As major league baseball season winds down and professional ice hockey season begins, I am reminded of something that happened a few years ago.\u00a0 I was on sabbatical leave, teaching at the Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary in Alberta, Canada.\u00a0 The Canadian national newspaper carried an interesting editorial heavily criticizing the United States for stealing Canada\u2019s game \u2013 Ice Hockey \u2013 and \u201cneutering it\u201d by giving the teams less than aggressive, fighting team names, like Ducks and Penguins.\u00a0 It was an honest opinion, and I tended to agree with it.\u00a0 However, that same year, the Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series, and the Canadian newspaper was silent on who stole whose game.\u00a0 Criticism needs balance. On a lesser scale, I see a similar thing happening with churches. \u00a0We are quick to criticize what other churches are doing, all the while being guilty of similar things.\u00a0 We need to be reminded that in His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus asked, \u201cWhy do you look at the speck in your brother\u2019s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye\u201d (Matthew 7:3)?\u00a0 Two verses later, He called those do did such things, \u201cHypocrites!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As major league baseball season winds down and professional ice hockey season begins, I am reminded of something that happened a few years ago.\u00a0 I was on sabbatical leave, teaching at the Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary in Alberta, Canada.\u00a0 The Canadian national newspaper carried an interesting editorial heavily criticizing the United States for stealing Canada\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3570"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3571,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3570\/revisions\/3571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}