US women's soccer

The US women's team won the Women's World Cup today. Apparently this is the US women's fourth World Cup victory since the dawn of the Women's World Cup. That's the most titles of any nation.

Riding this wave, it appears women are demanding equal pay in soccer because apparently women make significantly less than their male counterparts in soccer.

I admit I haven't followed the equal pay issues in women's soccer in significant depth so I don't know if what I'm about to say is on target. Here are my remarks:

1. First, congrats to the women's team. Megan Rapinoe is the media darling and MVP, but Rose Lavelle looks like the real breakout star of the team in terms of athleticism.

2. Do women in soccer deserve to make the same money as men in soccer? I don't know that "deserve" has anything to do with it. I don't know that it's an ethical issue. Rather I presume salary largely reflects viewership, sponsorship, and advertising. If a sport can get tons of viewers, sponsors, and advertisers interested, then the sport will have more money, and I presume players can get paid more. Isn't that normally how it works in sports? Why should it be different for women's soccer?

3. If we're judging simply by athleticism, I imagine it's not as fun to watch women play soccer as it is to watch men play soccer. To be frank, as good as our women's professional soccer team is, and I don't wish to take anything away from them, nevertheless they look more like amateurs playing soccer in comparison to a low tier male professional soccer team let alone a world class team like Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, England, Portugal, etc. I imagine that's the case for most men's vs. women's sports, not only soccer.

4. I presume sports like women's tennis and volleyball are popular at least as much (if not more so) for the female athletes' appearances as for their athleticism. That's not to suggest it's fair.

5. I don't have a problem if women are paid equally or even more than men in the same sport. Perhaps women's soccer can bring in as much if not more viewership, sponsorship, and advertising than men's soccer in the US. Especially in light of this latest World Cup victory. If so, then women could very well be paid on par with or even more than men. I don't have a problem with that.

6. My problem is if women are paid on par with men by dictum presumably due to political, social, or cultural pressure to pay women more simply because they're women. That seems sexist. And women shouldn't wish to get paid more simply because they're women any more than men should wish to get paid more simply because they're men. How is that empowering?

7. Take men's soccer in the US vs. England. To my knowledge, the English Premier League (EPL) tends to pay their players more than the Major League Soccer (MLS) pays their players. I presume that's because the EPL has more viewers, sponsors, and advertisers involved than the MLS does. However it'd be laughable if someone argued men's soccer players in the MLS should get paid on par with men's soccer players in the EPL, not because the MLS is bringing in the same viewership and money and so on as the EPL, but simply because they're paid lower and deserve to be paid more, or perhaps because the "potential" for viewers in the MLS is greater than the "potential" in the EPL.

8. I don't know if it would help or hurt if transgendered "women" make it onto the women's national soccer teams. I guess it'd improve the athleticism, but won't many viewers find that unfair or offputting in some way? At best, wouldn't it be like watching a low-rent men's soccer team? Who would want to watch that?

Rugby Australia’s “Own Goal”

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/rugby-australia-israel-folau-firing-free-speech-by-peter-singer-2019-06

Trans privilege

I just don’t understand how anyone can say this is a level & fair playing field. 1000% increase in trans women taking part in sport recently. It’s a serious topic that has to be honestly dealt with for safety as much as integrity #fairplay pic.twitter.com/g2x4crSFdE

— Sharron Davies MBE (@sharrond62) March 4, 2019

Coed wrestling

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2019/03/should-boys-and-girls-wrestle-each-other-a-case-study-in-sex-and-cultural-gender-confusion/

A few brief observations:

i) I'm no expert on intramural wrestling, but I imagine it would be very easy for a boy to seriously injure a girl. I'm not talking about a boy deliberately hurting a girl, but simply using the same techniques and making the same moves he'd use when wrestling a male opponent. Not only are boys naturally stronger, but boys who wrestle competitively are weightlifters to enhance their musculature. Although female wrestlers may lift weights as well, they can't add as much muscle mass or bone density as boys. 

ii) While I admire boys who forfeit games because they think it's dishonorable to wrestle girls, I think that's a mistake. If girls (and women) enter male space and compete with guys on their own terms, guys shouldn't abandon the field out of misplaced chivalry. Men have to be men. We cannot surrender to a feminist, misandrist ethos in which guys aren't allowed express their natural masculinity. 

