funny, there were some great running jokes, and I had (have) a major celebrity crush on Jenna Fischer.  But last night, at the very end of the series finale, it hit me. This show, for all of its humor and over the top awkwardness, celebrated the ordinary in ways a lot of shows just don’t do.

As I think back over the run of the show, the best moments were the ones that dealt with ordinary things.  The Jim and Dwight practical jokes.  The awkwardness of the dinner party.  The crazy building tension between Jim and Pam.  Andy’s desire for approval from his father.  Michael’s genuineness.  I’ve seen every episode (besides season 9) multiple times, and though the show post-Michael clearly went downhill, it was a show that celebrated a bunch of ordinary people doing ordinary things.

Everybody knows a Dwight.  I feel like, at times, I’m related to about 15 Michaels.  Jim feels like that guy I’ve been friends with since college, but I can’t really remember why, when, or how we met.  Ryan, though over the top, is that annoying hipster kid that really is that big of a tool.  Not because he’s a hipster, but because he’s just a tool.

The only other show I can think of that made me feel this way is Boy Meets World.  That show hit me as I was growing up, and in a lot of ways, I felt like I grew up with Cory, Topanga, Shawn, and Mr. Feeny.  And if that show kind of walked me through adolescence, The Office took me in to my adult life.  That statement is a bit of hyperbole, because there are a lot of really important things (like…the Bible and the ministry of RUF), but the show did play a part in it.

There were times that it really, I mean really, felt like a reality show.  I remember watching as Andy punched a hole in the wall and thinking “…wow, I could see myself reacting that way.”  I hurt for Jim during season 2, and I hurt for Pam in season 3, because it really did feel so real.  Same for Michael when Holly came back.

As ridiculous as some of the show was, it never really felt like the characters weren’t real people.  I think of just about every other show I’ve ever watched and the people don’t feel real.  Jack Bauer is a guy I wish was real and was out there stopping terrorism.  The Bluths are a hilarious group of people, and there are definitely people out there that are so rich that they are that clueless.  Dr. House, maybe my favorite TV character of all time, is exactly who I’d want working on me if I collapsed with some inexplicable disease that brought me to the brink of death.  But none of those people feel real.  They were too awesome, too clueless, or too smart.

For whatever reason, I never felt that way about the characters of The Office.  Jim and Pam’s relationship is a great example – they were great together, and it was a great love story.  But it never seemed to go quite the way they wanted it to.  There was no grand gesture when they finally got together, Jim’s epic proposal got hijacked, Pam got knocked up and the wedding went wrong, and Jim didn’t get to just go off and chase his dreams how it felt like we all wanted him to.  It was a great love story because it was flawed.  I think you can say a lot more about it than just this, and I’m sure someone has.  Maybe I will later.

It’s a weird thing to feel like TV characters are your friends, but that’s exactly how I came to view Jim, Pam, Michael, Dwight, and the rest of the crew.  And I’m aware that I’m probably over-romanticizing the show.  Full disclosure, the whole time the cast was sitting around in the office at the end of the finale, I was an emotional wreck.  As weird as the finale felt at times (although it was a great episode), I can’t imagine a more perfect ending to the episode.

9 years.  They weren’t all great, but what is great every single time?  Even the not-so-good times felt like bad pizza – it wasn’t very good pizza, but it was still pizza, and I’m always OK with pizza.  Since 2005, (I was a year late to the party), my Thursday nights have been consumed by the show.  Everybody had some great lines, but Pam’s I quoted above and the following by Andy nailed it for me:

I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.

So thanks, NBC, for 9 great years.  Thanks for giving me one of my 5 favorite shows.

And thanks for reminding me of the beauty of the ordinary.

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The NBA Playoffs: Round 1

I am not a sportswriter.  In another life, I wouldn’t have quit my journalism classes and would have gone on to become the most famous sportswriter in the world, but I was scared to read news out loud on the radio so I changed majors.  So this probably isn’t going to be in depth or accurate or funny or anything…I just like to write about basketball.

I am looking forward to the year, probably 2015, when I can sit down and watch the NBA postseason in its entirety, free of worrying about finals.  Of course, this is the last NBA postseason I will be able to enjoy as a single guy, but…well that’s another discussion for another time.

