08/15/2026
BRO Jim’s BLOG
“Sneakers or Supplies?”
I remember when Nike was preparing to debut the 10th edition of its LeBron James line of sneakers at a suggested retail price of $315, making them the, at the time, the costliest pair of shoes the company had ever produced. Marc Morial, the head of the National Urban League said, "It's insensitive to market a $300 shoe to kids and teenagers [when] people are going back to school and struggling to buy school supplies. This is not food, this is not rent, it's a single pair of sneakers." The real fear is that given the choice teenagers and parents will choose sneakers over supplies. Sounds crazy that weighing out sneakers or supplies, supplies or sneakers, that sneakers would win out, but as we all know that would be the case for far too many.
Some are advocated that Nike be forced not to market the sneakers for that price. This would add to the growing wave that government should regulate what we can buy, what we can consume, and what we can do. Because too many are making bad choices, according to the government, with their health, their money, their freedoms, then government must step in and make the choices for us by removing the element of choice. Those okay with such things are the same people who say, “Why doesn’t God remove the devil so there would be no sin and sickness in the world?” God, unlike the direction government is taking, recognizes that man must be responsible for weighing the choices between good and bad, between right and wrong, between holy and unholy. God Himself says, “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live” (Deut. 30:19).
Most of us think it crazy that teenagers and parents would actually buy $300 sneakers before buying the school supplies that are so desperately needed. But isn’t it true that we all make some pretty stupid choices in the course of our lives? Just the other day I chose to follow my own logic and not to listen to my wife and as a result my precious Bible and other things are gone. We choose an hour watching “American Idol” instead of an hour praying to God. We choose the comfort of our couch over the comfort of the church. We choose work over worship, fishing over fellowship, hunting over holiness and then we turn around and laugh at those who would choose sneakers over supplies. How many times have we said, or heard others say, “I am in this situation because of bad choices”? We all have. We all need to read the writing on the wall, “You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting” (Daniel 5:27). As God looks at the choices we are weighing and the decisions we are making, are they found wanting?