Unfortunately, girls, as well as their willfully stupid parents, need to learn the hard way that there are intractable differences between men and women. We can't allow the destructive illusions of feminism to go unchallenged. Some girls will get hurt in the process, but they volunteered. If feminism prevails, that hurts everyone.

I do grant Olson's point that a boy might forfeit the match if he worries that full-body contact with a girl will trigger a very public, spontaneous erection. Perhaps cup protection gear would disguise it, although that might create a different problem if there's no place for that expansive pressure to go.  

iii) Ironically, the transgender thugs are illustrating the athletic superiority of men. 

All-male women's sports

Will the day come when women’s sport consists entirely of men, asks Rod Liddle https://t.co/Xffyq1dCuD

— Fraser Nelson (@FraserNelson) March 2, 2019

If I could do it over again

Randal Rauser 

I don't think that's true. I explicitly identified a type of morally sufficient reasons, i.e. those that produce greater goods. And there are countless examples where suffering produces greater goods. For example, I recently heard a paraplegic athlete say that if he could do it all again, he would accept the accident that paralyzed him because it made him the person he is today including the cultivation of individual character and relationships with other loved ones at a far more profound level. I don't think those who don't suffer can speak into those kinds of cases, but when those who have suffered enormously make their own judgments about coming to own their suffering, we should listen. And that can open our minds to the kind of redemptive stories that are indeed possible.

https://randalrauser.com/2019/02/why-the-problem-of-evil-is-the-ultimate-theist-atheist-standoff/#comment-4339953768

Sports and Sabbath

https://calvinistinternational.com/2019/01/07/should-we-be-celebrating-frank-reich/

1. For the record, I'm not personally invested in this issue. I rarely watch sports. 

2. American culture idolizes sports. And that's hardly unique to American culture. The idolization of sports is a global phenomenon. 

That presents Christians with two basic options. On the one hand we can constantly bitch about the inevitable. Constantly bitch about what we can't change. We can boycott it. Be separatistic. 

On the other hand, we can view sports as an opening for the Gospel. We can infiltrate sports. Take advantage of what we can't change. 

Christian coaches can mentor the next generation of men. They can reach the unchurched. They can reach boys and men who don't normally have occasion to be exposed to the Christian faith. Not to mention boys and men who wouldn't normally take the Christian faith seriously because they haven't seen representatives of the Christian faith they can take seriously. But a coach is an emblem of manhood, and there are boys and men who will give the Gospel a respectful hearing because they respect their coach. 

3. In addition, the secular progressives loathe masculinity with a passion. But sports can be a haven for common grace masculinity at a time when manliness is under sustained attack. In that respect it's more important than it used to be.

4. It's ironic that his daughter plays on the boys' team. That's functionally equivalent to the transgender movement. 

5. Jones sometimes writes useful things, but he's a classic company man. He epitomizes the "confessional Calvinist" mindset.

Although I defend Calvinism on a regular basis, I've always maintained a certain distance from the Reformed community due to its cliquishness and clannishness. I'm not suggesting that's distinctive to the Reformed community. You find that mentality in just about any religious community–as well as other kinds of communities. 

Theological traditions are off-the-shelf packages. And you always have dutiful adherents whose mindset is to robotically check every box. 

The motivation isn't primarily theological but sociological. Because human beings are social creatures, there's a powerful incentive to assimilate to your peer group. To be a loyal team-player. Where creeds simply function as a litmus test for membership in the club.

That reduces theological fidelity to playacting. Guys like Mark Jones and Scott Clark are actors who recite a script. Memorize a script. It's not first and foremost about fidelity to God but playing a role to be a member in good standing with your peer group.

John Frame used to get into hot water because he was too smart for his own good. By that I mean, he wasn't an actor. He wasn't just reciting his lines. He's an independent thinker whose priority is to be true to God's truth. As a philosopher and apologist, he cares about the quality of the arguments. 

His mentor John Murray had the same outlook. That's authentic, God-honoring piety. Instead of paying lip-service to sola Scriptura, it is serious about having biblical justification for what we think and do. The piety of John Owen, Richard Baxter, and Archbishop Leighton (to name a few), who avoided partisan entanglements and blandishments.  

