It’s the Monday morning after the completion of the 2015 US Open at Chamber’s Bay.

Things I loved:

I live about a mile away from the course. My neighbors and I were all convinced that the traffic was going to be a nightmare during the week of the tournament. And to our absolute delight and surprise, the traffic was a non-issue. The US Open had buses running constantly throughout the tournament to shuttle people back and forth. I saw buses from Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Washington. I saw Greyhound buses, school buses, church buses. The US Open must have contracted with anyone with buses in Washington and its surrounding states. Cudos! Well done. Duly impressed!!!

The setting of Chambers Bay. Is there anywhere more beautiful and picturesque than the Pacific North West on a nice sunny summer day? You could not have asked for a more scenic setting than the Puget Sound in the summer time.

The US Open Experience. Both Chambers Bay and the USGA did a superb job of making the tournament experience exciting. The fan experience at the pavilions, to the shops, and the concessions was done very well.

Finally, I love that the tournament was held in our back yard! It was great to get the exposure to the South Sound. When I travel around the world and even the US, I end up telling people I am from Seattle because most people don’t know where Tacoma/University Place/Lakewood is.

Things I Hated Loved Not So Much 

Hate is a pretty strong word. So I changed it to “Loved Not So Much” but my real feelings are closer to hate.

Notice I haven’t said a thing about golf in the above section? That’s the thing. I think the USGA ruined the golf experience for the players and the fans.

The picture on the right is what Chambers Bay normally looks like. It’s beautiful. The greens are…well, would you look at that!!!…greens are green! The fairways are green! 

The USGA ruined the course. The USGA and Mike Davis intentionally browned the course. For almost two weeks they intentionally starved the course of water in order to brown it, to make it faster, the course harder (not necessarily tougher, literally the surface harder). The end result was the moon-like terrain, and broccoli like greens.

Not only was the course visually ugly, it made the golf ridiculous. I hate that good golf shots were not being rewarded. I hate that bad shots could end up being great because of a lucky bounce. This happens all the time when one is playing golf, but the USGA set Chambers Bay to play like that. Why did you do that USGA? Why did you make our course look and play so horrendously?

Finally, the thing I hated was the spectator experience. There was no way to follow the action. The only way to see the tournament was to park one’s rear end on one of the grand stands or along the course and wait for the players to come by. Had I paid to fly in, pay for lodging, and tickets for the tournament, I would have been incredibly disappointed. We ended up watching most of the golf action at home on TV. Given, this is true for most sporting events. But no sporting event or golf tournaments I’ve been to had a worse set up for spectators than the US Open at Chambers Bay.

If they ever bring the tournament back to Chambers Bay, they need to fix this.

Conclusion

I am glad the Pacific Northwest, the state of Washington, Seattle, and particularly the South Sound got major exposure. This was a fantastic way to show the rest of the world how wonderful our corner of the world is.

Note to folks from rest of the world – you are very welcome to come and visit anytime.

I would love for Chambers Bay to host another US Open…but USGA leave our course alone. Don’t ruin it for the players and the spectators please.

A few days ago I posted a blog where I asserted that one of the saddest lies of the modern culture is the phrase, “This is the way God made me and I cannot change.”

I made the claim in the blog that God loves us just the way we are. And because God loves us so much he will not leave us the way we are.

That is an absolutely true statement.

However, I think some clarification is necessary.

I am a Korean-American. This is the way God has made me. When I became a Christian, God didn’t change my Korean-American-ness. In fact, what God’s love will do is to help me become the best Korean-American follower of Christ I can be. And if God changed my Korean-American-ness to anything else, becoming or making me something other than Korean-American would be asserting that something was “wrong” with Korean-American-ness. In fact, it would be the same as saying that God had made a mistake in making me Korean-American and God’s love is now righting the wrong of my Korean-American-ness by making me something other than who I am.

That is both preposterous and highly offensive. And, thank God, just flat out wrong.

God will not make me white-American, black-American, or anything other than who God created me to be.

This is an absolutely true statement.

The problem we run into is when we make secondary identifications, primary.

It is true that I am Korean-American and that I cannot be anything other than Korean-American. However, my Korean-American-ness is not my primary identity. My Korean-American-ness does is not dictate what kind of Christian I am. My identity as a Christian shapes and informs what kind of Korean-American I am.

My identity as a child of God is primary. My identity as a Korean-American is secondary.

As a follower of Christ, my primary identity is as a child of God. If I allow any other identity (my Korean-ness, being an American citizen, being Presbyterian, a husband, a son, a brother, a heterosexual, a fan of the Seattle Seahawks, graduate of Pepperdine University, etc.) to become my primary identity, that identification becomes idolatrous and dangerous.

When American Christians make the “American” way of being Christian take priority over being Christians as Americans, such behavior and attitude is both ugly, dangerous, and un-Christian.

When secondary identifications become primary, it is a false and an inadequate understanding of who we are as Christ-followers.

The primary way in which we are to view ourselves and the world is through the lens of having become children of God and followers of Jesus Christ. This reality must be greater than any other reality and identification.

One of the problems with our society and our church culture is that we have allowed ourselves to come dangerously close to making our sexuality a primary identification of who we are as human beings. When one’s sexual orientation becomes the primary way in which we view our self-understanding, that skews our worldview.

The only way we are going to figure out how to be both gracious and truthful in finding a way forward in how we are to live with one another as sisters and brothers in Christ is as we see one another, first and foremost, as brothers and sisters in Christ.

If Jesus is your Lord and Savior, you are my sister, you are my brother.

Regardless of our sexual orientation or any other secondary identification, If Jesus is your Lord and Savior, in Christ we are family.

Now lets figure out a better way to be family together as God’s children than what the world has witnessed thus far.