Chuck Klosterman on Kentucky Basketball

Chuck Klosterman has written an intriguing article on Grantland.com about John Calipari’s Kentucky Wildcat basketball team, and what it will (or at least could) mean to NCAA basketball if UK wins the National Championship on Monday.

It’s a compelling article and touches on a lot of issues facing college basketball today—overall decline in the quality of play, recruiting, and the NCAA’s stupid One and Done rule. I agree with a lot of what Klosterman has to say, but I think he’s too easy on John Calipari. Coach Cal might genuinely be a nice guy, but his past teams have been too marred by scandal (and their accomplishments vacated) for me to believe that he is clean. 

He’s right about one thing though—Kentucky should absolutely win the title this year. They are scary good.

The Dangers of Language Study

I have spent what seems like a significant portion of my life studying languages, and for the most part, I’m pretty good at it. Aside from English, which I’ve been speaking at least semi-fluently for almost a quarter century, I also spent several years studying Spanish (and even have a college degree in it), and for the past two semesters I have been studying Koine Greek (i.e., the Greek of the New Testament).

There’s a problem that comes with being “pretty good” at language study though: learning a language comes easy enough to me that I am not too intimidated to try it, but it is difficult enough that I never completely seem to “get it down.” Part of this stems from the fact that language study takes a great deal of constant practice, and I haven’t always been diligent about doing that. Another problem is that my brain seems to have a difficult time keeping the different languages separate, which results in me occasionally producing a weird hybrid of multiple languages. For example, consider the word in in the three languages I know:

• English: in
• Spanish: en
• Koine Greek: ἐν

These three words mean the same thing, are pronounced virtually the same, and are basically spelled the same (the Greek ε is similar to the Spanish e and the Greek ν is similar to the English or Spanish n). Is it really any wonder that I semi-routinely get these words mixed up and use them interchangeably?

Genesis 11 tells the story of the Tower of Babel, which occurred at a time when everyone spoke the same language. In an act of apparent hubris, a bunch of people decided to build a tower which would stretch up to heaven. This displeased God, so he confused their language (v.7) to disrupt their cooperation and prevent the completion of their project.

All of that to say this: despite my best efforts, I feel like my languages are significantly confused and babbled in my head. And here’s the problem with that: when you misspell the word in, people start to make assumptions about your intelligence (or lack thereof).

Influence and…Faux Hawks

The Idolatry of Solomon, by Franz Francken II, 1622

Influence is a powerful force—both the influence that we have on other people and the influence that others have on us. This is by no means a new or ground-breaking statement, but it is an idea that was hammered home to me last night in an unusual way.

I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror after taking a shower, when I realized that the way my hair was laying pretty closely resembled a faux hawk. And here’s the shocking part: I caught myself thinking, “You know, that really doesn’t look too bad.” This completely blew me away, because when faux hawks first became popular a couple of years ago, I thought they were irredeemably stupid. I don’t ever remember consciously changing my opinion on the matter, but apparently, seeing one faux hawk after another for the last couple of years gradually influenced me to think of it as a normal and acceptable haircut (Don’t worry, I have since returned to my senses and there is no danger that you will see me sporting a faux hawk—ever.).

This shocking event illustrates an important point about influence—you can gradually, subtly be influenced to completely change the way you think about a certain behavior, practice, or way of life, and it can happen without you even realizing it. Sometimes you might change your mind about something relatively innocent or unimportant (like a hairstyle), but influence can also change us in much more significant (and sometimes negative) ways.

I’m currently reading a book called Sticky Faith, which addresses the alarming rate at which Christian teenagers tend to drop out of the church about the time they graduate from high school. There are a lot of reasons why this happens, but a major one is influence—when teens leave home and move off to college, they are largely freed from the greatest influence in their lives (parents), and are especially susceptible to new influences that they encounter. Often, these new and different influences push them to places where they never thought they would end up—most faithful Christian teenagers don’t plan to go to college, drop out of church, and become involved in a lifestyle of binge-drinking and sexual promiscuity, but it happens as they are influenced to change the way they look at things and to fit in with their surroundings.

Although this phenomenon always seems to be surprising to youth ministers and parents when they witness it in individual cases, it’s really shouldn’t surprise us at all, because the Bible explicitly teaches us that the influences of others can lead us to sin:

• King Solomon was influenced by his foreign wives and concubines to turn away from following God and build places of worship to idols instead (1 Kings 11.1-13).
• Herod’s stepdaughter was influenced by her mother to ask that John the Baptist be beheaded (Matthew 14.1-12).
• In Galatians 2.11-21, Paul describes how certain men had influenced Peter and Barnabas to withdraw from fellowshipping with Gentiles.
• In 1 Corinthians 15.33, Paul comes right out and says, “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company ruins good morals.’”

The good news is that influence works both ways—good influences have a lot of power as well:

• “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5.13-16)
• “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” (1 Timothy 4.12)
• “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.” (1 Peter 2.12)

Ultimately, when talking about influence, I think it all boils down to a couple of important points:

(1) All of us are susceptible to outside influences, so it is important that we monitor those influences closely. What kind of people do you surround yourself with? What music do you listen to? What movies or TV shows do you watch? If you are a parent, answer those same questions about your children. Don’t be naive—if you surround yourself with bad influences, no matter who you are, they are affecting you negatively.

(2) All of us influence others as well, so it is important that we are aware of the kind of example we are setting. You never know who might be watching you and who might be influenced by what you do. As a youth minister I do a lot of things, but I have long thought that the most important thing I can do is to be a good example of Christian living for the young people I minister to. Certainly I don’t always succeed, but I always try to be aware that I am broadcasting an influence—for good or bad— at all times.

Blog Updates

I have left my blog to lie fallow for too long and needed to make a few changes. Last night I finally took the time to do so.

First, I slightly tweaked the header image. I wanted to keep it largely the same, but also update it—I think I hadn’t changed it at all for about three years, so it was time.

Also, after my announcement from last week, I thought I might as well add a link to my Twitter account. For those who are interested in following me, you can now do so by clicking on the Twitter link below the RSS feed on the right hand side of the page.

I also cut out some clutter on my sidebar—specifically, I removed a couple of large images and also a list of the main categories that I post under. I thought the list of categories was unnecessary—you can still access my posts on a given category by either searching for a category in the search bar at the bottom (by typing in say, “Baseball”), or by clicking the link to a category at the bottom of a post. I don’t really think this will be an issue, because I don’t think anyone actually used the category list anyway. I could be wrong though.

I also moved my bloglist from the sidebar to a page of its own called “Links” on the navbar. In the process, I updated the list, adding some new blogs while removing links to other blogs which either no longer exist, or no longer seemed to be updated. If I removed a link to your site and you think I did so in error (“No really, I am going to blog there again some day!”), let me know and I will be happy to add it back. I also added some links to some other sites that I think are cool for one reason or another.

Finally, I also updated the “About” page on the navbar. What I had there before had gotten somewhat out of date. Also, it was written in the third person—originally, I found that to be humorous, but the last time I read it it annoyed me. So, no more third person.

I’m still tinkering with the idea of making some more changes for the future, but that covers what I’ve done for now.