Spiritual Lessons from the Baseball Field

Introduction

Twelve 7–10 year-olds looked up to me this baseball season as their coach. My family walked into baseball this year hoping to make some friends in the community, introduce our kids to a team sport, and invest in our neighbors. Through some unexpected and tragic circumstances I ended up coaching my oldest daughter’s team, and I filled in to varying degrees for two other teams.

As I scrambled to remember fundamentals and coaching techniques, I realized I wanted to teach my team more than just baseball this year. It would have been easy to leave coaching to “step-and-throw”, “your glove is your force field”, "finger's up, thumb down", and “keep your back foot planted and elbow up,” but that would have only served these kids on the field. As the season progressed I built up five principles that were meant to serve them on the baseball diamond, but even better and longer for their whole lives.

Here they are in order of importance.

1. Do your best! It is popular to hear, “The most important thing is to have fun!” But that is not the most important thing; if having fun is the most important thing then when you stop having fun, you stop playing baseball. Both my team and other teams lost kids early in the season who weren’t having fun and walked off the field. We played an early season game at 34 degrees Fahrenheit, and we played a late season game at 100 degrees. Neither was comfortable, but we weren’t out there to have fun, we were out there to do our best, and it was a huge blessing to be able to say to the kids that I watched them do their best in the extreme cold and the extreme heat.

I love the saying, “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.” If there is a benefit in us being on the field and supporting our team, then that benefit exists if we’re freezing or sweating, having fun or crying, winning or losing.

I hope I always remember the look of epiphany when I watched my short-stop hold a baseball while trying to make the decision of where to throw it, ultimately not throwing it anywhere; I told him, “I’d rather you make a wrong decision than no decision.” I was parroting Theodore Roosevelt, “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” Later in the season he made an excellent play, a perfect throw to third base, only to realize there was no play at third base. I lauded his effort because he fielded and disposed of the ball quickly; knowing where to throw it will come in the future.

2. Support your team! Like most leagues, some of my kids had been playing baseball for years, and some had brand new gloves that they didn’t even know how to wear. It is a beautiful thing watching elementary kids calling out encouragement to their teammates and cheering them on, coaching their fundamentals and being patient with their foibles. Baseball has been called the ideal team-sport because you cannot win—or lose—a baseball game on your own, it requires the efforts of the entire team to see success.

Watching a third-grader realize this on the pitcher’s mound when one of his teammates botched a play was priceless. He understandably criticized his teammate; but I was in position to explain to him that you have to help each player to succeed, teach them to field, and back them up, because your team is only as strong as the weakest player. That remark, early in the season (maybe second or third game) was the last disparaging comment that I heard come out of any of my players’ mouths.

Next year I hope to rope my team parents into this and get them investing not just in their own kids but all of the players on the field. Late in the season I started employing young family members as base-coaches, which provided an excellent opportunity for team growth and involvement.

No-one can win a baseball game on their own, so always look for ways to improve your teammates, whether that is your family, friends, schoolmates, or coworkers!

3. Have Fun! I thought about calling this one, “Attitude is everything,” but decided to stick with the language from “the most important thing is to have fun” by pointing out that we should be enjoying ourselves, but not to the detriment of our team or our efforts when we’re not. I remember my first two years of baseball were on the dead-last team in the league, yet I always remember enjoying playing with my team. This made it oh so sweet when our third year we showed marked improvement and were the only team to give the first-place team an L (for Loss) that year.

It’s easier to have fun when you know you and your teammates are trying your hardest. I watched one of my kids rocket a line-drive into the waiting glove of the third baseman, I watched another do everything he could to beat out a play at first base only to be out by half a step, and I cheered on kids who bounded balls half way into the infield who previously couldn’t even make contact. Their smiles showed that they appreciated their improvement and effort, and it made for everyone having a better game and season.

4. No Walking on a Baseball Field! The rules of baseball don’t say anything directly about moving with a purpose (except maybe the ambiguous “delay of game” or “pace of game” rules), however it has been a long unwritten rule to “hustle up.” This isn’t just to make the game less boring, it helps with doing your best. It may be summed up, “Anything worth doing is worth doing well.”

I reminded one meandering coach about this unwritten rule, and then thought about how much better so many things in life would be if everyone moved with a purpose and did the job they were there to do. Now, granted, in baseball the kid’s have paid to be there, but most of them don’t know that. If we can ingrain the idea that doing our best is separate from how much fun we're having, money we're making, or glory we're reaping, then we’ll do great things in life.

