Skeptic

A Colorado football fan has filed an explosive $100 million lawsuit against the National Football League, claiming league owners conspired to sabotage Shedeur Sanders' draft position after the star quarterback shockingly fell to the fifth round of the NFL draft. The federal lawsuit alleges the once consensus top-5 pick became victim of "collusive practices" that caused the fan "severe emotional distress."

"It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion," the plaintiff, filing as "John Doe," told The Independent. "Every time they passed on Shedeur for some second-rate player, I felt physically sick. This wasn't football - this was personal." The 22-page complaint details how Sanders' draft freefall allegedly violated The Sherman Antitrust Act, with owners collectively suppressing his value. Legal analysts immediately dismissed the case as frivolous, but acknowledge it taps into growing fan skepticism about draft transparency. "They think they're untouchable," the fan said of NFL owners. "Well, not this time."

League sources point to Sanders' reportedly poor combined interviews and off-field concerns as the real reason for his slide. But the lawsuit has ignited fiery debates across sports media about fairness in the draft process. With legal experts giving the case less than a 1% chance of success, the fan's nine-figure demand appears more about making a statement than expecting a payout, potentially opening the floodgates for lawsuits over similar grievances.

The NFL has yet to formally respond, but the case has already accomplished one thing: turning Sanders' disappointing draft night into one of the most talked-about football stories of the year.

Possible Preaching Angle:

While this story may not have much legal basis for a case, it does illustrate the need for believers and churches to be open and transparent in all decisions and business matters. We must be “above reproach” and “blameless” (2 Cor. 4:2; Phil. 2:15; 1 Tim. 5:7; Titus 1:7).

A new survey reveals that more Americans are trusting social media and health-related websites for medical advice over an actual healthcare professional. The poll of 2,000 adults finds many will turn to the web for “accurate” information regarding their health before asking their physician. In fact, significantly more people consult healthcare websites (53%) and social media (46%) than a real-life doctor (44%). 73% believe they have a better understanding of their health than their own doctor does.

Further showcasing their point, two in three Americans say they’ve looked up their symptoms on an internet search engine like Google or a website like WebMD. Respondents say they would rather consult the internet or ChatGPT instead of their doctor because they’re embarrassed by what they’re experiencing (51%) or because they want a second opinion (45%).

Of course, much of the trust people have for technology doesn’t stop with AI. Many would also trust major tech companies with their personal health data, including Google, Apple, Fitbit, and Amazon. Overall, 78% state they’re “confident” that AI and tech companies would protect their health information.

Researcher Lija Hogan said, “This means that we have to figure out the right guardrails to ensure people are getting high-quality advice in the right contexts and how to connect patients to providers.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In a similar way, many congregants are fact checking their pastor during the sermon and may put trust in strangers on social media and the internet over their pastor’s teaching, relying on dubious information or incorrect theology.

In an issue of CT magazine, author Jordan Monge shares her journey from atheism to faith in Christ. She writes:

I don’t know when I first became a skeptic. It must have been around age 4, when my mother found me arguing with another child at a birthday party: “But how do you know what the Bible says is true?” By age 11, my atheism was widely known in my middle school and my Christian friends in high school avoided talking to me about religion because they anticipated that I would tear down their poorly constructed arguments. And I did.

Jordan arrived at Harvard in 2008 where she met another student, Joseph Porter, who wrote an essay for Harvard’s Christian journal defending God’s existence. Jordan critiqued the article and began a series of arguments with him. She had never met a Christian who could respond to her most basic questions, such as, “How does one understand the Bible’s contradictions?”

Joseph didn’t take the easy way out by replying “It takes faith.” Instead, he prodded Jordan on how inconsistent she was as an atheist who nonetheless believed in right and wrong as objective, universal categories.

Finding herself defenseless, Jordan took a seminar on metaphysics. By God’s providence her atheist professor assigned a paper by C. S. Lewis that resolved the Euthyphro dilemma, declaring, “God is not merely good, but goodness; goodness is not merely divine, but God.”

A Catholic friend gave her J. Budziszewski’s book Ask Me Anything, which included the Christian teaching that “love is a commitment of the will to the true good of the other person.” The Cross no longer seemed a grotesque symbol of divine sadism, but a remarkable act of love.

At the same time, Jordan had begun to read through the Bible and was confronted by her sin. She writes:

I was painfully arrogant, prone to fits of rage, unforgiving, unwaveringly selfish, and I had passed sexual boundaries that I’d promised I wouldn’t …. Yet I could do nothing to right these wrongs. The Cross looked like the answer to an incurable need. When I read the Crucifixion scene in the Book of John for the first time, I wept.