But this week was the first week I got to sit down and really watch the NBA playoffs, and it has not disappointed at all.  During the first round, it looked like we were due for one of the more boring playoff rounds.  The matchups weren’t exactly marquee, but that doesn’t always happen in the first round of anything.  But you had:

Clippers vs. Grizzlies

Thunder vs. Rockets

Nuggets vs. Warriors

Lakers vs. Spurs

Heat vs. Bucks

Knicks vs. Celtics

Pacers vs. Hawks

Bulls vs. Nets

The Spurs swept the Lakers (which was awesome, because I knew adding Dwight Howard was going to be a train wreck because he is a 7 foot tall 3 year old who destroys teams) and the Heat swept the Bucks (also which was expected) but other than that we got some great series.  I will attempt to break them down in a few sentences (yes I’m fully aware I should have done this a week ago, but…I didn’t.  Sorry.)  Also, I’m ranking them by entertainment value, from least entertaining to most entertaining.

The West

Spurs vs. Lakers

As I said – Dwight Howard is a child and any team trying to build their franchise around him is making a huge mistake.  Pretty much everything about the Lakers is a train wreck right now, and I love that.  But the Spurs rolled on as the model of consistency.  Every time I look at the Spurs, I think “wow, I can’t wait for the year 2000!” And then I realize it’s 2013 and they’ve (seemingly) had the same players since then.

Thunder* vs. Rockets

I don’t know if Patrick Beverley’s play was “dirty” or not.  I don’t think it was, but since Beverley played at Arkansas, I don’t give him the benefit of the doubt and, while I wish no personal harm on the guy, I hope every University of Arkansas player ever has a terrible pro career.**  But that play totally changed the series, and in my opinion, the outcome of the NBA playoffs themselves.  OKC was pretty clearly the second best team in the NBA all year (although a case could be made for the Spurs) with Russ, and without him, they limped (see what I did there?) to a 4-2 series victory over the Rockets, who were fun to watch but really weren’t that good.  They were bad defensively and pretty much all year felt like “Hey, James Harden, go score 50 points and let’s see what happens.”  It sells tickets and generates buzz, but it wasn’t all that great.

Clippers vs. Grizzlies

I don’t like the Grizzlies, and I’m not crazy about the city of Memphis.***  I don’t really care that much about the Clippers either, although I do like Chris Paul and Blake Griffin.  They’re fun to watch.  But they whine a lot, and it was fun to see the more smash mouth style of basketball go up against the more high-flying style the Clippers play.  This series really seemed to be in LA’s favor, but the Grizzlies reeled off 4 straight in impressive fashion.  And I’m glad that Blake Griffin and Chris Paul have more time to make commercials, because the commercials they make are pretty funny.  So good job, LA.

Nuggets vs. Warriors

Steph Curry is the only thing that needs to be said.  Watching him shoot a basketball is simply perfection.  Gallinari being healthy makes this a different series, but since he’s not, we get to keep watching Steph Curry do his thing.

Prediction:

I’m calling Memphis over Golden State in the Western Conference Finals.  With a healthy Westbrook, it’d be OKC, but without Russ, I just don’t see it.  Also, a healthy David Lee might be enough to put Golden State over the top, but alas, it is not to be.  This is not to discredit Memphis in any way – you beat the teams you have to beat.  This is the playoffs in the greatest basketball league on earth.  Nothing is easy.

The East

I’ll be honest – I’m really not interested in any of these series, because the conclusion is already set.  I don’t think anyone can beat the Heat in 7 games.  But anyway:

Heat vs. Bucks

Didn’t watch a single second of this series.

Pacers vs. Hawks

Two evenly matched teams, pretty boring basketball honestly.  I haven’t watched a lot of either team lately, but it seems like the Hawks are pretty stale.  I like the Pacers’ future though.

Celtics vs. Knicks

Not really interesting to me either.  Clearly it’s the end of the current makeup of the Celtics (I can’t see them keeping things the same), but I just don’t care about the Knicks.  In the Round 2 Game 1 loss to the Pacers, Anthony missed as many shots as Lebron did in the entire first round.  So there’s that.

