“That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” (Ephesians 4:14)
Well, it is that wonderful and magical time of the year again – baseball season! I love baseball. Anyone who doesn’t is a communist. I have followed it even more over the last few years since I have gotten into a fantasy league. I was always ambivalent about fantasy baseball because of what I thought was a lot of work. Being a part of a fantasy league gets you much more connected to what is going on in the sport on a regular basis, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of time. I don’t have a lot of time for stuff like that. I only get to play golf a couple of times a year because of the time commitment, and I don’t watch a whole lot of movies for the same reason. So I was always worried that fantasy baseball would consume too much of my time. But it really doesn’t, except for one time in the year when the draft is done and the league is set. After that, it is pretty much maintenance, and since I like to follow baseball anyway, not much more is involved.
We just held our annual draft a few days ago. It has always been the prevailing philosophy to draft hitters first, and try to build your pitching staff through the middle rounds. Pitchers can be “feast or famine” and when they are famine, it really costs you dearly. Hitters are usually a little more consistent. But over the last couple of years, the landscape of baseball has changed. The steroid era has come to an end, and you no longer have so many gorillas with their knuckles dragging on the ground lugging their big wooden sticks to the plate. Pitchers have a little better chance now, so the pendulum is swinging back in their direction. The winner of the league the last two years did so with pitching, so now everyone is on that bandwagon. Almost without exception, team “owners” went after pitching first in this year’s draft. I was going to do the same, but as the draft unfolded, I saw very quickly that they were leaving the best hitters alone. So I shifted my draft direction in mid-stream and loaded up on hitters. Anyone who knows me at all knows that I am a rebel (without a clue). I always naturally trend away from the “prevailing winds”. I have been like that from the womb. It has carried over to my Christianity as well. Sometimes it gets me in trouble, but most of the time, it saves me from a lot of grief.
Christianity is dominated by “prevailing winds”. One of the leading “experts” in modern church movements is George Barna. His work is done in surveying church trends and gathering statistics on the state of Christianity today. Since his work is so “national” in scale, he has to include everything that ties itself to “Christianity”, whether it is actually Biblical or not. As a result, he can give trends for church movements, but he may not really be showing us where God is at work. Statistics often do not tell the correct story, especially as it relates to individuals. For example, if you stuck your right foot in a bucket of ice water, and your left foot in a bucket of scalding water, statistically, you would still be very miserable. On the average, you might be “trending” in a certain direction, but individually, your feet would tell a much different story, and I would still have to visit you in the hospital.
Romans 3:4 says, “Let God be true, but every man a liar…” A principle that has always served me well is “the majority is always wrong”. When man gravitates to some “movement”, I am always suspicious. Be careful of movements. They often create a mess that someone else has to clean up. (Sorry for that mental image). James 1:8 says, “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.” Set your course of life on the rock of ages. His anchor always holds. When the mobs flock to the latest fad, step back for a moment and look at the word of God. While the world moves in one direction, the “Spirit of God moves upon the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2) in the other direction. Jump on his bandwagon, it always leads to peace and truth.
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