Going Against the Grain

“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” (I John 2:15)

This week we kicked off our annual fantasy baseball league again. I wrote in my blog last year that I had joined a league for the first time in my life. Playing fantasy sports has been a pastime for a lot of people for many years, and I had always resisted the urge. But last year my brother talked me into it, and it was enough fun that I thought I would give it a go again. We held our draft last Sunday afternoon where twelve of us try to outsmart each other and pick the guys we think will score the best in our league system. There are all kinds of “strategies”, but the common thought is to draft offense first and pitching later. Pitchers are “feast or famine”. They give you the most points when they are good, but can easily score negative points if they have a bad game. So most guys fear the volatility of the pitchers and try to build their teams around the hitters.

I took the opposite strategy this year. I looked at last year’s draft and noticed that the guy who won the league built his team on pitching first. While everyone else was drafting hitters, he stocked up on all the best pitchers, and they had a good enough year to give him the title. Since I am naturally a “rebel”, I thought I would also “go against the grain” and take a different strategy into this year’s draft. I have some decent hitters, but I have tried to stock up on relief pitchers first and a few good starters. So let’s see how it works. By the end of baseball season I will update you on how my unorthodox strategy fared. (I know, most of you don’t care. But this is my blog, so you will just have to suffer through it or get your own blog.)

A believer in Jesus Christ is called to “go against the grain” of the philosophies of this world. There is a consistent “strategy” that the world operates by to try to solve its problems and achieve “victory” in the lives of men and women. It always fails. The Bible says that God’s thoughts and his ways are not like ours (Isaiah 55:8-9). God goes against the grain of this world, and the world goes against the grain of God. So if you want to walk with God, you have to walk against the world. Think of the natural illustration of the relationship between the sun and the earth. We know that the reason there is night and day is because the earth spins on its axis and revolves around the sun. That was scientific information that the Bible contains, but astronomers did not catch up to until Galileo and others learned it. But then again, man has always been trying to catch up to the Bible. Now we realize that when we travel west, we actually “gain” time. We can fly to Denver from Kansas City, and land at almost the same time we took off. But think in the larger picture for minute. The reason we can travel west and “gain” time is because the earth is rotating toward the east. Travelling west “gains” time because we are going against the rotation of the earth, and the amount of time we are exposed to sunlight increases. Now “round off” the numbers. The earth is approximately 25,000 miles around its circumference, and there are 24 hours in a day. The earth spins at approximately 1,000 miles per hour. So if you could get in a car and/or boat and travel due west at 1,000 miles per hour, you would stay at the same “time” because you would be under the sun at the same point as the earth’s rotation. Think it through. I hope I don’t have your head “spinning” right now.

Now here is the real lesson of all of that. The earth spins east to west. When you travel west against the world, you stay in the light. I John 1:7 says, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” To walk in the light of the Son of God, you have to go against the grain of the world. People say, “That Bible just rubs me the wrong way!” Well, if you will just turn around, it won’t rub you the wrong way anymore! Walk in the light. Be kind and courteous to the lost who are in the world because they need Jesus. But rub this world the wrong way for him!