It's not enough to believe the right things. We need to believe them for the right reason. As I say, Mark Jones is a recognizable personality type. Keeps the uniform well-ironed and spotless. Polishes the brass buttons. Smartly salutes and clicks his heels.

The psychology is interchangeable across theological and ideological boundaries. The confessional Baptist, confessional Presbyterian, confessional Lutheran, Eastern Orthodox, Rad-Trad Catholic, party-line Democrat, pious Muslim. Credal expositions like the WCF, WSC, LBCF, Canons of Dort, and Heidelberg Catechism are wonderful summaries of Christian faith. But they're no substitute for Scripture. To be a team-player won't help you on your deathbed, facing into eternity. We're ultimately answerable to God. 

Two paths, two destinies

Life is like poker. Each of us is dealt a hand. It's then a question of how we'll play our hand. In principle, there are different ways to play the same hand. It's instructive, sometimes inspiring, sometimes sobering, sometimes edifying, sometimes ominous, to see how different people play the hand they were dealt. 

Burt Reynolds was a pop icon. I didn't know that much about Reynolds. You know about some people just through cultural osmosis. 

Deliverance was the only film I saw him in. He made several trashy but highly profitable films. He reportedly did a centerfold for Cosmopolitan. Had many affairs. Unlike Nick Nolte, Reynolds stayed trim, but age and illness hallowed out the Olympian physique. He was said to be more intelligent than the jarhead image he projected on screen. 

If you're an atheist, and you have what Reynolds had going for him, that's a reasonable way to play your hand. Utterly vacuous, but in a godless universe, every choice is equally vacuous. And vacuous hedonism is more rational than vacuous humanism. No doubt Richard Carrier secretly envies the lifestyle of Reynolds, but as a pure undiluted dork, Carrier can never emulate that lifestyle. 

It's interesting to compare how Reynolds played his hand with how Tim Tebow is playing his hand. Perhaps Tebow doesn't have the same rakish looks. Nevertheless, with a bit of tweaking, one can imagine Tebow play his hand the way Reynolds did or Reynolds play his hand the way Tebow does. Both were dealt a similar hand. But look at what they do with it. The contrast is striking. 

Transgender self-defense techniques

As progressive Christians, we've put transphobic, homophobic, misogynistic, toxic masculinity behind us. Now's the time to master unisex self-defense techniques:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCZtcxGwHRg&app=desktop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G10uv57Romo

Football blues

Some boys live for football. Intramural football is the highpoint of their life. They know it's not risk-free, but they only get once chance to be teenagers, so they make the most of it. 

It's a big letdown after they graduate from high school. The rest of their life is an anticlimax. They continue to watch football, but that's not the same thing has playing football. They look back on that time of life with bittersweet nostalgia, yearning to recapture their long-lost youth.

Of course there are more important things in life than football. But here's my point: Those who die in Christian will be 17 again. Maybe not literally 17, but those who die in Christ will be rejuvenated. Youthful and ageless. 

You're not condemned to look back vainly and longingly at all you lost, for you can look ahead to restoration. In a sense you come full circle, but better than ever. Christians have so much to look forward to. 

Extreme sports

I was watching a video of young men playing parkour on high-rise buildings. This is similar to other extreme sports, viz. Motocross, mountainboarding, rock-climbing.

i) The foolhardy hubris is arresting. A daredevil has to get lucky every time while gravity only has to get lucky once. What factors contribute to this high-risk behavior?

ii) Atheism is nihilistic. Doesn't give young people anything to live for. So secularism fuels risky behavior. 

iii) Some boys have always been attracted to dangerous stunts. That's why it's good to have contact sports (e.g. football, ice hockey, Lacrosse). While contact sports aren't risk-free, they're far safer than the activities some boys resort to if denied that outlet. 

The cultural elite, which dominates the education establishment, demonizes masculinity. Frowns on stereotypical male activities, like contact sports. But the result is to make boys pursue even more hazardous extracurricular activities.

iv) It may not be coincidental that parkour has an urban setting. Men are designed for the out-of-doors. While some guys love the big city, I think many guys find too much urbanization claustrophobic. In the past, boys had hunting, rafting, horseback riding to work off their excess energy. 

