Glen's Quotes Db (3169 total)

Not Reading Pitino is a Choice by Joe Lavin -- http://joelavin.com Let me just say up-front that I like Boston Celtic basketball coach Rick Pitino. He is one of the best basketball coaches around, but, Coach, I have just one small request. Stop writing the books. Please. Pitino's Success is a Choice is another in a string of sports/business books which include Pat Riley's The Winner Within, Phil Jackson's Sacred Hoops, and Bill Parcells' Finding a Way to Win. These coaches are no longer content to write merely about the X's and O's of sports. No, instead, they have a more important agenda. These books are about how to succeed in life, how to motivate the workforce, and how lessons learned from the world of sports can be applied to the world of business. This is clearly unfortunate. Think about it. Do you really want your boss to use a coach as a role model? "No, TWO-SIDED, you @#$%!!!! What the @#$% were you thinking you @#$%ing moron? Get back to your @#$%ing desk! Tammy, go in for Bob at the photocopier, and don't you @#$%ing screw up either, or I'll ship your ass outta here so fast you won't know what the @#$% hit you!" Well, I suppose coaches do more than just yell. They also teach. "Bob, you gotta work on this photocopying. It's dragging the whole office down. I want you to stay after work and practice the fundamentals, okay? Here make 500 copies of this collated on 3- hole paper. And if you get it right, then maybe I'll let you photocopy for real." "Okay, Coach." Something tells me that if enough supervisors take lessons from coaches, we'll probably all turn into Latrell Sprewells. But the real problem is this: the lessons learned from the world of sports just can't be applied to the real world. (You remember the real world, Coach. You know, that complex thing where people don't play for a living.) The real world and sports have nothing in common. It would be just as efficient to have an accountant write a book about basketball. "Chapter Six: How accounts payable knowledge can be applied to the execution of the fast break." One of Pitino's favorite themes is the importance of motivation, and I have to hand it to him. He is an impressive motivator. After all, he somehow managed to motivate a publisher into publishing this crappy book in the first place. That right there is a major motivational coup in itself. But I still don't understand what he can teach us about motivation. Just because Rick Pitino can motivate a seven foot basketball player who has been dreaming of the NBA all his life doesn't mean he can motivate some slacker in the mail room. "Come on. Let's win one for the team." simply won't cut it in the mail room. Sure, there may be a few Sprewells and Rodmans in the NBA, but for the most part NBA players are only upset when they are not allowed to do their job. "Look, Coach, I'm a much better copier than Tammy. You've got to put me back on the machine. I've earned it." is not something you'll ever hear in the office. Trust me. But then again, Coach Pitino wouldn't know about job malaise. Its very notion is completely alien to him. Here's a man who clearly loves his job. He is constantly babbling about staying late after work, working the weekends, and preparing for the next day's work the night before. And while at work, all the other distractions of life must be ignored. "An athlete. . . wouldn't think of showing up for an eight o'clock game at seven fifty-five. . . . What you should be doing is arriving at work a half an hour earlier and getting all of your social conversations out of the way, getting your newspaper read and getting your coffee poured, so that when the workday starts you'll be ready. . . . When the workday is in progress that should be where all your energy is focused." It's a lovely plan, but you have to wonder how many others will be at work a half hour early every day. "Hey, where is everyone? I have to get my social conversations out of the way before the workday is in progress. Guys?" Even when you do succeed, Pitino won't let you relax. This is the same man who held a meeting with his coaches at seven in the morning the day after his Kentucky team won the national championship. Hard work is not only the impetus of his system. It may also be the reward. Still, if you follow his "ten steps to overachieving in business and life," Pitino firmly believes you can accomplish practically anything. You can lose weight. You can grab that promotion. You can motivate lazy teenagers. ("You know the type: poor grades, earrings or noserings, dyed hair.") Hell, you can even write wise ass attacks on popular sports figures like Coach Pitino. But, of course, successful wise ass attacks don't just come overnight. You have to earn your success through hard work, putting in those extra hours so that your wise ass attack on Coach Pitino can be the best wise ass attack on Coach Pitino ever. And so as I reach the end of this article, we should remember that in wise ass attacks -- just as in basketball -- the time to put up your best effort is at the end. Sure, there may be more pressure writing the conclusion, but I know I cannot be afraid of that pressure. Instead, I must thrive on it. Yes, it's time to put my best foot forward and work extra hard to create an absolute zinger of an ending, an ending that's so completely entertaining and informative that -- Aw, screw it. I think I'll just go grab a beer instead. Wanna join me? _________ Copyright 1999 by Joe Lavin

What should I think of my child, if I found that he limited his faith in me and hope from me to the few promises he had heard me utter! The faith that limits itself to the promises of God seems to me to partake of the paltry character of such a faith in my child -- good enough for a Pagan, but for a Christian a miserable and wretched faith. Those who rest in such a faith would feel yet more comfortable if they had God's bond instead of His word, which they regard not as the outcome of His character but as a pledge of His honour. They try to believe in the truth of His word, but the truth of His Being they understand not. In His oath they persuade themselves that they put confidence: in himself they do not believe, for they know Him not.

