The (Im)Perfect Game

I am a huge baseball fan. I grew up on the baseball diamond. My dad ran our local recreation league for several years, and I played high school baseball, so from March to August, I was on the field or at the park practically every single day. I know a lot of people find the game to be slow and boring, but I love the subtle intricacies and strategies of the game, and I love the battle between pitchers and hitters. It's a physical battle, no doubt, but I think it's also one of the most intellectual battles in sports.

I say that to say this: baseball has a special place in my heart, but never has a story about baseball captured my interest in quite the same way as the recent story of Armando Gallaragga and Jim Joyce.

If you've been paying much attention to the news this week, you've probably seen the story already. Gallaragga, a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, was on his way to throwing only the 20th perfect game in baseball history. For baseball novices, a perfect game is when a pitcher doesn't allow any hits, runs, errors, or walks through the entire nine innings of a game. It's obviously quite a feat, since only 19 people have done it in more than 100 years of playing Major League Baseball. Think about that, 100+ years of 20+ teams playing 100+ games. That's literally hundreds of thousands of games, and it's only happened 19 times.

So Gallaragga is one out away from this historic feat. With two outs in the 9th inning, the would-be final out hits a slow ground ball to the first baseman. Gallaragga himself comes to cover first base and get the out. The first baseman flips it to him, clearly getting the runner out by about half a step. Then, the unthinkable happens: the umpire, Jim Joyce, calls him safe. One out away from the perfect game, and Gallaragga loses it because of a bad call by the umpire. In his defense, Joyce is considered one of the best umpires in the game. But he blew this call.

That in and of itself is enough to make this story incredibly intriguing, but what happened after has made it even more so. There are times, even in our fallen culture, when something happens that is so beautiful that it begins to show off the Gospel, almost despite itself. And that's exactly what we've seen in this situation. There are several things I want to note.

You might have imagined that Gallaragga would have lost it after this play. Most people would say he would have every right to get in the umpire's face, to yell and scream and argue. That pretty much happens in ten baseball games a day. But he did not. Gallarragga had a brief look of surprise, then he smiled, walked back to the mound and finished the game, doing his job, getting the final out, and getting the win for his team. I don't know much about this man, but this was an incredible display of character.

Here's what C.S. Lewis had to say about character:

"Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light." - Mere Christianity

When I saw Gallaragga's reaction, I immediately thought about what Lewis said here. Character is most clearly revealed when we don't have time to think about what our reaction to a situation should be.

This situation also displayed the Gospel in several pretty amazing ways I thought. Now, when I say it displayed the Gospel, I'm not saying that Jesus was proclaimed. But I am saying that there were several elements of the Gospel that were very clear. Here are some:

1 - Man's sinfulness. I'm not saying the umpire sinned by making the wrong call. But I am saying that the bad call says something about all of us. We are fallen humans, and we make mistakes. We are not God, we are not perfect.

2 - Repentance - After the game was over, and the umpire had a chance to review the play, he quickly realized he had made a big mistake. He was very upset. He immediately went to the Tigers' locker room, found Gallaragga, and apologized for his error. He then went before the media, admitted his mistake, and in tears apologized for ruining the pitcher's chance for a history making moment. His apologies were sincere and heartfelt. There was true regret in his voice.

3 - Mercy - By most accounts, Gallaragga would have completely been within his rights to blow off the umpire's apology, to say, "You cost me my chance at history!" But we've already learned that he has some character, and he continued to show it after the game. He simply accepted his apology, told reporters that he knows umpires make mistakes sometimes, and moved on.

4 - Grace - But that wasn't all he did. It would have been plenty. He's already shown more than enough character in this episode. Nevertheless, he takes it a step further the next day. You see, Jim Joyce was the umpire behind home plate the next day. It is baseball tradition for the manager of the team to take his batting lineup to the home plate umpire before the game. Instead, Gallaragga took it to the plate, patting Jim Joyce on the back as the veteran umpire wiped back tears. It was an incredible act of grace, going beyond just forgiveness. This is a beautiful picture of what Jesus does. It's not enough that he forgives our sins. When we repent, we are made joint-heirs with him in God the Father. We go from being his enemy to being a part of the family. And that's exactly what happened here.