5. Safety isn’t First! It doesn’t take much imagination to see so many communities, societies, work-places, and people succumbing to the temptation to become risk-averse and facing extreme consequences because of it. The baseball field is not immune, and I heard several comments along the lines of protecting yourself from harm rather than making a good play. Now, I certainly do not want kids to needlessly get hurt, but avoiding the risk of pain in baseball is almost certainly going to cause you to fail at the previous four principles.

After-all, a baseball in this league might come at you in excess of fifty mph, or a bat for that matter, or a tag might be a little excessive. My own daughter sat out half an inning tending to a bloody nose when she was tagged out at home in the face. Several players stopped balls with their sternums, more than one catcher limped off the field after finding their padding covers a lot, but it does not cover everything.

I awarded a “perseverance award” at the end of the season to the player who got hurt the most without quitting. With no bias at all—purely statistics—this person actually was my daughter.

Kids who slid into base, were hit by grounders (or the occasional pitch), or who were bruised in some other way were encouraged to walk-it-off and “get back in there”, and it was a tremendous blessing to watch them push through the pain, assess the risk, and realize that great risk brings great rewards.

Conclusion

In conclusion, none of my kids got trophies or medals at the end of the season, but they all improved vastly at baseball, and were invested in by some great adults and kids, and the lessons they learned will serve them well throughout the rest of their lives.

 I hope you, dear reader, will always remember that having fun and staying safe are not the most important things, but that setting your eyes on the prize, deciding to try your best, and pushing through the pain will serve you and those who are served by you when the glory of who had the most W’s and the least L’s fades.

Note: I’ve purposely left this article more on the baseball side for copy/paste/quoting, but I do especially want to encourage you to “Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven and his righteousness, and everything else will be added to you,” and “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. . .Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.”

Masks Sacrificed to Idols

There was a problem in First Century Christianity where Jews were coming to the faith in the resurrected Christ having their consciences bound to rules that suddenly did not apply. Under the Old Covenant, simply touching a dead body or unclean thing, or eating an animal that had consumed an unclean thing, was a sin against a holy God and would put a separation between him and you. (Confer Haggai 2:12-13)

By logical extension, food offered to an idol became tainted by that action and idol, and consuming that food united the consumer with sin, thus driving a wedge into their relationship with God. The New Covenant declared that it was not just the touching of external things that defiled a person, but that their very heart was defiled and defiling. See (Matthew 15:10-20)

If the original commandment wasn’t harsh enough, Jesus shone a light on just how holy God is, and that God’s standards were impossibly more difficult than men had tried to remake them. But with that revelation of holiness, Jesus also delivered hope of cleansing, a new heart, a recreation of the man from old to new, and a complete reconciliation with God through the blood of his cross.

Jesus proved this himself when a woman touched him who was ceremonially unclean. When she touched him, he did not become defiled--as a mere man would have been--but instead power went out from him and she was not just healed, but made right with God. (See Luke 8:42-48, amongst many others)

But this conviction of external defilement did not die easily. Some new believers could not divorce their faith in Jesus’ saving power from the idea that they were sinning against God by eating unclean animals or meat that was sacrificed to idols. Rather than simply confronting these brothers for their error, Paul encouraged more mature believers to respect the conscience of their weaker brothers by abstaining from meat sacrificed to idols in their presence.

This has been used in the past months and weeks to say that Christians ought to wear masks for the sake of their brothers who fear COVID-19 and/or think that wearing masks is right for whatever reason. The first failing of this attempted application is that wearing of a mask is not a matter of sin or obedience to God or fellowship with God. I have yet to meet any one at all, least of all Christians, who feel that they are serving God by wearing a mask or disobeying God by not wearing a mask. The second failing is that this actually encourages Christians to fear COVID-19 or government mandates rather than God (Matthew 10:28). Third, rather than protecting the conscience of the mask wearer, this misaligns the stronger brother’s conscience with a command that has no basis in scripture nor bearing on relationship with God.

Wearing a mask while citing the command to respect the weaker brother’s conscience is a radical eisegis and damaging to both parties. Blatant sin should be confronted: A mask cannot save your soul nor prolong your life; at best it feigns obedience to the government and at worst it hides and mars the image of God and silences the proclamation of his Word.

A legitimate extension of the command to respect the conscience of others would be to say, “If you feel that wearing a mask is detrimental to your relationship with God and others, then I won’t wear mine when I'm around you.” And it says, “If shopping at such-and-such website perpetuates human slavery, then I won’t shop at that website, or at least not brag about it to those who believe it does perpetuate slavery.” Or “If masks could be hiding sex-trafficking or domestic abuse, then I’ll encourage people to take them off when they are socially distanced or at the very least ask if they are safe, healthy, and thriving.”

