During Game 2 of their opening round NBA Playoffs series with the New Orleans Hornets, the Los Angeles Lakers debuted a public service announcement intended to discourage anti-gay slurs such as the one made recently by Lakers star guard Kobe Bryant in the direction of an NBA official.

For noticeably and loudly saying this slur so heinous that almost no news outlet dared hint what it actually was, Bryant was fined $100,000. Interestingly, the outcry and fine came only days after a UCLA study reported that just 3.5 percent of Americans are homosexual (a number far smaller than the usual 10-percent figure announced by LGBT groups).

Which leads me to ask: If a slur bothering 3.5 percent of the population earns you a $100,000 fine, and as many as 80 percent of Americans call themselves Christians, would NBA commissioner David Stern truly consider a--doing the math here--$2.3 million fine for the next player who clearly profanes the name of Jesus Christ? Or would such a huge number only apply to a star like Bryant?

Ernie Becker V has lived five lifetimes in one. Or at least that's the way it seems. Born and raised in Las Vegas as a fifth generation contractor/developer, Ernie followed in the footsteps of his family business and was very good at it. He performed all aspects of construction development, buying and selling real estate, raising money and working closely with financial institutions. Then things started to spiral out of control. As Ernie says, "I tried to find anything I could on the outside to make me feel better on the inside."

Then Ernie discovered Christ, put his addictions down and began to work forward with what Jesus had in store for him. For ten years he became both a student and a teacher of Christians life coaching principles. Three years ago he formed E5 Coaching, LLC, as a way to help people find the life purpose he has found.

When we see Jesus’ life in context, we can then begin to see some connections to Hip Hop culture. First, Jesus had baby-mamma. Jesus was born to a virgin—right? Well, in the Jewish context of His day and time, the word “virgin” could have meant either without having sex or a “a maiden; by implication an unmarried daughter”[1] This is a problem, not just for contemporary understandings of who Mary—the mother of Jesus—actually was, but also for Mary during that key moment in time.