So, she plunged headlong into devouring books from many perspectives, but nothing compared to the rich tradition of Christian intellect. As she read the works of Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, and Lewis, she knew that the only reasonable course of action was to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

If I wanted to continue forward in this investigation, I couldn’t let it be just an intellectual journey. Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31–32). I could know the truth only if I pursued obedience first.” I then committed my life to Christ by being baptized on Easter Sunday, 2009.

God revealed himself through Scripture, prayer, friendships, and the Christian tradition whenever I pursued him faithfully. I cannot say for certain where the journey ends, but I have committed to follow the way of Christ wherever it may lead. When confronted with the overwhelming body of evidence I encountered, when facing down the living God, it was the only rational course of action.

Editor’s Note: Jordan Monge is a writer, philosopher, and tutor. She is also a regular contributor to the magazine Fare Forward and for Christianity Today.

Pastor Mark Clark was raised in a staunchly atheistic household but came to Christ once he became convinced of the power and soundness of Christianity. He writes:

I heard about Christianity for the first time at a summer camp when I was nine years old. I was fascinated by the concept of God. Not enough to get me to attend church or read a Bible but enough that I found myself going back to the camp every year and talking about God. Then I came home to a very different life: Stealing from cars, stores, and the purses of my friends’ mothers—to get money for drugs, partying, and everything else you do when you don’t have God in your life.

Mark began using drugs at eight years old and they became a regular part of his life by high school. Once he nearly died from an overdose, lying glassy-eyed in the street. His parents divorced when he was eight and he developed Tourette syndrome which later grew into obsessive-compulsive disorder.

My father was a classic deadbeat dad. He died of lung cancer when I was 15 and I never got to say goodbye to him. Sitting in that very lonely funeral home, pondering where exactly my father was, I asked myself: “What do I believe? About God, myself, heaven and hell? What do I believe about eternity and morality and my father? Where is he?”

When Mark was 17, he met Chris, a former drug dealer at his school, who had become a follower of Jesus. Mark was intrigued by his life and his passion for God. Chris challenged him to examine his doubts, read the Bible, pray, and think about what he believed about life and God.

I began to wrestle with the existence of God, with questions of suffering and evil and with the reliability of the Bible. I wrestled with the doctrine of hell and how God could allow my father to go to a place of everlasting torment. But the more I explored, the more I saw the emotional power and philosophical soundness of Christianity.

The year I met Chris, I gave my life to Christ and began a journey of total transformation. The most powerful catalyst was the Bible itself. I spent two years reading the Bible. I felt like I had been set free from all the shame, guilt, and powerlessness I had known growing up, and I was confident others would want that freedom too.

People often ask me where my passion for defending Christianity comes from. As a longtime doubter myself, I delight in showing other doubters that Christianity is real—historically verifiable, philosophically compelling, consistent with science, and full of satisfying answers to our deepest questions about life’s purpose.

In the days of the Russian revolution, the Soviet state tried to stamp out Christianity and convert everyone to atheism. A popular Russian comedian developed a stage act in which he played a drunken Orthodox priest. Dressed in wine-stained robes, he did a comic imitation of the ancient but beautiful liturgy.

Part of his performance was to chant the Beatitudes. But he used distorted words—such as “blessed are they who hunger and thirst for vodka” and “blessed are the cheese makers”—while struggling to remain more or less upright. He had done his act time and again and been rewarded by the authorities for his work in promoting atheism and in making worship seem ridiculous.

But on one occasion things didn’t go as planned. Instead of saying his garbled version of the Beatitudes in his well-rehearsed comic manner, he chanted the sentences as they are actually sung in a real Liturgy. His attention was focused not on the audience but on the life-giving words that were coming from the Bible, words he had learned and sung as a child. He listened to the memorized words and something happened in the depths of his soul.

After singing the final Beatitude, he fell to his knees weeping. He had to be led from the stage and never again parodied worship. Probably he was sent to a labor camp, but even so it’s a story of a happy moment in his life. He had begun a new life in a condition of spiritual freedom that no prison can take away. Whatever his fate, he brought the Beatitudes and his recovered faith with him. Truly, the Bible can change one’s life.

In an interview with AARP The Magazine, actor George Clooney reflected upon his scooter accident in 2018, and mortality.

I’m not a particularly religious guy. So, I have to be skeptical about an afterlife. But as you get older, you start thinking. It’s very hard for me to say, once you’ve finished with this chassis that we’re in, you’re just done. My version of it is that one one-hundredth of a pound of energy that disappears when you die and you’re jamming it right into the hearts of all the other people you’ve been close to. That energy tells me to put down my phone, buy real estate, shun premade salad dressing, write letters, repair my house, gather loved ones around a big circular table … and be curious about others.

Atheist Angel Eduardo argues that keeping our beliefs to ourselves, while avoiding confrontation and promoting harmony, is actually harmful and immoral. Beliefs are the “engines of our actions. They’re foundational to how we think and behave, and they have consequences.” He admits when atheists tell Christians and people of other religions to keep their beliefs to themselves, they don’t truly grasp what they are asking:

We rarely think about this from the perspective of the believer. For them, every encounter is of paramount importance. They are truly convinced that you are in danger and that they possess the keys to salvation. ... Their proselytizing is a moral act, even when we consider it a nuisance. However misguided or wrong they might be, their actions are motivated by a desire to make our lives (and afterlives) better. ... It’s hard to imagine how the consciences of the ethically devout are burdened by every skeptic they’ve failed to convert. ... How much worse would that guilt be if they’d instead been unwilling to try?

Eduardo wants atheists and skeptics to be more understanding:

Imagine us atheists indifferently watching the religious waste their lives believing nonsense. What would it say about us if we didn’t try to talk them out of it, to help them save what little time they have left on this mortal coil, because we’ve chosen to keep our beliefs—or unbelief—to ourselves? Sure, we’re being polite in the moment. We’re exercising tolerance, in our own myopic way. We are living and letting live, but at what cost? Not one I’m willing to pay.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This fresh perspective should give Christians even more motivation for sharing our faith.

When Portland police contacted a woman named Amanda to tell her that they found her previously stolen ID, Amanda wasn’t entirely convinced. According to police sources, an officer first tried to contact her via phone, then sent a text when the call was unsuccessful. Her response? “There is no way a cop has my cell phone number. Nice try you creep.”

But Officer Fullington, while impressed with her incredulity, was undeterred. He sent a selfie standing in full uniform in front of his official police vehicle, holding the ID card in question. She responded with a laughing/crying emoji, saying she would call after she gets off work. Police say people in Amanda’s situation are right to be skeptical, because scammers have been known to impersonate officers, even sometimes with actual officer names inside a spoofed caller-ID system.

Potential Preaching Angles: Skepticism is only helpful if it leads us to follow through and find the truth. God can handle our doubts; our challenge is to open up to receive the truth where we find it.

In 1993 FBI agents conducted a raid of Southwood psychiatric hospital in San Diego, which was under investigation for medical insurance fraud. After hours of reviewing medical records, the agents had worked up an appetite. The agent in charge of the investigation called a nearby pizza parlor to order a quick dinner for his colleagues.

According to snopes.com, a site dedicated to sleuthing out urban legends, the following telephone conversation actually took place.

Agent: Hello. I would like to order 19 large pizzas and 67 cans of soda.

Pizza Man: And where would you like them delivered?

Agent: We're over at the psychiatric hospital.

Pizza Man: The psychiatric hospital?

Agent: That's right. I'm an FBI agent.

Pizza Man: You're an FBI agent?

Agent: That's correct. Just about everybody here is.

Pizza Man: And you're at the psychiatric hospital?

Agent: That's correct. And make sure you don't go through the front doors. We have them locked. You will have to go around to the back to the service entrance to deliver the pizzas.

Pizza Man: And you say you're all FBI agents?

Agent: That's right. How soon can you have them here?

Pizza Man: And everyone at the psychiatric hospital is an FBI agent?

Agent: That's right. We've been here all day and we're starving.

Pizza Man: How are you going to pay for all of this?

Agent: I have my checkbook right here.

Pizza Man: And you're all FBI agents?

Agent: That's right. Everyone here is an FBI agent. Can you remember to bring the pizzas and sodas to the service entrance in the rear? We have the front doors locked.

Pizza Man: I don't think so.

** Click **

Nathaniel [Nash] intuitively understood that there was a difference between skepticism and cynicism. ... Skepticism is about asking questions, being dubious, being wary, not being gullible. Cynicism is about already having the answers--or thinking you do--about a person or an event. The skeptic says: "I don't think that's true; I'm going to check it out." The cynic says: "I know that's not true, it couldn't be. I'm going to slam him."

Skepticism gets in the way of prayer. It can create barriers in my intimacy with God.

Apparently it's expected that candid confessions of uncertainty [by churchmen] will attract into the church other doubters who will contribute generously of their time, talents, and dollars for the spreading of a gospel in which neither they nor their mentors believe. The holding of such expectations requires a faith such as few can share but which all should admire.