Is participation in a fishing tournament gambling?

Question: Is participation in a fishing tournament gambling? Answer: Gambling is attempting to get something for nothing without rendering service or exchange of goods.  Gambling is basically driven by covetousness, laziness, and recklessness. A gambler, desiring the possessions of another offers a risk that involves losing your possession on the chance of gaining what everyone…

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Thanks for putting up the article on yoga

Question: Just read the article you did on yoga. Thanks for putting it out there. I work at a wellness center and we have yoga. It has always disturbed me in an eerie kind of way, especially some of the dialogue that is said by our yoga instructor during the meditation. She claims that there is…

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Is competitiveness wrong?

Question: Dear sir, I found your article on videos, TV, etc. a most interesting, excellent work. I am troubled by my own shortcomings in all these areas. My questions are: Do most video games and movies not draw on the same need of excitement or exhilaration that people get from sports, hunting, or chess? In this…

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Experience with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes

Question: Thank you for all your work with this site and for answering hard questions that sometimes members of the Church are unprepared and unequipped to answer. I graduated from High School in 2010 and have experienced first hand the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I was never personally a member, but once I did happen to be…

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Your list of scripture on sports helped me encourage my son

Question: I will keep this short due to the wonderfully small keypad that I’m using on my phone. I just came across your website while searching for scripture. I needed a few words of encouragement for my teenage son. He is a wonderful young man of God who may be struggling with a tough decision.…

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Should a Christian do yoga?

Question: Should a Christian do yoga? Answer: Your question has complexities because yoga is viewed in two different ways. Yoga originated in India and was strongly connected to Hinduism. It was later picked up by Buddhism and Jainism. The goal of yoga as a religious practice is for the practitioner to attain a state of…

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How do I handle my compulsive need to run?

Question: I’m extremely self-conscious about my weight. A lot of the time, such as now, I feel as though I am overweight. When I was a child, I was overweight and teased mercilessly in school about it. In high school, I lost the weight, but I still believe, maybe falsely, that I’m overweight to this…

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What about the Fellowship of Christian Athletes?

Question: I was wondering if you could write something on the FCA?  Fellowship of Christian Athletes. To me, this is an organization similar to the Promise Keepers. Both of my sons have turned down offers of membership for scriptural reasons.  First and foremost it’s a fellowship of denominations. I’ve looked on many websites of the…

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Notes on Sports

Few engaged in activities purely for entertainment. Sports served practical purposes in gathering food or protection. However, some of these activities were done for competition and the winning of a prize. Competition 1 Corinthians 9:25 “And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable…

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Are violent sports sinful?

Question: I had always wondered if combat sports like boxing and MMA sinful? I know that MMA looks brutal on TV, but in reality, it is not as raw as it seems. No one in the UFC has gotten a bad injury that could of led to death. So is practicing such sports sinful? Answer:…

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What do you think about Christians watching cheerleaders at games?

Question: I read your article on dancing, and I was hopeful that you would have a complete sermon covering this topic.  Our class, last night, was on Christian Strategies for Social Life. Yes, pretty much dancing was discouraged.  But, and I knew it was coming, football games and cheerleading was not an issue. It was…

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Should I use steroids to give me an edge in making the team?

Question: Hey Mr. Hamilton, I hope you are well. In the past, I told you how I would like to walk on at the state university for basketball. I decided that I am going to give it a shot, it has basically become my obsession, all I can think about. One thing that I have…

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That Suddenly Uncomfortable Cheerleading Uniform

by J. S. Smith Parents in Southern California are understandably disturbed that videos of their teenage daughters cavorting about in sexually tantalizing clothing have been showing up for sale on the Internet auction site e-Bay. That’s not exactly how the news media begin their reports on the story, but still, it is a pretty fair…

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