At the end of the day, I believe this is actually a better story because of the blown call. Most non-sports fans would not even know of this story if it weren't for the bad call. And God has used it as a way to display his glory and his grace to the nations. What a beautiful picture.

Complementarianism or Chauvinism?

I've been thinking a lot over the last few days about the complementarianism; for those of you who don't know, it's basically the idea that men and women have specific, God-designed, complementary, gender roles in their marriages and in the church. Some will even take it as far as to say those roles should carry over into every other aspect of life: work and politics being two specific examples. The two most obvious ways this plays itself out in Christian life is that only men are allowed to be pastors, and the man is considered the head of the household. Those are two controversial topics in and of themselves, to say the very least.

But I am a complementarian. I'm a converted one, but I am a complementarian. I grew up in denomination that ordained women, and didn't see a problem with it, and I never really thought much about gender roles in marriage growing up. I've become convinced, that in those two particular situations, the Bible does prescribe different gender roles. The most all-time most popular posts on my blog are about just these subjects.

Nevertheless, I'm very nervous about much of what I see in in the complementarian community. I think it's led to excesses that subjugate women in ways the Bible never said. The Internet Monk has recently spoke about this topic a bit; I've also been thinking about it for my own personal reasons, in my marriage, and with the pending birth of my first daughter.

Let me give you an example from my own life: A couple of years ago, our church did the "Every Man's Battle" study, a look at how to best avoid the temptation of lust. Though I didn't like everything about the study, I found it generally pretty helpful, and still use some of the techniques I learned from it in my daily life.

My problem came, not as a part of the study, but at the end of it, when we had a guest speaker come in to talk to us about lust. He's a guy that I won't name, because I know him, and respect him and his thoughts in some areas. But the theme of his talk, basically, seemed to be that we shouldn't lust after women because we were sinning against their fathers or their husbands.

Here was the argument: When you lust after a woman, because they are under that authority of a man, then you primarily sin against that man. If that woman is married, you've sinned against her husband. If she is not married, you've sinned against her father. If she has neither father nor husband, then you've sinned against the church, who is the primary authority over her in the absence of the other two, according to this line of thinking.

Now, I just don't see the Biblical warrant for that. I think it's stretching the text, at best. And it does the very thing that critics of complementarianism say they do; subjugate women to a role of lesser person. Is a sin against a man greater than that against a woman? I think I can answer that with an unreserved no. The whole idea strikes of chauvinism disguised as complementarianism. I don't want to judge any one's heart, but that's the way this kind of think will certainly be perceived.

The complementarian position is supposed to be one that says men and women are equal but different. Any complementarian position that does not completely affirm the equality of women in the eyes of God is just plain wrong. Those who advocated complementarianism are going to get lots of slings and arrows anyway. We need to be more careful.

A Haiku for My Church

Aslan on the move.
What is going to happen?
He will show us soon.

Blind Spots

I had a conversation with my boss today that got me to thinking. He and I will sometimes sit and talk about life and society and God for a few minutes in the middle of a work day. It's nothing too serious, but it is almost always interesting.

The inauguration of Barack Obama brought today's conversation up. It was about blind spots. Every society has them. Every era has them. And because they are "blind spots," rarely do people recognize them for what they are: major societal moral failures.

During my time in the Georgia/Carolina area, I covered the waning months of Senator Strom Thurmond's life. By the time he died, you would be hard pressed to find a more beloved politician anywhere, and his popularity crossed all boundaries of race and social status. That's particularly amazing, considering he once ran for President on a platform of segregation. What makes it even more amazing is that at the same time he was running, he was helping to put his mixed race daughter through college. He visited her monthly and gave her the money she needed to get through school. They apparently had a very close relationship.

See, despite all of his talk about segregation, he was very integrated when it came to love. As a young man, he fathered a child with the family's African-American maid. All indications are that this was not just some fling; he apparently had very strong feelings for her, and she for him. But everything had to be kept quiet because the time they lived in just didn't allow things like that.

