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Jeopardy

     Watching Jeopardy the last few weeks has been exhilarating. Amy Schneider won 40 total games, which puts her in second place for all-time wins. What's even more impressive is most of those wins came from runaway games. Her knowledge of a myriad of topics was inspiring, and her buzzer speed was excellent. Before her loss last Wednesday, I thought she could have easily overtaken Ken Jennings' amazing winning streak from 2004. You would think that every fan of the show would have been cheering her meteoric rise to game show stardom, but that wasn't the case. The reason: while she may be female now, she was born male.

    In a previous post, I discussed some of my thoughts about transgenderism. While I may not agree with it, that doesn't mean I didn't want Amy to keep winning. I appreciated her good gameplay even though I don't agree with her choices. Being transgender didn't negate the fact that she was an excellent Jeopardy contestant. 

    Something we seem to have lost in our society is the ability to disagree with others without dehumanizing them. Too often, the disagreement becomes all that is important, and the relationship suffers as a result. I touched on this issue some in an earlier post. 

    The truth is, no matter what we disagree about, we can still find something that we agree about. A prime example is the friendship I've talked about losing in a few of my recent posts. We met in a church group in college and bonded over our shared faith and love of music. Those two aspects of our personalities haven't changed, but he chose to let a disagreement with me ruin our friendship. I think he's forgotten, as it seems many people have, what For King and Country talk about in their newest song: "What if we're all the same in different kinds of ways?" Every single person on this Earth was created in the image of God, and when we use our differences to separate ourselves from others, we are not honoring our God-given assignment to love others the way He loves us. 

    There's been a lot of talk recently about getting back to normal following the pandemic. I think the only way to do so is by going back to a point where we actually talked to other people and listened to what they had to say, even if we didn't agree. Where we were willing to be open and honest with others, even if it meant running the risk of getting hurt. And most importantly, where we lived life without fear of the future and didn't lash out at those who didn't share our fears. Actually, I think returning to normal is too safe a goal. I think we should try to push ourselves to be better than our pre-pandemic normal. That's the only way that we can truly reach our world with the love and acceptance that Christ offers to all who believe in Him.

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