Although there are probably multiple reasons for street gangs, I think one reason is that inner city kids lack access to nature in the wild.  

3 Reasons I’d (Still) Let My Sons Play Tackle Football

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/3-reasons-let-sons-play-tackle-football/

The ethics of football

Kirk Knudsen • 

I have an entirely different take on this issue. I started playing football in 7th grade, and played every year through my senior year of college (10 years total), at a Bible college in MN. I never suffered a major injury playing football nor missed time for a football injury, and have never suffered a head injury playing football or basketball (which I played for 12 years). I coached high school football for three years following college. I greatly enjoy the game. I think it would be helpful in this post to differentiate the injury status/level of various levels of football. As far as I know, most who have played football only through high school do not have anywhere near the traumatic head injury levels or long term effects professionals see The game gets exponentially bigger, faster, and stronger for each level beyond high school. The speed, strength, weight, and total time invested/involved all greatly impact the short and long-term effects of head or any other injuries.

To me it seems unfairly narrow, as well as inaccurate to say the only two reasons people would watch football are money or that people enjoy seeing each other hurt each other. There is much strategy, coaching, teamwork, planning, and athleticism to be observed. Moves and counter-moves for those who know the game make for interesting and engaging scenarios as teams seek to adjust to and stop each other from what they are trying to do. The game moves fast, generally involves much scoring, and takes a great deal of thought, team work, athleticism, and strategy to do it well, plus in any given game there are many individual match-ups to observe. Those are just a few more reasons to watch it. I know many who greatly enjoy watching football, and I've not heard one of them say they enjoy watching someone get hurt. That seems like a point to demonize those who oppose your position on this topic, which doesn't seem fair or necessary to me.

For me personally, I have learned more about leadership, coaching, team work, dealing with adversity, discipleship, relationships, conflict management, and working with others you don't like in football than in any other single venture. Those lessons have been highly valuable in my now 20+ years of vocational church ministry. That by itself suggests there are many reasons to like and participate in football. I've never been paid in any form for playing, nor benefitted monetarily. In the three years I coached, I was paid $800 for two of the seasons, averaging 20+ hours per week from August into November. I coached because it gave me (then a youth pastor) access into kids lives and into our schools doing something I knew and loved.

I have no interest in soccer. As a college player, I was 6' 6" and weighed 285. That won't work in soccer. Soccer allows for basically one kind of body type and a comparatively narrow set of skills to succeed. Football offers opportunity for athletes of many different skill sets, sizes, and athletic abilities to participate and be successful. The teamwork required allows men to work together in their respective tasks and be highly successful even if they never touch the ball or if their long-term endurance isn't a great strength (to be a great soccer player, you need to have the ball with some regularity and you need great endurance).

I think there are concerns, and you address some of them for football (which also apply to other sports too). Players are starting too young and expected to invest far too much time too early in their lives into sports. I don't think it benefits us to have elementary aged kids playing extensive game schedules in any sport. Second, more time needs to be given by schools and organizations offering football to training coaches well, instead of letting any warm-body coach. If football coaches from the junior high level up were offered more training in how to coach and teach players to avoid head injuries (and injuries in general) I think it would go a long way towards minimizing the injury problems. Finally, I think football at all levels need to continue to penalize hits to and from the head more aggressively. If players start missing game time for head hits, and unsafe play, they will decrease.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2018/02/time-national-conversation-football/#comment-3744269924

Contact sports

In this clip, David Platt makes some good points:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve9jPfJeT2k

1. He can get away with it because he's such a likable guy. But as a rule, I think it's a mistake for pastors to scold parishioners about sports. They're talking to the wrong audience. They should be grateful that people do attend their church, given all the competition for their attention. 

2. A danger with invidious comparisons is that it cuts both ways. What if someone replies that he'd find church more exciting if the pastor didn't make it so boring. Are there things pastors can do to make church legitimately more interesting and engaging? 

3. Another issue is recognition that there are things we can change and things we can't. Scolding sports fans won't change minds. It's not likely to make them less fond of sports. Rather, it alienates the from the church.

