Showing posts with label Cheating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cheating. Show all posts

Friday, September 2, 2016

Sermon Video: Should my word be my bond? - James 5:12

In all manner of aspects of business, politics, and personal relationships, the world is rife with the deceptions of lying, cheating, and stealing.  In many ways, those who find "success" in this world live by the mantra that "if you're not cheating, you're not trying".  For the people of God, such things are entirely unacceptable.  God's people, in contrast with the world, must live by honesty, integrity, and faithfulness.  We don't need oaths to strengthen our word, for our actions, day by day, ought to confirm to those around us that our word can be trusted.  It will cost us to live by a higher standard, we may lose out on business to an unscrupulous competitor, we may lose out on friendships with those live by deception; so be it.
Christian businessmen must choose to be honest and true in their dealings, Christian politicians must choose to abandon the back-stabbing, lying, and character assassinations so common in our current political scene (and those who claim to represent Christian values, but wallow in these vices, are in no way representing God's people), and Christians need to deal with their family, neighbors, and friends in honesty and integrity.  These are not optional choices for the people of God, but demands upon us by our Father.
FYI, this also means that in our arguments and debates, with fellow Christians or with unbelievers, we must embrace the truth, quote people fairly, eschew dirty tactics and character assassination, and treat our opponents with dignity.  That this behavior is sadly lacking, especially in what passes for debate on the internet, is painfully obvious.

To watch the video, click on the link below:


Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Why Lance Armstrong's cheating still hurts.

If you're like me, you don't watch much cycling on TV, nobody does.  Yet a few years ago I found myself watching the Tour coverage so that I could root Lance on against the world (and especially the annoying French who always hated him for winning their race); it seemed impossible that he had that extra gear, that ability to dig deep when it mattered most.  I admired that drive because I remember it well from my days of competitive running, although I had no more talent than the next guy, I always managed to pass somebody at the end.
And now Lance is going to admit to the world what he's been denying loudly for decades, he cheated.  It seems that everybody in cycling was cheating (Baseball fans may recognize this notion), and he felt the need to join them to have a chance of winning.  I really did like Lance as an athlete, not so much as a husband, but athletes are rarely good role models (as Charles Barkley famously said).  And now this.
Even though I know that putting your faith or trust is another person opens you up to disappointment, I can't help myself.  The theology of it I understand, Paul makes it clear in Romans that there are none righteous, none that we can put on a pedestal, all have flaws.  Certainly the lives of the O.T. saints confirm the need to proceed with caution (everybody's hero David certainly have a dark side worse than most). 
And yet we, myself along with you, find ourselves believing that this person will be different; that this politician, actor, athlete, teacher, pastor, or friend will be different.  They'll never let us down and they'll always do the right thing.  When the inevitable letdown happens, we can't help but feel the disappointment.
So why do we do it?  Why do we keep on believing in people when only God can promise to never disappoint us?  Simple: we need heroes.  This world is too full of moral evil for us to cope with our own struggle against it without having heroes to look up to.  Real people living right now (on top of the comic book and fictional characters we escape from reality with) that can encourage us by their own example.
In the end, that's a good thing; we need to put our trust in people too, we can't simply say that we trust in God because our faith is lived out in this world; it is here that we must make our stand, it is here that we must sacrifice of ourselves to help others, and it is here that we need to believe that a guy can come back from cancer to be a champion, even if that belief hurts in the end...It turns out that it's worth the occasional pain of being let down to find people in life worth believing in; after all, God believes in you, his Son came to prove it.