Dear Ben,<\/p>\n
I totally respect that your particular religion requires you to abstain from sports on Sundays. But Sunday is our 3rd grade championship game, and the fact is we can\u2019t win without your son, Jonah.\u00a0 We have seven boys who are fair-to-middling at best, and then my son Coop who can\u2019t dribble twice without traveling. So I\u2019m wondering if you would be willing to \u201clet go and let God\u201d and let Jonah play on Sunday?<\/p>\n
FYI, Sunday is my day of rest, too, Ben. I putter around, mow the lawn, watch football, eat wings.\u00a0 Not a lot of praying, but it’s still a Sabbath of sorts. So I\u2019m making a sacrifice here, too, dragging me and Coop out to Foothill Middle.\u00a0 Why? To give these kids a chance to express their God-given talents before the eyes of God.<\/p>\n
I would never argue that our basketball game is more important than your religion. But I would argue that your son Jonah\u2019s ability to shoot off the dribble is itself an expression of God\u2019s will, one that you may not even have the right to deny him. And not to be sacrilegious, but his step-back jumper is seriously the most ungodly thing I\u2019ve ever seen in U9 basketball.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re probably aware of the rule where I have to play the lesser players for five minutes in the first half. They get out there and jump around and lose the ten-point lead that Jonah gave us, and when I look at Jonah on the bench I can see that the only thing he wants to do is get back out there and break some ankles.<\/p>\n
What this means to me, Ben, is that Jonah is only truly at rest while he\u2019s in motion.<\/em> So if you really want him to rest, you have to let him play. And if you don’t let him play, you’re not letting him rest, and therefore failing to observe the Sabbath. Could this make you a sinner? I’m no theologian, but it might be something to consider.<\/p>\n I do respect your beliefs and your adherence to the Word of God, so I did research the whole “day of rest” covenant in the Bible. In Exodus 20:8-11 it says:<\/p>\n On [the Sabbath] you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock.<\/em><\/p>\n Now, though it does mention sons, there\u2019s no mention of basketball. Not even any language that you could construe to refer to basketball. And since covenant means the same thing as contract, playing basketball ipso facto<\/em> does not constitute a breach of the Covenant.<\/p>\n I also want to remind you that this game will be over by 3pm, so you and Jonah will have 23 other hours in the day to abstain from things. And I don\u2019t mean to offend, but I can\u2019t help wondering how a benevolent God could ever punish a child for playing in a basketball game? Honestly, I don\u2019t know if I could believe in such a God, Ben.<\/p>\n One scenario that Assistant Coach Rajeesh mentioned was this: Cooper invites Jonah over for a play date (or a \u201cpray date\u201d) on Sunday; the boys wander over to Foothill Middle to pray or \u201cwhatever\u201d and then you pick him up at three-thirty.\u00a0 You do a WWJD by turning the other cheek and a blind eye, while also maintaining plausible deniability in the eyes of the Lord. And maybe, just maybe, we find a trophy in our case by EOD.<\/p>\n We\u2019re Presbyterians, Ben, so we don\u2019t have the whole covered-wagon-no-cell-phone-apocalypse thing going. But on good days we all do believe in God, and when I lost my job last year I prayed like crazy to God.\u00a0 And he delivered.\u00a0 Albeit at a 30% pay cut. So I consider myself a religious man.<\/p>\n But I don’t think my God wants me to make arbitrary rules that preclude fun for my child. He doesn\u2019t want me to tell Cooper that he can\u2019t play basketball because he shoots into the wrong basket or because I need to “rest\u201d on Sunday. I believe that my God wants me to let my son play on Sunday, or Tuesday, Friday or any frickin\u2019 day they put a game on our calendar, Ben.<\/p>\n So please reconsider and let your holy basketball warrior help us vanquish the Battling Bobcats Sunday at 2pm at Foothill Middle School, Court 2.<\/p>\n Yours in God,<\/p>\n Coach Tim<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Ben, I totally respect that your particular religion requires you to abstain from sports on Sundays. But Sunday is our 3rd grade championship game, and the fact is we can\u2019t win without your son, Jonah.\u00a0 We have seven boys who are fair-to-middling at best, and then my son Coop who can\u2019t dribble twice without […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":13819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1322,1324,1325,1323,1321,1326],"class_list":["post-13814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-basketball","tag-bible","tag-covenant","tag-exodus","tag-sabbath","tag-wwjd","writer-stephen-statler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13814"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13821,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13814\/revisions\/13821"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}