When reality television first became popular, most reality shows were devoted to putting a diverse group of people in a house or in the wilderness or in some sort of challenging situation. More recently many reality programs take a different approach and focus on a very specific subculture, whether child beauty-pageant contestants, pawn-shop owners, pastors’ wives in Atlanta, or people who have made a fortune off of duck calls. Maybe the church can learn something from reality TV. This week LinC affirms that all Christians—from all cultures, denominations, and traditions—are one in Christ. But we also will celebrate the qualities that make individual Christians, congregations, and denominations unique. Key Scriptures: John 1:43-49; 1 Corinthians 9:19-23; Hebrews 11; 13:8. It’s only February, but 2013 already has arguably seen more sports scandals than any year in recent memory. Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong confessed to doping; baseball writers, suspecting that many eligible players had taken performance-enhancing drugs, elected no players to the Hall of Fame; the story of Lennay Kekua, girlfriend of Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o and supposed leukemia victim, turned out to be a hoax; and just last week investigators in Europe broke the news of a gambling scandal that may have affected hundreds of soccer matches. Amid all the cheating, match-fixing, and dishonesty, it’s hard to know which sports records, results, and stories we can trust. And these struggles aren’t unique to sports. Next week we’ll talk about trust, whom and what we can trust, and what it means to trust in God.