Bulls vs. Nets

I didn’t watch any of this series either.  The Bulls would be a heck of a lot more interesting if they had Derrick Rose, but right now, they’re playing with house money.  Good team, but really…they’re not going much father.  Also, the Nets suck.

Prediction:

Heat over Pacers, probably in 4 games.  That’s really all there is to say.

I’ll recap Round 2 when it’s over!

*I am a fan of the Oklahoma City Thunder.  The thing about my professional loyalties, though, is that they are mostly based around players.  I would love to live in a pro sports city, or even a pro sports state, but I don’t.  So several years ago, one of my college roommates was a huge Texas fan, and he kept talking about this Durant guy.  So I started following him.  I watched him as much as I could in Seattle (I was also on the verge of moving to Seattle at the time), and knew Russell Westbrook from watching him at UCLA, so I just kept following them when they moved to OKC.

**My Ole Miss loyalties run deeper than any professional loyalties.  Go figure.

***I made derogatory remarks about the city of Memphis the other night on Twitter.  It was partially to get a rise out of some Memphis people, which it did, but I really don’t like the city.  It’s okay, and the FedEx Forum is a GREAT venue, but unless there’s a great show there, I don’t see much of a reason to go.  That may change after I get around to a few of the more off the beaten path BBQ joints, but…yeah.  Not crazy about Memphis.

Thank you, Chris Broussard

This week, an NBA player, Jason Collins, came out as a homosexual.

The response was predictable.  The majority of the media fawned all over him and took opportunities to blast those who didn’t, and Christians everywhere (read: liberal and conservative Christians) felt like martyrs.  And if there’s one thing that Christians in America seem to love, it’s feeling like martyrs over stuff that really isn’t persecution.

But that’s another post for another day.

Through all the noise, one voice truly stood out to me – Chris Broussard.  Honestly it was one of the last voices I expected to hear on it, not for any negative reasons towards him, but because I didn’t know anything about him other than that he was a sportswriter.

On Outside the Lines, an ESPN show that focuses on sports figures on and off the field, Broussard and LZ Granderson were brought in to discuss Jason Collins’ announcement.  Granderson is openly homosexual, and Broussard is a Christian (I think it speaks volumes about both men that, despite their disagreement over this issue, they can maintain a professional working relationship and apparently a solid friendship).  I didn’t know that until Monday.  But Broussard was asked point blank what he thought about Collins’ decision in light of Christianity, and he responded with this:

It should be noted that all of the clips involving Broussard’s answer start with “I’m a Christian, I don’t agree with homosexuality,” making it seem as if he just started offering up his opinion.  He did not.  He was specifically asked about it, and then gave an honest answer.  If he had just volunteered that answer without being asked, it probably would have bothered me.  A sports station or sports broadcast is not the place to take up political/social/religious issues (I’m looking at you, Bob Costas).  But he was asked his opinion, and he gave it.

Then yesterday, he went on a radio show to clarify his statements, and not only did he not back down, he strongly stood for what he believed.  He explained the Old Covenant/New Covenant difference well.  And he didn’t single anyone else or let himself off the hook.  Listen to it here.

Through all of this, I want to say thank you, Chris Broussard.

Thank you for having the courage to speak your mind, even though it wasn’t popular.

Thank you for having the restraint to not speak your mind until you were directly asked about it.

Thank you for showing grace in the initial interview.

Thank you for not pointing the blame on “them, them, them” and recognizing that we are all sinners.

Thank you for reminding us that Christians aren’t perfect.

Thank you for not being a martyr.

Thank you for giving well reasoned, well thought out answers.

Thank you for showing grace not just through your answers, but through how you live.

I hope more Christians can learn to handle disagreement this way.

Thanks, Chris.

How to be a Sports Fan: Lesson 3

This is a post I wrote for a friend’s blog that is also running today.  Check it out at The Greatest Blog of All Time.

I have been around sports for years.  I’m 28 now, and I remember waaaaaaay back when as a little kid playing T-Ball.  I don’t know when that was, but it was a long time ago.  I was never good at sports, but I have played, and probably more importantly, watched them for years.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all of these years, it’s this:

In order to be a sports fan, you must overreact to everything.

This manifests itself in many different ways.  Fans do it, announcers do it, and talking heads do it.  And then after you overreact to everything, you have to get mad at ESPN for creating a culture in which we overreact to everything, essentially absolving yourself of any and all blame.