After Senator Thurmond died, his daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, "came out of the closet," for lack of a better term, admitting to the world who she was. It was a big press conference, and I was there to cover it. Someone at the press conference asked Mrs. Williams how she reconciled his racist statements with his obvious love for her. She said that she'd once ask him, "How can you say all of those awful things on the campaign trail and then come down here and love me like this?" His answer: "That's just politics honey."

That's a profound statement. Strom Thurmond and others like him may or may not have agreed with segregation, but that wasn't the point. They knew that if they were going to get elected in the South, then they would have to embrace segregation. That is not a defense of them by any stretch of the imagination. It's just a fact. It's also a fact that many otherwise decent, Christian people were also segregationists. It's really hard to reconcile those two facts, until you understand the concept of blind spots.

I think they've existed in every society since the beginning of time. Specifically, the United States has had major blind spots through it's history, many of them related to race. It was a really disappointment for me to discover, after reading his work for years, that the great preacher Jonathan Edwards was also a slave holder. I love Edwards; he was absolutely brilliant, and on almost every other issue, the model of Christian character and morals. But he had a blind spot.

Thankfully, there are always prophets who point out a society's blind spots. William Wilberforce was one such prophet, working for decades to get slavery abolished in the British Empire, and finally achieving that goal just before he died. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one, preaching the evils of segregation with such power that his message lived on long after he had been assassinated.

So here's the question: what are this nation's blind spots now? What areas will we look back on 50 years from now with shame? What is our country doing now that will be so obviously wrong in our country's eyes years from now, but completely escapes us as a society now? And where are the prophets pointing out our sins to us? Who are they? I think if we can identify some of those things, we can go a long way toward seeing where our blinds spots are.

Scary, but Good

Yesterday was an incredible day. It was the day our new pastor, Dr. Danny Lanier, began his ministry at Northcrest Baptist Church here in Meridian. It was great for a number of reasons: great music, great preaching, the largest crowd we've had in years, and just a generally electric atmosphere in both services. But it's what happened outside those two services that was the most amazing part of the day for me.

Bro. Danny had the "good fortune" of having a deacon's meeting on his very first Sunday afternoon as pastor. As any Baptist knows, deacons meetings can be a real pit of snakes for many pastors. I think I can safely say that our deacon's meetings have never been like that, though. Either way, it's an important thing for a new pastor to get off on the right foot with the deacon body, and vice versa.

I can say without reservation that Bro. Danny did just that. He asked the entire pastoral team to attend the meeting, and also asked non-active deacons to be there. When the meeting started, he did something pretty amazing - he washed our feet. That's right, he washed our feet. Now, for some churches, I'm aware that feet washing is a pretty standard practice; for us, it is not. It's never happened as long as I've been going there, and I'm pretty sure for long before I was there. But Bro. Danny wanted us to know from the very beginning that he was there to serve us, and that's just what he did. He spent 30 minutes, on his hands and knees, with his sleeves rolled up, washing the feet of more than 20 men. And for those of you who don't know, he has fibromyalgia, a chronic illnesses that causes major pain. So I know he was hurting while he did this.

I don't tell you this to toot my own pastor's horn. He didn't do it so we'd tell everyone. He did it to humble himself, and show himself a servant. In the process, he humbled us also, and reminded us that we are servants in the church, not bosses. That's something every deacon body should remember, and I think yesterday is something that every person in that room will never forget. There certainly was not a dry eye in the room.

I really believe something is about to happen in our church, and in this community. Last night, I felt God's presence in a way that I have few times in my life, in a way that frankly scared me to death. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, I was as frightened as anyone who is happy can be, and as happy as anyone who is frightened can be. I pray that it becomes a regular occurrence.

Penn on Evangelism

This is a remarkable video from Penn Jillette, of Penn and Teller fame. He's an atheist, who was recently given a Gideon Pocket New Testament. Listen to what he says about the man who did it, and think about how that might be able to help us bring the Gospel to the world.

Merry Christmas

For Christmas, my favorite part of my favorite Christmas special: