Wake Up, Look Up

Hello everyone, and thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch, and in today's episode, we're asking the question, why is the WNBA such a mess? This is based on an article I read in the Wall Street Journal. An opinion piece by William McKern called the WNBA asks what is a W? If you're not familiar, the NBA, the National Basketball association, is the professional sports league for basketball in the United States. for men, the WNBA is the women's National Basketball Association. It's the equivalent league for women. And on one hand, the WNBA is experiencing a little bit of a resurgence. It's full of young, talented, players who are really driving eyeballs on social media and on television to the league. On the other hand, it is a complete mess. And that's in part because the WNBA has hooked itself into or aligned itself with the, craziness of progressive politics. The WNBA is making sure that the league promotes and aligns with gender confusion, the over sexualized approach to understanding people in terms of primarily who they sleep with and what their preferred sexual expression is. in other words, the WNBA has gone headlong into celebrating LGBTQ issues and in the ambiguity around what a woman is. And it sparked a strong reaction on both sides. On the one hand, you've got some people in the league who are pushing for, for trans men to be able to play. In other words, a man born biologically male who's now living as a trans woman to play in the wnba, which of course brings up all kinds of issues due to size, physicality and whether or not that's fair to biological women who have been spending their whole life trying to get to the wnba. On the other hand, you've got players like Indiana Fever player Sophie Cunningham, who's come out saying, absolutely not. Women's sports are for biological women, who she is now getting booed. There are protests outside the stadium. Listen, 79% of Americans believe that biological males do not belong in women's sports, no matter how they identify. That is a dramatic majority. But the WNBA doesn't care. Again, they in large part exist to promote progressive politics. The WNBA can't even tell us what the W is because they, as a league, haven't really defined a woman. So now you've actually got male basketball players like, Royce White or Enos Freedom, both guys who played in the NBA now coming out and declaring for the WNBA draft saying, hey, I'll call Myself, a woman, if that means I get a contract and a job. Of course they're proving a point. I guess what I'm saying is this is that this is an example of the identity politics that are ruining so much in our country. Because the WNBA is a basketball league. That's what it exists to do. To put talented women on the national stage and to celebrate and enjoy their participation as athletes, to pick a team and root for that team to win a championship. what the WNBA should be doing is staying out of these kinds of things and instead putting the emphasis on basketball. But even their own commissioner consistently brings these issues up, consistently reinforces the leftist position of the wnba so that the conversation around the league is not about stars like Asia Wilson or Caitlin Clark. It's about this kind of stuff. And I want you to understand why. Why can't they leave this identity stuff aside? Why do they have to put it in everyone's face? Well, the answer to that comes from the first chapter of the book of Romans, because Paul tells us in Romans 1:24,25 that underneath these kinds of things is a spiritual rebellion. He talks about how we as creatures have exchanged the glory of the Creator for our own glory. We are suppressing the truth about God and manifesting our own authority in sexual expression, in identity, saying to God, we don't need you. We'll take it from there. In other words, what's going on really in the WNBA and in our larger culture and is rebellion to God. We're not rubbing it. They're not rubbing it in your face. They're rubbing it in God's. That's why they can't stop. It's a spiritual illness. It is a demonic force. I don't mean there are demons running the wnba. I mean, this is what Satan does. He wants to turn everything over and against God. The sad thing is, the consequence of that, in addition to incurring the judgment of God, is it's taking the conversation away from women who, for the first time, belong really on the national stage in basketball. There's a lot of talent in the league, but we don't want to talk basketball. We want to push our politics down people's throats. We want to push our agenda to suppress the truth about God and instead celebrate people in all of their various forms. Listen, I wish the WNBA would correct itself, but I don't see that coming any day soon. But I want you to realize this is not a political issue. It's a spiritual one. And we really should be praying for our culture that before it's too late, it would turn towards God in repentance instead of defiance. Hey, thanks for checking out Wake Up, Look Up. For more content, be sure to visit the Christ Community Chapel app or website cccchapel.com.

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