Air Tsinelas
by Oliver Carlos
One corner in Divisoria that I discovered to be an addicting place to shop in is the shoes section. For the price of one pair of original basketball shoes in the elegant mall, you can buy 3 pairs of that model in DV! Fantastic!
At first, I bought just one pair every six months, because they get worn out easily. But when this certain model came out, I bought 3 pairs instantly. I fell in love with the design. It really looked like the real thing. But of course, the quality is different, very different. But I didn’t care. I still loved them even though the main body of the shoe is quite hard and not so flexible. Meanwhile, the sole is soft, it’s easy to pinch. The sole is made of the same rubber quality as your regular slippers. Thus, I call my DV shoes, “glorified slippers”.
Even though my shoes were of poor quality, I still bring them to the battlefield. I feel cool wearing these shoes as I play basketball. Since I have 3 pairs of different colors, I match the shoes with the color of my jerseys. If I wear a red jersey, I wear my red shoes. If my jersey is blue, then my shoes are also blue. If my top is yellow, my shoes are yellow.
One regular playmate wondered if my shoes were like Nokia cellphones, one can change the housing everyday! He thought I have only one pair that magically change colors at my will. There was a time when I was featured in our alumni basketball league weekly photo report as one of the players with the most handsome shoes.
After playing several months with my glorified slippers, I developed some pain in my heels. The pain wouldn’t go away even after the games. The pain would worsen the more I play in my DV shoes. So I stopped using them. I started to wear authentic basketball shoes. Then my heels recovered. Now I know what caused my chronic injury. Since then, I vowed never to buy fake shoes.
In the Book of Acts, we see a group of people who were so conscious of not consuming counterfeit Gospel lessons. They were the citizens of a city called Berea in Ancient Greece. Paul and Silas went to their city and they were received warmly. They preached day and night, and the Bereans listened intently.
But one thing that made the Bereans model students was their careful scrutiny of whatever they hear. They just wouldn’t accept things hook, line, and sinker. They wanted to find out if the new teachings were truthful or not. They probably went out of their way to research on Paul’s teachings, did some context analysis and content analysis on their own.
We read in Acts 17:11 (NLT), “And the people of Berea …. listened eagerly to Paul’s message. They searched the Scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth.”
This attitude reaped dividends. Acts 17:12 (NLT) says, “As a result, many Jews believed, as did many of the prominent Greek women and men”.
In this digital age, many fake news abound. Aside from these, many untruthful philosophies also spread in the internet. Many of them are in posts that we see in social media everyday. They seem sound cool and nice to believe in or share to others, but let us examine them carefully like how the Bereans searched for the truth. Let us have the attitude of scrutinizing lessons if they are aligned with Biblical truth. Otherwise, we might find ourselves regretting our decisions.