A better strategy is to take advantage of popular interest in sports. Use that as a vehicle to reach the lost. Don't wait for sports fans to come to church; rather bring church to them! For instance:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/02/mounting-up-with-wings-like-eagles.html

Douglas Groothuis

Abstract: I argue that football is morally objectionable because it is intrinsically violent and thus is conducive to vice in both its players and its fans. By way of contrast, I argue that baseball is only contingently violent, that it is not based on violence, and that it is, as such, a morally superior sport. 

1. Football is intrinsically violent. It cannot be played without heavy padding and physical punishment. Professional players typically undergo multiple surgeries for repeated injuries. Many of these injuries are permanently debilitating. The nature of the sport encourages a toleration for, and even promotion of, violence. Players attempt to injure each other to take them out of the game. Many young men are seriously injured while playing football. Why risk the damage to a growing body? If the body is “fearfully and wonderfully made” and the temple of the Holy Spirit for the Christian, why should anyone treat one’s own body and other’s bodies to so much physical abuse? We were not designed for this kind of punishment.

http://www.epsociety.org/userfiles/DiscussionOnAustinSports.pdf

He raises some valid questions and concerns. That said:

i) There's the danger of elitism. Groothuis is a philosophy prof. The fact that football is unappealing to him isn't the benchmark for boys and men who have a passion for football.

ii) Overshadowing all of life is the inexorable specter of human mortality. That prompts us take risks we'd otherwise avoid, because sooner or later we're going to die anyway. Due, moreover, to the aging process, there's an unrepeatable window of opportunity to do certain things. If you wait too long, that's a lost opportunity you never get back. You can be health nut and still die of Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. 

iii) There's lots of talk about "racial reconciliation", but few venues are better than a ball field to achieve that objective.

iv) We live in a society where the cultural elites are making every effort to suppress masculinity. But the predictable result is to make many young men recoil against feminism. It creates a backlash. 

If we don't have contact sports with rules and protective equipment, boys will resort to aggressive behavior without the safeguards. The alternative won't be less violence but more violence.

v) Speaking of which, I'm bemused by social commentators who say football is violent. In a very tame, domesticated way that's true, but we've become so spoiled by contact sports that we've forgotten what real male violence looks like. Left to their own devices, males have a propensity for extreme violence. Consider the Iroquois. That was a heathen warrior culture. Here's an example of what men are capable of doing when they lack any cultural Christian restraint:

As they went they saw the Iroquois braves slaughtering the remaining Indians [Hurons] in the village, setting the wigwams afire, and throwing the wounded people and little children into the flames. Both priests were tied to stakes. Mocking baptism, the Iroquois poured boiling water over their heads to scald them. They then cut off the nose, ears, lips, and other body parts of de Brebeuf, smashed his teeth with a club, put red hot hatchet blades on his shoulders, put hot coals on top of his head, and then smashed his skull with a tomahawk. They pulled out the eyes of Lalemont and forced hot coals into the sockets, they sliced open his thighs in the form of a cross and then burned him at the stake. Both priests prayed as long as they could and proclaimed their love and forgiveness for their torturers. (The account of their martyrdom was made public by some of the Indians who had witnessed it and later were converted to the Catholic Faith.) Because de Brebeuf died so stoically without crying out, something the Indians greatly admired, they cut out his heart and liver after his death and ate them raw, so they could, in their belief, obtain his kind of courage and ability to endure pain.

https://catholicexchange.com/the-martyrdom-of-st-john-de-brebeuf

That capacity is always lurking just under the surface. Remove Christian ethics, then watch men revert to unmitigated savagery. Instead of whining about the "violence" of contact sports, we should we grateful for outlets that channel and curb male aggression.  

Mounting up with wings like eagles

I'm usually fairly skeptical when athletes and other celebrities claim to be Christian, praise God, sport Bible verses or Christian symbols as tattoos on their bodies, and so forth. Their lived lives rarely seem to match their profession of faith. It just seems like they're paying lip service to Christianity.

That said, I'm still a bit wary in general, but I find reports about evangelical Christians on the Philadelphia Eagles have a ring of truth to them. For example, Eagles' QB Carson Wentz (injured before the Super Bowl) wanted to help make the Super Bowl an evangelistic opportunity. He has also launched the Audience of One (AO1) foundation to help "the less fortunate".

QB Nick Foles (who led the Eagles to their Super Bowl victory) has said he has always wanted to become a pastor. He's currently taking online classes at Liberty University toward that goal. He filmed a YouVersion video about some of his struggles with football and faith.