We are to believe and follow Christ in all things, including his words about Scripture. And this means that Scripture is to be for us what it was to him: the unique, authoritative, and inerrant Word of God, and not merely a human testimony to Christ, however carefully guided and preserved by God. If the Bible is less than this to us, we are not fully Christ's disciples.

This column was syndicated by Scripps Howard News Service on 01/12/2005 Believers often wrestle with tragedy and death on the Mukono campus of the Uganda Christian University. Families are large and disease common, affecting young and old. Terrorism and tribal conflicts in this culture often lead to violence, injury and death. "Someone will say, 'My brother died last night,' and he will say it as a simple statement of fact," said Father Stephen Noll, vice chancellor of this Anglican Church of Uganda school. "Someone may report that a particular student will not be returning to class because he was killed in an ambush by the 'Army of God.' " It took time for Noll to adjust, after leaving his post as dean of an American seminary to help support the growing churches in Africa. He watched the faithful face so much pain and loss without losing faith in a compassionate and just God. "It's not that they don't grieve," he said. "They know -- as a common fact of life -- that bad things happen to good people. They accept that in the context of their faith." Thus, Third World believers may wonder why leaders in privileged lands such as Great Britain and the United States have been so quick to point angry fingers at the heavens following the Indian Ocean tsunami. For example, Anglican leaders in Uganda were surprised by this headline in the Sunday Telegraph in London: "Archbishop of Canterbury -- this has made me question God's existence." The online version was just as blunt: "Of course this makes us doubt God's existence." Press officers for Archbishop Rowan Williams protested that these headlines radically oversimplified the truths that the theologian and poet had tried to communicate in his complex, candid tsunami essay. Critics had focused on his statement that it was wrong for Christians not to doubt the goodness, or even the existence, of the biblical God in the face of 157,000 deaths. "Every single random, accidental death is something that should upset a faith bound up with comfort and ready answers," wrote Williams. "Faced with the paralyzing magnitude of a disaster like this, we naturally feel more deeply outraged. ... The question: 'How can you believe in a God who permits suffering on this scale?' is therefore very much around at the moment, and it would be surprising if it weren't -- indeed, it would be wrong if it weren't. The traditional answers will get us only so far." Meanwhile, religious believers in violent and impoverished parts of the world often find comfort and coherence in the traditional answers of their faiths. Noll stressed that it would be wrong to oversimplify this. Nevertheless, he thought Ugandan responses to the tsunami were revealing. "For God the issue of dying is not as tragic as it is to us because whether dead or alive we are still in his presence," said Father Grace Kaiso, spokesman for the Uganda Joint Christian Council. "God whispers to us in times of peace and shouts to us in times of tragedy and unfortunately we pay more attention when he shouts. So through the tsunamis he was shouting to us and awakened us to the reality of death, which can come suddenly, of his power and of his salvation which we should take advantage of." Imam Kasozi of Uganda's Muslim Youth Assembly responded: "God does what he wants to do. If people are not responding to his call of upright living, he will punish them. ... When God sends punishment, it does not discriminate between wrongdoers and the upright ones. This incident was two-way in that the wrongdoers were punished and the upright people who were doing God's will were taken early to heaven." The key, said Noll, is that many in the West tend to question the sovereignty of God, preferring a "weakened God or a mystical God or no God at all" to an omnipotent God who permits disasters. "People in traditional societies," said Noll, "face quandaries of God's justice daily with the death of a relative from AIDS ... or a crazed insurgent and they lean in the direction of accepting disasters as God's sovereign will. They also have a more vivid belief in the afterlife. While they mourn the loss of life, they console themselves that God's justice will be vindicated in the end." Terry Mattingly (www.tmatt.net) teaches at Palm Beach Atlantic University and is senior fellow for journalism at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. He writes this weekly column for the Scripps Howard News Service. --------------------------------------------------------------------- You are subscribed to this list as: glen@glenandpaula.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: tmattingly-weekly-unsubscribe@lists.gospelcom.net For additional commands, e-mail: tmattingly-weekly-help@lists.gospelcom.net -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.6.13 - Release Date: 1/16/2005

So far we have established that the law is relevant to expository apologetics. We have also answered the objection posed by those who believe it is hypocritical to apply some parts of the law and not others. Additionally, we have established the fact that those who disagree with us are actually the ones who arbitrarily pick and choose. They hold to certain parts of the law and not to others. In fact, their objection to our use of the law is based on their assumption that hypocrisy is wrong-an idea rooted in the ninth commandment. The difference, of course, is that (1) we know we are using the law, and they do not; (2) we know why we are picking and choosing, and they do not; and (3) our picking and choosing is governed by an authority outside ourselves, and theirs is not.