Make sense?  No?  Good.  Let’s look at it more specifically.

Fans Do It

This may be the easiest one to grasp.  Lose a game?  Fire the coach.  Win a game?  Sign him to a lifetime extension.  It’s really easy to do, and it honestly is a lot of fun.  It’s especially magnified in rivalry games.  A few years ago, my alma mater beat its in-state rival 45-0.  After the game, tons of fans (and I may or may not have been one of them) declared our rival program dead and poised to move up a tier in our conference and begin competing for conference championships.  Know what happened the next year?  We lost to our in-state rival, and the year after that (and the year following that) we lost to them again (making it 3 in a row) and went 3-9 and 2-10.  But you know what happened during that time period?  Our in-state rival won 3 rivalry games in a row and took over almost the exact same position we were in.  After a 31-3 beatdown last season, they had left us in the dust and weren’t ever looking back.  They were poised to compete for a conference championship.  Then…we beat them.

Another great example is recruiting.  I am admitting this as a full-blown recruiting addict.*  At times, recruiting overreaction borders on the creepy.  I read a message board post from a guy who had hired a sitter and was taking his wife out on a date to the bar that the recruits were visiting.  Maybe overreaction isn’t the right word for that, but it does deserve to be mentioned here.  On the flip side, when your rival school recruits well, overreaction gives you a great coping mechanism – they recruited well?  Well, they obviously bought the recruits cars or prostitutes or gave them hundreds of thousands of dollars.**

A third, and final, example, is Twitter.  Twitter is both the best thing in the world and the worst thing in the world.   There are many different ways you can go with this.  A recent example would be the Miami Heat’s win streak.  Miami won 27 games in a row, falling just short of the NBA’s all time record of 33 games in a row.  When the Chicago Bulls beat them, Twitter exploded.  The reality of the situation was that the Miami Heat, the best team in the NBA, won 27 games in a row and then lost to a really scrappy Bulls team who, despite some injuries, is a pretty good team.  If you read Twitter that night, though, Lebron James is the worst player in the world, the Heat suck, and the Bulls are great.  It’s really easy.

Announcers Do It

This one is more awesome.  All you have to do is watch any game Gus Johnson has ever called and you know this to be true.  And we LOVE Gus for it.

Craven and I spend a lot of time playing the NBA 2K series.  We’ll be playing, going back and forth, and one of us (usually Craven) will get a fast break and throw an alley-oop.  The announcers, though, will have a series something like this:

Announcer 1:  You know, last season, this team 16-10 at home.  They really need to…

*alley-oop thrown*

All the announces:  SOIEHGOWIEHFPIUWHEIUNWEOIWEOHEOIUFHWEOFHPWJEBV JDOIWEHFUIWBE IJBWDIUNWIUEB WUIEBF UWEBIUFBWE IUHG WOEIFOIWENCIUWEN CUIBWE UGWE IVE NEVER SEEN AN ALLEY OOP BEFORE

One of my favorite real-life examples of an announcer overreacting (an an example of clueless announcers) is in this video:

Now, overreacting is not always a bad thing.  Take this example, from this NBA season as well, of the Houston Rockets announcer:

This is a regular season NBA game in December, so it’s essentially meaningless.  BUT this announcer’s overreaction gave me one of my favorite sports phrases of all time.

Talking Heads Do It

So fans and announcers get a pass.  Fans often*** have invested much into their teams.  They attended school there, grew up going to games, whatever.  It runs deep.  Announcers are selling an experience, and they typically have the best seat in the house for the greatest moments.

But the talking heads (I’m looking at you, ESPN) are the worst, and they get no pass.  Every little thing is picked apart and analyzed and rash statements are made all the time.  I really don’t have to go back that far to find proof.  A couple of weeks ago, something bad happened to both Tiger Woods and Kobe Bryant.  ESPN exploded.  And all of that happened before we got to the First Take cycle.****

Another example is how the analysts have talked about college basketball (and I’m guilty of this one too).  College basketball is being ruined, it’s losing viewership, and everything bad is happening.  Wait…what’s that?  This year’s NCAA tournament was the highest rated in years, and the national championship game was the most attended of all time, and it was a phenomenal game to boot?  You mean that maybe the sport isn’t ruined but these things just have a natural ebb and flow to them?

