{"id":135,"date":"2008-12-18T14:07:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-18T14:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2008\/12\/christmas-outside-the-lines--with-dr-j.html"},"modified":"2008-12-18T14:07:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-18T14:07:00","slug":"christmas-outside-the-lines-with-dr-j","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2008\/12\/christmas-outside-the-lines-with-dr-j.html","title":{"rendered":"CHRISTMAS OUTSIDE THE LINES— WITH DR. J."},"content":{"rendered":"

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There is an enormously poignant story about Julius Erving and his long lost daughter Alexandra Stevenson by Tom Friend as a featured story on ESPN’s award-winning show ‘Outside the Lines’. Here is the link to the script of the story, and some video highlights as well—-http:\/\/sports.espn.go.com\/espn\/eticket\/story?page=drjandalexandra<\/p>\n

It will show up as a TV broadcast next Sunday morning Dec. 21 at 9.a.m. on ESPN. It is a story, often sad, but also with hope and reconciliation about what happens when a celebrity commits adultery and has a child outside of wedlock, and then longs for forgiveness and reconciliation after the fact. So many have loved Dr. J through the years, and still do— witness his recent Dr. Pepper commercials. But there is another side of the man, a man who cheated on his wife of many years Turquoise, several times, and on more than one occasion it led to the birth of a child— in this case Alexandra Stevenson, a budding tennis player on the women’s circuit. What I find especially moving about this whole story is Alexandra’s willingness to forgive a father who had really no part in her life before she was 18, a father whom she still has trouble calling ‘Dad’. For you see it takes more than paternity to make a real father, a real Dad. And this case it takes real forgiveness before the 60 something Julius Erving could even begin to be a Dad to Alexandra. Read the story and see what you think.<\/p>\n

BW3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is an enormously poignant story about Julius Erving and his long lost daughter Alexandra Stevenson by Tom Friend as a featured story on ESPN’s award-winning show ‘Outside the Lines’. Here is the link to the script of the story, and some video highlights as well—-http:\/\/sports.espn.go.com\/espn\/eticket\/story?page=drjandalexandra It will show up as a TV broadcast next…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nCHRISTMAS OUTSIDE THE LINES- WITH DR. 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He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}