Those who have been perpetuating mask wear for the sake of the weaker brother are they themselves tightening the chains of bondage, nurturing the fear that hides the face of God, and promoting a false salvation that eternal rewards are to be traded for temporal health.

So the next time someone is encouraging you to sin against God by acquiescing to man’s wisdom, consider whether their conscience is bent towards God’s eternal decrees, or serving their flesh. Whichever they are doing will drastically drive your response.

Fit For Service

 After Hurricane Katrina I was privileged to be a part of a church that sent several cleanup and rebuild crews to New Orleans over several years. On one of those trips we broke from our normal routine and went to visit a nursing home in order to sing, hold a service, preach the gospel, and talk with the residents. Most of the residents were in their eighties and nineties, but one man stood out, he was half the age of everyone else.

During the time of mingling myself and a few others were able to strike up a conversation with this young man. It was readily apparent that he had a serious disorder which had brought him to the nursing home: he was in a wheel chair, his hands and arms were locked in grotesque and unnatural positions, and-most glaringly-he could only communicate through grunts and head movements. Patience, and his experience communicating despite his debilitation, allowed us to slowly discover that he had not always been wheel chair bound, but that through drug abuse he had destroyed parts of his brain and had addled his thinking.

We transitioned into speaking about spiritual things, and asked him if he knew who Jesus was. His response was extraordinary, he perked up, gave us a crooked grin, and nodded his head profusely. A few probing questions led us to believe that since being stricken, someone had shared the gospel with him, he had believed it, and had been born again.

But then I asked a question that nearly crushed him, “Are you serving Jesus now?” His head and countenance fell. It was obvious that despite his desire to serve his Saviour, he felt as fettered in his ability to do anything for Jesus as his body was bound to the wheelchair. I thought about how he could answer the question: he couldn’t preach, he couldn’t serve, he couldn’t go, he couldn’t even take care of himself, let alone someone else.

Then we gave him his commission, “Your job here is to pray for all of these people,” gesturing to dozens of residents who had little to no comprehension of the gospel that had saved this man’s soul, “and to not stop praying.” His joy returned and his grin came back. He was not a useless saint being punished with the consequences of his past sins, he was a useful saint whose past sins were being redeemed in a dark place to pray for heretofore un-prayed for people who were in their final strides of a lifelong race they had spent running headlong towards Hell!

Many of us feel as though we are unfit for service, though it is rarely so pronounced as this man. Perhaps it’s the retiree who no longer has an audience, or the military veteran who is missing an appendage, or the former pastor whose ex-wife’s sins disqualified him from the pastorate in his denomination, or the thrice divorced repentant adulterer who is known through the town for his past womanizing, or the missionary who had to return home because his health failed on the mission field, or the wife who finally realizes the beauty of, “the unmarried woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit,” and now thinks she’s wasted her usefulness by becoming anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband (1 Cor 7:34).

But God is in the business of laying out works before us to walk in (Ephesians 2:10). What was meant for evil, he is turning for good (Genesis 50:20). What should have destroyed us is making us stronger (1 Corinthians 1:8-9). We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies (2 Corinthians 4:8-10). We are afflicted-even when our affliction is our own fault-so that the works of God may be displayed in us (John 9:3).

We have this promise from God that he is both willing and working for his good pleasure, both redeeming us from our past sins, but also using our past to proclaim his purposes to others, so much so that the church is conquering the accuser with the blood of the Lamb AND the word of their testimony. Despite these great promises often we think that our sin is bigger than the grace of the Lord Christ. Or, and I’m not sure anyone would ever admit to this, we use our sin and affliction as an excuse to stop working, since we feel we can blame God for either not preventing our sin and/or affliction, or for not redeeming it in the way we’d like.

When we make excuses for why we are not working, we are denying the power of God. Paul works through this mightily in Second Corinthians 12, and he comes to this conclusion, “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

Christian, are you hindered in your ministry by some physical, spiritual, external, cultural or unmitigable impediment? GOOD! God can and does use the strong, but he more often uses the broken, destitute, impossible people to accomplish some of his most amazing outcomes. Do not whine to the living God that there is no-one able to heal or redeem your afflictions (cf John 5:2-9), for he will tell you to work while it is still day, to walk in the works he has prepared for you, not the works you’d do if you could choose, but the works he has chosen so that his power may be displayed in you. Are you looking at your circumstances and wasting your life by thinking they are wasting your life? Repent, and bear fruit keeping with repentance!