NO THE GAME SUCKS NOW COLLEGE BASKETBALL IS RUINED NO WAIT NOW IT’S SAVED FOREVER!!!!!!!!!

The problem is, and I’m cutting it short because it’s getting wordy at this point, ESPN does these things because we, the fans, watch it.  We vote in all the stupid polls they run, we contribute to the madness.  So, in theory, if we want it to stop, we should just stop.

But we don’t, because we love sports too much.

Which isn’t a bad thing.  But I have to end this – today’s round of NBA games just ended and I have to go Tweet about how this is the [insert best/worst here] playoffs in history and how the game is being destroyed.

*My recruiting addiction goes like this – I start to get the urge to read everything written about it around August.  I largely ignore it, just taking a look here or there once or twice a week.  By October, I am all in.  Come February, I am eating, drinking, and breathing recruiting (and college basketball), and the day after signing day, I collapse into a post-recruiting haze, swearing it off forever until August rolls back around, then the cycle repeats.  It’s vicious.  

**These are ridiculous assumptions unless you’re talking about Miami or Cam Newton.

***I say often because Alabama fans exist.  If you know any Alabama fans, they probably aren’t from Alabama, didn’t go to school there, and can’t name you a single Alabama football coach besides Bear Bryant and Nick Saban.  And if you told them “hey, Alabama has a pretty good softball team, too!” (which they do) they would look at you and say “ROLL TIDE what’s softball again? ROLL TIDE”

****First Take is the worst thing to ever happen to television.

I Will Survive

For the second Saturday in a row, I did it.

I survived.

I made it through a Saturday without either of the college sports I care so deeply about.

Summers tend to get long and boring (but really who can get bored 6 weeks from their wedding?), and I’ll hit withdrawal at some point when the weather gets really hot, but for now, I’ve made it two weeks.

I deserve a medal.

Pre-Emptive Thoughts on Boring Christianity

Two things to start – First, this blogging weekly thing is hard.  I finally got Internet in the house, only to be swamped by tons of schoolwork and a quick trip to the Final Four.  Second, this is a pre-emptive response/commentary on my friend Joseph’s post(s) on boring Christianity.  He let me read it early, and it’s awesome.  It says so many things I wish I could say to some of my friends and family.  I don’t know when he’s going to post it, but it’s good.

Growing up, I went to a “contemporary” church.  I didn’t really know any different, so it was fine.  But as I grew up, I’d go to other churches – particularly my grandparents churches – and I was bored.  The people were old, the music was slow, and nobody clapped.  I went to youth group at First Pres (I think it was called Insight?) one time, though, and somebody sang the hymn “When All Thy Mercies” but played it on a guitar and in a more upbeat way.  I would later go on to find out it was an “RUF song” (which basically means an old hymn set to new, folksy sounding music), and through RUF songs, fall in love with hymns.

That’s my story of how I became to love hymns.  But this isn’t really about hymns (although I am mulling over doing an entire post on them), it’s about “boring” Christianity vs. “entertaining” or “contemporary” Christianity.  I’ve heard people complain about worship styles on every side of the spectrum.  Comments from “I don’t see how anyone could sing old hymns with just an organ” to “all they do is repeat the same seven words eleven times to four chords on an acoustic guitar” to “why is that guy playing a guitar solo in the middle of a worship service?”

And it’s an age old debate.  I love that book of the Bible where Peter and Paul are discussing worship styles and which ones work and how traditional hymns are so much better than praise son…wait…that’s not in the Bible.

This whole “worship style” debate is American Christianity at its worst.  There are “traditional” services and “contemporary” services and “blended” services and “cowboy” churches and “farmer” churches and…you get the idea. “Hillsong is awesome!”  ”No way, give me John Wesley’s hymns all day!” “But this new Jesus Culture* album is incredible!” “But what about the Gadsby Hymnal?”

It’s the worst because we, as American Christians, have gotten bored with the Gospel.  It is the greatest story ever told, and if true, changes everything.  I mean, we are bored with this story:  God created man, man sinned against God, God undertook a plan throughout all of history to save man, God became man, Jesus lived a perfect life, Jesus died a sinner’s death, Jesus rose from the dead, and the world was changed.  And now he sits at the right hand of God the Father, actively ruling and reigning over his kingdom.