Tight end Trey Burton evidently serves as a team pastor and has helped baptize five of his fellow teammates. He wrote an article describing his faith.

Tight end Zach Ertz has said: "I was baptized in March, got married the next day...Our marriage has been built on that foundation from the word and Jesus, and it's changed my life. And just to have these guys hold me accountable on a daily basis has been phenomenal for me. I hope I do the same for them."

The Eagles' offensive coordinator Frank Reich earned an M.Div. from Reformed Theological Seminary and was a former president for RTS Charlotte.

Head coach Doug Pederson gave thanks to Jesus Christ after the Super Bowl win. Later he said: "It's all about the faith, it's all about our family, and it's all about the Philadelphia Eagles, and it is in that order." Only about a decade before he was the head coach for the Eagles, Pederson was the head coach for the football team of a private Christian high school, Calvary Baptist Academy.

Some professions of faith may be more credible than others. There are several other examples on the team.

Here's a video the Philadelphia Eagles released about the role of Christian faith on the team:

"Christianity wrapped in a flag"

From a recent exchange I had on Facebook with an evangelical leader:

Thinking about the weekend from thousands of miles away—Christianity wrapped in a nation’s flag obscures the cross…

I think that fails to engage the actual issue. It's true that sports and patriotism can be a substitute for religion. But I don't think that's what's driving the backlash.

i) At a mundane level, pro football is a business enterprise. We have athletes and managers who are snubbing their customer base. That has predictable consequences.

ii) More importantly, I suspect many Americans resent the protest because they see this as yet another example of secular progressives infiltrating and co-opting every social institution. Secular progressives have a strategy of taking over every social institution, to make it a vehicle for their political agenda. We are then required to submit to their ideology. Consider how ESPN was gratuitously commandeered to propagandize for the LGBT agenda. I think this is part of fueling the backlash. 

iv) Moreover, this has become very threatening. Under the Obama administration, executive agencies were commandeered to impose a secular progressive agenda on the nation. In addition, major corporations (e.g. Facebook, Google) have allied with the gov't in steamrolling critics. That endangers the civil liberties of many Americans. There's no escape: "You will be assimilated!"

Because an issue here is human rights.

But that begs the question. Another reason many Americans resent athletes protesting the national anthem/saluting the flag is because they reject the BLM narrative as a factually false narrative. They deny that police in general discriminate against blacks. 

This is a tactic of secular progressives. They build on a false premise. At the very least, their narrative is highly contestable. For instance:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451466/police-violence-against-black-men-rare-heres-what-data-actually-say

Yet we're supposed to grant their contention as an indisputable starting-point.

Free speech is a two-way street. Protest is a two-way street. Sports fans are entitled to counterprotest. And ultimately it's the fans who pay the bills. In addition, your claim about protected speech is confused. The First Amendment prohibits gov't from punishing speech. There's no prohibition against private boycotts. Consider the boycott MLK organized against segregated bussing.

I didn't suggest the players were boycotting anything. What you're really talking about isn't free speech, but paid speech. Whether sports fans are obligated to subsidize protestors.

Once again you're not following the argument. I didn't suggest the players are paid to sing the anthem. The point, rather, is that football fans ultimately pay their salaries, and the customer base has no obligation to subsidize their protest if the customer base doesn't share their politics.

The Sabbath

Here I'm expanding on a Facebook exchange:

Webb

So which is worse? Not respecting the Lord on the Lord's Day or not respecting the flag of your nation?

Hays 

Where does the NT say the "Lord's Day" is Sunday on the Gregorian calendar?

Webb 

It's called "the Lord's Day" because it was the day upon which the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead. That happened on the first day of the week: 

Matthew 28:1 Now after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. 

Ditto, Mark 16:2, Mark 16:9, Luke 24:1, John 20:1

The first day of the week in the seven day week, both Jewish and Gentile, is Sunday. This is not a disputed point.

Since the Resurrection, the church has historically gathered for worship on the Lord's Day, see Acts 20:7, 1 Cor. 16:2.

Hays 

I didn't ask why it's called the "Lord's Day", so your comment is irrelevant to what I said. You dodged the point about different calendars. BTW, it's not a command.

