May 2006

After reading the earlier post on Indiana University basketball, Brandon Dutcher, a fellow member of the Presbyterian Church in America, posted this comment which seemed best not to leave buried in the comments section. Thanks, Brandon, for adding your thoughts. This is a good encouragment to all of us to be better fathers. Happy Father's Day, early!

As a lifelong Sooner fan (and a PCA Presbyterian), I am disappointed in Coach Sampson for breaking the rules. Yet I have to say I genuinely like the guy and wish him the best at IU. I can promise you he does have some redeeming qualities, as you'll see if you read the column I have shamelessly inserted below. So give him a chance. Perhaps things will turn out better than you think.

-Brandon Dutcher

Father-Son Camp: It's About Time

[This column was published on Father's Day 2003 in The Sunday Oklahoman.]

This is the third Father's Day in a row that I've woken up sore.

But it's worth it, because I love spending time with my 10-year-old son at Kelvin Sampson's annual Father-Child Basketball Camp, held on the University of Oklahoma campus over Father's Day weekend.

Lincoln and I are among the 100-plus campers living in Walker Tower, eating at the Couch Cafeteria and playing ball in the Sooners' extraordinary practice facility adjacent to the Lloyd Noble Center. We practice our shooting and ball-handling, engage in sadistic stretching exercises, and battle other father-son combos in the two-on-two "Cutthroat" competition.

In a recent interview, Sampson told me he first got the idea for a father-son camp while running summer camps as a young head coach at Montana Tech. He even participated with his own son, Kellen.

A couple years ago I was in London and went to Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park to listen. (Speaker's Corner is the place where, for generations, men have taken a milk crate or stepladder and preached to anyone listening.)

On a Sunday afternoon a year earlier, I'd spent several hours there. That day, the subjects were overwhelmingly religious. A Messianic Jew proclaimed Jesus' Messianic fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies to the most hateful audience of Jews imaginable. I admired his courage and wondered whether the bobbies (London policemen) standing guard might not arrest him for inciting a riot. Afterwards I thanked him for his boldness. A year later we renewed our acquaintance.

This time, though, there was a pronounced change. It had all gone over to politics--specifically, hatred for the United States and anger over our war in Iraq. At some point I spoke up and was immediately surrounded by a small group of Muslims spewing venom: "You're an American, aren't you?"

"Yes," I responded, "but more importantly, I'm a Christian--and that comes far before my citizenship."

"So then you worship a god who couldn't keep himself from being murdered on a cross!" they announced gleefully. As they saw it, their victory was complete. The simple fact of our Lord's death on the Cross showed me for a fool.

Such an earthly and logical view of Jesus' death caught me off guard. I'd spent my life in a Christianized country where the cross is just one more piece of jewelry. Madonna just staged the opening concert of her comeback tour and this time her central drama involves mounting and hanging on a large crucifix. Here we have the cross as stage prop.

"You think God coming down to earth and being crucified on a cross is a sign of weakness?" I asked the Muslims. "Then you worship strength and power. And if power's what it's all about, the United States is your god--not mine, but yours."

After my wife, Mary Lee, and I had a date eating strawberry shortcake at the courthouse square this afternoon, I visited our best local used bookstore, Caveat Emptor, to browse through its new arrivals. When I walked in, Caveat's proprietor, Janos Starks, asked, "So, are you having any repercussions in your congregation from the release of The DaVinci Code?"

"No," I said. "There are two types of churches: those that believe discernment is good and those that think it's bad. We think it's good so we have no trouble understanding a novel that presents sex as a sacrament and tells us Jesus was married."

A couple years ago, my cousin, John DeWalt, sent me his discarded copy of The DaVinci Code telling me I ought to read it since it was important for me to know what everyone else was reading. Dutifully, I read it and can say that this book and the movie that closely follows it are not worth anyone's time. Simply put, The DaVinci Code is blasphemy and sacrilege dressed up as a murder mystery.

Picture the goddess worship of ancient paganism, the virulent anti-Catholicism of contemporary American culture, and the mystical babble of New Agers all clomped together in a religion that has a public ritual of sexual intercourse as its highest sacrament, and you've got the picture. Why would any Christian want to watch or read this demonic story?

Yet, I can hear the answer, "Because we can't engage our neighbors on the issues unless we have read the book or seen the movie ourselves. This is a great opportunity to dialog with unbelievers. Why waste it by not gaining the credibility that would come from knowing the story ourselves?"

(Update: The BBC asked YouTube to remove its video of the interview. BBC's explanation and video of the incident is available here. Good video of the interview is also available here.)

Check out this video. The BBC was doing a breaking news segment on last week's British court decision in favor of Apple Computer in a lawsuit against ITunes by the Beatles' Apple Records.

Their hope was to have Guy Kewney, European editor of EWeek.com, comment live on BBC news. But when Guy Goma showed up for an employment interview with the BBC's IT department, the receptionist sent him right into the studio where they were live on camera.

The look on his face in the first few seconds is priceless.

On this Mother's Day, David and I dedicate to our mother, Mary Lou Bayly; and to our wives, Cheryl and Mary Lee, this and the following excerpts from Chesterton's, What's Wrong with the World.

From "The Pedant and the Savage"

Some impatient trader, some superficial missionary, walks across an island and sees the squaw digging in the fields while the man is playing a flute; and immediately says that the man is a mere lord of creation and the woman a mere serf. He does not remember that he might see the same thing in half the back gardens in Brixton, merely because women are at once more conscientious and more impatient, while men are at once more quiescent and more greedy for pleasure. It may often be in Hawaii simply as it is in Hoxton. That is, the woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys.

On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn't obeyed. I do not affirm that this is the whole truth, but I do affirm that we have too little comprehension of the souls of savages to know how far it is untrue. It is the same with the relations of our hasty and surface science, with the problem of sexual dignity and modesty. Professors find all over the world fragmentary ceremonies in which the bride affects some sort of reluctance, hides from her husband, or runs away from him.

The professor then pompously proclaims that this is a survival of Marriage by Capture. I wonder he never says that the veil thrown over the bride is really a net. I gravely doubt whether women ever were married by capture I think they pretended to be; as they do still.

It is equally obvious that these two necessary sanctities of thrift and dignity are bound to come into collision with the wordiness, the wastefulness, and the perpetual pleasure-seeking of masculine companionship. Wise women allow for the thing; foolish women try to crush it; but all women try to counteract it, and they do well.

In many a home all round us at this moment, we know that the nursery rhyme is reversed. The queen is in the counting-house, counting out the money. The king is in the parlor, eating bread and honey. But it must be strictly understood that the king has captured the honey in some heroic wars.