And we’re bored with that.

The apostles didn’t write a lot on worship styles.  Why they didn’t do this is pure speculation, but I think part of it is because they were concerned that people were going to break into their house, throw them in jail, and feed them to lions.  So they probably felt like they had important things to write about.

We, on the other hand, have to deal with the horrors of the national media labeling our favorite fast food restaurant homophobic.  So our situation, as American Christians, is pretty similar to that of the apostles.

Except that it’s not.  We have the audacity (and “I” am included in that “we”) to get bored with the Gospel.  And since we’re bored with the Gospel, worship becomes entertainment.

This has happened for a lot of reasons, I’m sure.  We’ve devalued preaching.  We don’t face any kind of persecution.  We don’t take sin seriously.  Our attention spans have become shorter (seriously – Vine is an app that gives six seconds of video.  That’s all we got now).  There are a ton of reasons, but whatever the reason is, it’s messed up.

I have been there before.  I’ve been frustrated and bored with the church.  I bought into the whole “I’m Christian, but I don’t really do the church thing” lie for a while, mostly because I was bored.  Then I read the Bible.  I mean…really read the Bible.  I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t read the Bible all the way through, beginning to end, until about 4 years ago.  That totally changed me.

The point is simply this – worship is not entertainment.  It’s for edification, education, and most importantly, glorifying God.  Sometimes it’s not going to fit into whatever musical style we like, but that’s okay.  Maybe sometimes the words are hard to understand or archaic.  There are bad hymns and good hymns.  There are bad worship songs and good worship songs.  But don’t miss the incredible truth of “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” just because the musical styling isn’t what you hear on the radio.  Don’t listen to “Crown Him With Many Crowns” unmoved because it doesn’t sound like a U2 cover band.  But at the same time, don’t ignore a song like “How He Loves Us” because “rock music isn’t your thing.”  I could go on, but I won’t.

What we do, when we get “bored” with worship, is we put entertainment over truth.  And while we get bored with it, people in other countries are being thrown in jail and killed for their faith.

I think there’s a lot to be said about content.  That’s where this discussion needs to be aimed.  Because style…that’s just unimportant.

 

*I think it needs to be said that the name “Jesus Culture” is stupid and possibly a violation of the Third Commandment.

Quick Easter Post…

Again, due to lack of Internet accessibility, this should have run 3/29 in preparation for Easter. But I have Internet now, so I should be caught up.  Joy of joys!

This Keller quote is one of my favorites:

“If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.”

Timothy Keller

He is risen indeed.

I am Marshall Henderson

Finally have Internet at the house – this post should have run 3/22.  

Even in the off chance you paid attention to MPSA basketball in the early 2000s, you missed my basketball career.  It was the definition of unnoticeable – while I was on the varsity squad, I averaged less than a minute a game, and got more minutes than other stats (with the exception of fouls – I once played only the fourth quarter of a game and almost fouled out).  My intramural career also began in high school as the coach of the illustrious Jacktown Smackdown dynasty.  It wasn’t really a dynasty, but we did win a championship our senior year, and it is to date the greatest accomplishment of my basketball career.

I didn’t play much because I wasn’t very good.  That’s easy enough to understand.  I was a Forward/Center and I was 6’2″ and weighed about 170 lbs.  So what that should tell you is that I was really, really slow and uncoordinated, because 6’2″ 170 is a good size for a guard.  But I was a center.  So there’s that.

I also had a terrible attitude.  To this day, I think one of the biggest blessings the Lord gave me was making me bad at sports.  I argued with refs, talked trash to other players, celebrated obnoxiously.  I threw a punch in a game and also threw a ball at another player (two separate games).  I got ejected from multiple intramural games at Ole Miss and even got banned from intramural basketball for a season (it was for arguing with a ref.  I didn’t hit anybody or anything).  When I think about every fight I ever got in throughout high school, it probably involved basketball in some way.  And people probably should have seen it coming – I got nicknamed “little Rodman” in church league basketball one year because all I did was rebound and have a bad attitude.