Webb

I don't think you're getting the point. The Gregorian and Julian calendars both have a 7-day-week beginning with Sunday. The Gregorian calendar didn't come in to use until 1582 to make up for the 11 minute difference in the length of a year. Prior to that time the church had always been meeting on Sunday, the Lord's Day. So the Gregorian Calendar is irrelevant to this issue.

Hays

i) Scheduling worship according to the Gregorian calendar is an ethnocentric custom, not a biblical mandate. Frankly, you need to take that difference seriously rather than conflating biblical norms with extrabiblical adaptations and culturebound conventions. What if Japanese or Chinese converts used a traditional Japanese or Chinese calendar? 

ii) That doesn't mean there's anything improper about using the Gregorian calendar to regulate worship; what is improper is to conflate localized conventions and post-biblical developments with the authority of Scripture, then condemn people for a made-up sin. That's what the church of Rome does.

Imagine you were a missionary to Chinese, Japanese, or Mayans before the Gregorian calendar became the default standard in modern times. Do you think their calendrical system corresponds to our calendrical system? Do you believe Christian conversion requires them to adopt the Gregorian calendar?

Webb

And it's only not a command if you either don't believe the command to not forsake the assembling of the church.

Hays

i) To begin with, you're guilty of equivocation by confounding arguments for obligatory public worship with a particular day on the Gregorian calendar. That's logically fallacious.

ii) Apropos (i), your thin, atomistic prooftexting falls short of your desired destination. A more sophisticated argument for mandatory church attendance would begin with the nature of the church and the fact that Christian faith as a corporate dimension. To practice fellowship, Christians must have agreed-upon times and places to gather for worship. That's a firmer foundation than cobbling together some verses that prove less than you need.

That, however, doesn't absolutize any particular day on whatever national calendar happens to be in use. Rather, it's a question of convenience and mutual agreement.

iii) BTW, the passage from Hebrews you allude is contextually referring to fear of persecution. 

Webb

Or the actual practice of the Apostolic...

Hays

i) You're turning descriptive passages into prescriptive passages. That's not a principle you can consistently apply. Do you really need me to give you counterexamples? It isn't hard. 

Webb

…and post-Apostolic church is not binding or normative.

Hays

You can't be serious. You think the practice of the postapostolic church is ipso facto normative for Christians? Counterexamples abound.

David

Surely a 7-day-week is ordained by God.

Hays

Whether a 7-day-week is ordained by God is distinct from whether a particular calendar day is ordained by God. We need to draw some basic distinctions. 

1. Natural symbolism

Some phenomena have naturally emblematic associations, viz. four seasons, five senses, lifecycle, day/night, sunrise/sunset, garden/desert, fatherhood/sonship. This forms the basis of poetic metaphors and theological metaphors. And this often enjoys a universal appeal. 

2. Assigned symbolism

In contrast to natural symbolism, some phenomenon have ascribed significance. Take Christmas or Easter. Christians agree on a particular day or date to commemorate the birth of Christ or the Resurrection of Christ. That doesn't correspond to the actual calendar date. We don't know what that was. So we pick an arbitrary day or date. 

3. Idiosyncratic significance

Particular people, places, and events may be significant to one individual but not to another. The high school you attended may have nostalgic associations for you, but not for someone who didn't attend your school. It's constitutes a symbolic landmark in your life.  

When they're still alive, you celebrate your mother or father's birthday. After they pass way, their deathdate is more significant to you than their birthdate. For one thing, the death of a parent is a turning-point in your own life. In addition, you experience their death in a way that you don't experience their birth. 

4. Days and dates

Anniversaries commemorate significant events. By definition, an anniversary is a year later than the original event or the last anniversary. The same date, one year later. But even though anniversaries fall on the same calendar date, a year later, they usually fall on a different day, since days and dates shift from one year to the next. 

So, for instance, you may remember the anniversary of a parent's death every year, but that's pegged to the calendar date rather than the calendar day. The interval is what makes it significant, and not whether it falls on the same day of the week. It's important to keep that conceptual distinction in mind when we consider the significance of the Christian Sabbath. 

5. Commemorations

And in terms of symbolic associations, it's not the day that makes the observance memorable, but vice versa. The commemoration reminds of us the original event, not vice versa.