Simply put, I was a punk on the basketball court.  I loved the game, I loved my school, and I wasn’t afraid to let anyone know it.  My love for sports message boards even started then as I found a board that discussed Mississippi high school sports, and I would regularly mix it up with old guys I’d never met to defend my high school.

I quit playing basketball in any organized fashion for a while, until I got on a church league team in Madison three years ago.  I kept myself under control, but quit because I could feel that part of me coming back.  Basketball (and I guess in a sense competition in general) has that effect on me.

On the other hand, if you paid attention to sports at all this year, you know the name Marshall Henderson.  He’s the brash, gunslinging guard who happens to play for my alma mater.  He talks a lot, scores a lot, and occasionally does stupid stuff that pisses everyone off.  So basically he’s just like me except that he’s good at basketball.  Yeah, he has a rough past, but as far as anyone knows, during his time in Oxford he’s kept himself out of trouble.

He’s become a bit of a media circus.  A Tennessee 247 writer (which, to be clear on something, I have a hard time taking a lot of 247, Scout, and Rivals writers seriously, because too many of them – though not all – are nothing more than glorified cheerleaders) whined about him for a full day after he dropped 30 on them in Knoxville (the same writer remained noticeably silent when people commented on how personable Henderson was and how he always made a point to shake hands with the other team and coaches).  Gregg Doyel, also a hack, took up a campaign against him.  Some New York Times writer (don’t remember his name) included him in a piece that was pretty much just crying over kids having fun playing basketball.  Seriously, the guy complained about the FGCU players shaking hands with Reggie Miller after a game.

And let me be clear – the criticism isn’t entirely unwarranted.  Like I said, he’s brash.  He’s cocky.  And in an era, especially in sports, where nothing is good enough, of course he’s going to be blasted.  And I really do wish he’d tone some of it down – but if he sticks around in Oxford for another season, and stays out of real trouble, I can take the good with the bad.

All this is to say – I get why people don’t like it.  I get why opposing fans boo him and all that stuff.  But I also get why he does what he does.

I don’t know where I’m even really going with this.  I’m aware I probably wouldn’t like him if he didn’t play for Ole Miss.  Maybe that makes me a hypocrite.  But I also feel like criticizing a guy for getting a second chance (or third, or fourth…whatever) and handling talent and fame way better than I ever could also makes me a hypocrite.

Plus, we just won an SEC Tournament championship for the first time in my life, so that has to count for something.

Faking It Is Hard

Note – if you’ve been following along, you know my New Year’s Resolution was to make a post per week.  This is still my goal, but due to not having Internet in my new house yet, this post was delayed a few days.  

A couple of weeks ago, I was reading an article about how Facebook is becoming less popular among teenagers. I started to read it because I’m a youth pastor and I needed to see what was cool and apparently that’s important for me to know, but there were a few things that stood out to be, particularly one sentence:

At some point, adding these details, like hundreds of photos from a recent vacation and status updates about your new job amounted to bragging — force-feeding Facebook friends information they didn’t ask for. What was once cool was now uncool. Worse yet, it started to feel like work. Maybe the burden of constantly constructing immaculate digital profiles of ourselves is tiring.

We live in an age where we are more exposed than ever. I mean, I should be proof. I write a blog, post on Twitter, have Facebook, and read a few different message boards. I also have an Instagram and a Playstation Network ID. If I really looked hard, I could probably find a few more things that I have or do that put me out there somehow. I’m all over the place. My guess is, if you’re reading this, you found it via my Facebook or Twitter. So we’re all exposed.

But if you pay attention to my Facebook or my Twitter, and you don’t know me outside of those places, do you really know me? I am a bit of a control freak about what pictures get put out there of me. My job kind of requires it. Take, for example, a picture of me at an Ole Miss football game. Say I’m sitting with some friends in the Grove, drinking a Coke out of a red Solo cup. Somebody takes a picture of us. I’m going to make sure that picture doesn’t make it to Facebook. Why? Just because I can’t afford for there to be any misconception. It gets really easy for that to go from “I was drinking Coke out of a red Solo cup in the Grove” to “I was drinking out of a red Solo cup in the Grove” to “I was drunk in the Grove” to “MAN THIS WEEKEND IN OXFORD WAS SO FUN I GOT TRASHED” to “Hey, this is your pastor and we need to talk about what you’re doing away from Brookhaven.” Really easy. And in this made up scenario, all I was doing was drinking a Coke.

So, up front, I’m admitting that there’s a screening process. I am trying to actively manage what you get from me on a service that supposedly gives us unfettered access to people’s personal lives. And that makes sense. Even if I wasn’t a youth pastor, I wouldn’t want to send out the misconception that I was drunk in the Grove, because odds are, I wasn’t.

But what about stuff that doesn’t make sense? What about pictures of me doing something I really enjoy doing, but not wanting the pictures to be out there because I look fat? Or not “liking” a band because they may not be the most popular band out there? I have, on several occasions, witheld posting something that I read that I found meaningful because I was scared that the author wasn’t “Reformed” enough for the people I go to seminary with. Or…whatever. There can be a million different reasons.

The fact is, I’m fully aware that Facebook (or Twitter) is the most exposure some people have to me. So I’m going to make sure there aren’t any “embarrassing” pictures, “bad” theology, whatever. But more than that, I’m not ever, EVER, going to reveal my true struggles on there. I may jokingly throw out something like “man, I just ate a whole large pizza, no wonder I’m fat” or “wow, I just listened to Mmmbop four times in a row” or whatever, but I’m not about to tell you my real thoughts or struggles.

And that’s why Facebook feels like work, and why it isn’t that “cool” anymore. Yeah, we’ll still use it, probably for a long time. It has forever changed the way we network and keep in touch with people. But faking it is hard. I think deep down, everybody wants to be truly known and still loved anyway. And I think part of the appeal of Facebook is that it appears to give us that option.  But then we get to it and realize it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

That’s one of my biggest concerns with the digital age.  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram…whatever…they give us the illusion of community without actually giving it to us.  And so we wind up feeling more exposed and more isolated than ever, which is not a good thing.

As I have written this blog, I have never wanted to just insert the stereotypical “and this is where the Gospel comes into play” part at the end of a post where it doesn’t fit.  And since most of my posts have been on the less-than-serious side, there really haven’t been many chances to do that.  But this is where the Gospel comes into play.  Only in the story of God seeing our sin, loving us despite it, then coming to earth in human form to live among us and then die for us can that desire ever be fulfilled.  When I deal with kids, or elders, or my family members, or even my fiancee, there is always a nagging feeling that I can’t ever be truly real because I’m scared that will be the thing that pushes them over the edge.

But Jesus does just the opposite.  Jesus says “I know your faults and your struggles and your inconsistencies and your insecurities and your sin better than you ever could.  I felt them in ways you never will.  And I love you anyway.”

So I guess the point here is this – you can’t fake real community.  We try really hard sometimes, but we can’t.  We try to put just enough of ourselves out there so that people “know” us, but they really don’t know us.  So we’re left longing for more.  But as we move past Facebook on to whatever the next social media craze is going to be, I hope we can keep in mind that calculated, digital interaction with people can never replace real Christ-centered community.

Go Mississippi

This is just a post where I talk about how awesome Mississippi is.  It’s not particularly eloquent, and I don’t make any great points.  Mississippi is just awesome.

I am from Mississippi.  I was born here, I grew up here, I live here.  I may not always live here, but I’ll (hopefully) die here.

I went to college here, I met my fiance here, and I’ll get married here.

I firmly and sincerely believe this is the greatest state in the United States of America.

We get a bad rap a lot of time time, and it’s not always undeserved (though the response is often unfair), but it’s a great place.

Great music, great food, great literature, great athletes…you name it, we have it.  We’ve put it out there.

I don’t need a special occasion or reason to say it, but for all the crap we get, I’m going to take a second and brag.

This week, doctors at the University of Mississippi Medical Center cured an HIV+ child.

The biggest medical breakthrough in history could be coming from my hometown.  That’s a lot to take in.

The first heart transplant also happened here, so it’s not like major medical breakthroughs don’t happen here.

So, as a Mississippian and an alumnus of the University of Mississippi, this week I’ve been beaming with pride over this news.

Like I said, I don’t need a reason to brag on my state.  Honestly, I probably should do it a lot more.

But yeah…I love this state, and this is just one more reason why.

Go, Mississippi.