6. The first day of the week

Monday is the first day of the week according to the international standard ISO 8601, so even symbolically, there's no consistent correlation between Sunday, the Resurrection, and the first day of the week.

Telling time by broken clocks: Trump v. the NFL

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451816/nfl-protests-trump-right

Trump vs. Tattooed Millionaires

https://www.city-journal.org/html/trump-vs-tattooed-millionaires-15457.html

Take a knee

Over the weekend, Trump waded into another controversy. He didn't initiate the controversy. Rather, he responded to an ongoing controversy. Among other things, he said:

Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!’”“You know, some owner is going to do that. He’s going to say, ‘That guy that disrespects our flag, he’s fired.’ And that owner, they don’t know it [but] they’ll be the most popular person in this country. The NFL ratings are down massively. Now the No1 reason happens to be they like watching what’s happening … with yours truly. They like what’s happening. Because you know today if you hit too hard: 15 yards! Throw him out of the game! They’re ruining the game! That’s what they want to do. They want to hit. They want to hit! It is hurting the game. But do you know what’s hurting the game more than that? he said. When people like yourselves turn on television and you see those people taking the knee when they’re playing our great national anthem. The only thing you could do better is if you see it, even if it’s one player, leave the stadium. I guarantee things will stop. Things will stop. Just pick up and leave. Pick up and leave. Not the same game anymore, anyway.

He continued on Twitter. His comments ignited a predictable firestorm on the left, along with some critics on the right. A few observations:

i) It would be unconstitutional for gov't to arrogate to itself the legal power to punish dissidents. And, indeed, that's what it's doing in the case of Christian businesses that refuse to collaborate with the LGBT agenda. That's gov't exercising official power to suppress political dissent. 

That's quite different from a president expressing the opinion that owners of a private business ought to fire political dissenters. We can still debate the pros and cons, but that's not unconstitutional, as I read the First Amendment.

ii) Trump is simply giving voice to what many sports fans feel. Only difference is that he has a megaphone. 

iii) I've read some people talk about how soldiers die for the flag. That, however, confuses the symbol with what it symbolizes. They don't die for the flag, but at most for what it represents. I'd add that before the advent of the volunteer army, many soldiers weren't dying for a cause. They died because they were drafted. 

iv) Sports used to be bipartisan. But the left insists on interjecting its social agenda into every venue. Many Americans resent that. This has even extended to conscripting 8-year-olds to take a knee. 

v) Strictly speaking, there's no intrinsic reason why a sporting event should open with patriotic ceremonies. But that's our custom. And many sports fans associate sports with patriotism. That tradition can't be rescinded without alienating the constituency. 

vi) The management has exposed itself as a bunch of arrogant out-of-touch elites who don't share the cultural outlook of many or most fans.  

vii) In addition, the management is arbitrary. It allows and defends players who protest the national anthem, but forbids players who wish to honor murdered police officers or 9/11 victims. 

viii) By the same token, you have Democrats who support a movement to violently suppress political dissent (Antifa), but suddenly pivot to defend the right of athletes to protest the national anthem. 

ix) However, some conservatives have said that if we object to Google firing political dissidents or politicians advocating boycotts of Chick-fil-A, then we must, in consistency, defend the rights of athletes to protest the national anthem. To that I'd say several things:

x) There's an important distinction between gov't penalizing political dissent–and economic boycotts. Protest is a two-way street. If athletes can protest, so can fans. 

xi) Moreover, the merits of an issue are germane to what we should or shouldn't tolerate. Now that's irrelevant to freedom of expression as a civil right. It's not for gov't to take sides at that level. But at the level of private citizens and sports fans, we are entitled to distinguish treatment depending on the merits of an issue. People can have good reasons and bad reasons for protesting. Chick-fil-A or Christian bakers, photographers, and florists are not morally equivalent to rich athletes who protest nonexistent structural racism. The difference between right and wrong makes a difference. 

xii) In addition, pro football, baseball, basketball &c. is big business. If you go out of your way to antagonize your customers, you literally pay a price. Entertainers like Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise have damaged their career by making themselves unlikeable. Professional athletes are subject to the same market forces. In the past, entertainers like Johnny Carson kept their political views to themselves because they knew their line of work was a popularity contest.