17 INCHES

 

[The issues of concern expressed in this story were the ones receiving greater media attention in the ‘90s. The issues may be different today within the various groupings but the substance of unease is still the same.]

In January 1996, in Nashville, Tennessee, more than 4,000 baseball coaches descended upon the Opryland Hotel for the 52nd annual ABCA convention.

While waiting in line to register, veteran coaches chatted about the lineup of speakers. One name kept surfacing, always with the same sentiment — “John Scolinos is here? Oh, man, worth every penny of my airfare.”

Who is John Scolinos?

Coach Scolinos was 78 years old and five years retired from a college coaching career that began in 1948. He shuffled to the stage to an impressive standing ovation, wearing dark polyester pants, a light blue shirt, and a string around his neck from which home plate hung — a full-sized, stark-white home plate.

After speaking for twenty-five minutes, not once mentioning the prop hanging around his neck, Scolinos appeared to notice the snickering among some of the coaches. Even those who knew him had to wonder exactly where he was going with this, or if he had simply forgotten about home plate since he’d gotten on stage. Then, finally …

“You’re probably all wondering why I’m wearing a home plate around my neck,” he said, his voice growing irascible. The audience laughed, acknowledging the possibility. “I may be old, but I’m not crazy. The reason I stand before you today is to share with you baseball people what I’ve learned in my life, what I’ve learned about home plate in my 78 years.”

Several hands went up when Scolinos asked how many Little League coaches were in the room. “Do you know how wide home plate is in Little League?”

After a pause, someone offered, “Seventeen inches?”, more of a question than answer.

“That’s right,” he said. “How about in Babe Ruth’s day? Any Babe Ruth fans in the house?” Another long pause.

“Seventeen inches?” a guess from another reluctant coach.

“That’s right,” said Scolinos. “Now, how many high school coaches do we have in the room?” Hundreds of hands shot up, as the pattern began to appear. “How wide is home plate in high school baseball?”

“Seventeen inches,” they said, sounding more confident.

“You’re right!” Scolinos barked. “And you college coaches, how wide is home plate in college?”

“Seventeen inches!” said in unison.

“Any Minor League coaches here? How wide is home plate in pro ball?” “Seventeen inches!”

“Right! And in the Major Leagues, how wide is home plate in the divisions? “Seventeen inches!”

“Sev-en-teen inches!” he confirmed, his voice bellowing off the walls. “And what do they do with a Big League pitcher who can’t throw the ball over seventeen inches?” Pause. “They send him to Pocatello!” He hollered, drawing raucous laughter. “What they don’t do is this: they don’t say, ‘Ah, that’s okay, Jimmy. If you can’t hit a seventeen-inch target? We’ll make it eighteen inches or nineteen inches. We’ll make it twenty inches so you have a better chance of hitting it. If you can’t hit that, let us know so we can make it wider still, say twenty-five inches.'”

Pause. “Coaches, what do we do when your best player shows up late for practice? Or, when team rules forbid facial hair and a guy shows up unshaven? What if he gets caught drinking? Do we hold him accountable? Or do we change the rules to fit him? Do we widen the home plate? "

The chuckles gradually faded as four thousand coaches grew quiet, the fog lifting as the old coach’s message began to unfold. He turned the plate toward himself and, using a Sharpie, began to draw something. When he turned it toward the crowd, point up, a house was revealed, complete with a freshly drawn door and two windows. “This is the problem in our homes today. With our marriages, with the way we parent our kids. With our discipline.

We don’t teach accountability to our kids, and there is no consequence for failing to meet standards. We just widen the plate!”

Pause. Then, to the point at the top of the house, he added a small American flag. “This is the problem in our schools today. The quality of the students’ performance is going downward and teachers have been stripped of the tools they need to be successful, to educate and train our young people. We are allowing others to widen home plate! Where is that getting us?”

Silence. He replaced the flag with a Cross. “And this is the problem in the Church, where powerful people in positions of authority have taken advantage of young children, only to have such an atrocity swept under the rug for years. Our church leaders are widening the home plate for themselves! And we allow it.”

“And the same is true with our government. Our so-called representatives make rules for us that do not apply to themselves. They take funds from lobbyists and foreign countries. They no longer serve us. And we allow them to widen home plate! We see our country falling into a dark abyss while we just watch.”

At a baseball convention where the expectation was to learn something about curveballs and bunting and how to run better practices, the audience learned something far more valuable.

From an old man with a home plate strung around his neck, they learned something about life, about themselves, about weaknesses, and about responsibilities of leadership. They had to hold themselves and others accountable to that which was right—lest families, faith, and society move downward on an undesirable path.

“If I am lucky,” Coach Scolinos concluded, “you will remember one thing from this old coach: if we fail to hold ourselves to a higher standard, a standard of what we know to be right; if we fail to hold our spouses and our children to the same standards; if we are unwilling or unable to provide a consequence when they do not meet the standard; and, if our schools, churches, and government fail to hold themselves accountable to those they serve, there is but one thing to look forward to …”

With that, he held the home plate in front of his chest, turned it around, and revealed its dark black backside, “…we have dark days ahead!.”

Coach Scolinos died in 2009 at the age of 91. Meeting him at an ABCA convention kept many coaches returning year after year, looking for similar wisdom and inspiration from other coaches. He was a great speaker because he was more than a baseball coach. His message was clear—keep your players (no matter how good they are), your children, your church, your government, and most of all, yourselves at seventeen inches.

Don't widen the plate.

THE SEA OF FAITH

Two serious-minded unbelievers are walking home together, trying to make sense of the contemporary world. The dream of progress and enlightenment has run out of them. The consumerism and mass communication of the late twentieth century has blown a whistle on the world as they knew it. The post-industrial society provided no solution for, or even comfort to, the world in its current state, beset as it is with fanatic extremism, with a widening gap of rich and poor, with myths of a secular utopia (“if only we could get religion out of the public sphere!”), and with domination escalating and initiatives being manipulative.

Our two unbelievers walk along the road to a beach where the sea of faith is emptied. They are discussing, animatedly, how these things can be. How can the stories by which so many have lived come to let us down? How shall we replace our deeply uncertain cultural identities? What should we be doing in our world now that every dream of progress is stamped with the word “Babel”?

Into this conversation comes Jesus, incognito. “What are you talking about?” he asks. They stand there, looking sad. Then one of them says, “You must be about the only person in town who doesn’t know what a traumatic time the twenty-first century has become. The great intellectuals of the twentieth century were quite right: life is empty. We thought we’d brought peace to the middle east through war, and we’ve had nothing but more wars ever since. We had a sexual revolution, and now have an epidemic of sexual harassment and more lonely, confused people than ever before. We are so connected with one another through social media that we ignore the people sitting in front of us. We pursued wealth, but we had the global financial crisis and ended up with half the world in crippling debt. We can do what we like, but we’ve all forgotten why we liked it. Our dreams have gone sour, and we don’t even know who ‘we’ are anymore. And now even the church has let us down, corrupting its spiritual message by assuming worldwide liberty could be achieved by political persuasion and legislation.”

“Foolish one,” replies Jesus, “How slow of heart you are to believe all that the creator God has said! Did you never hear that he created the world wisely? And that he has now acted within his world to create a truly human people? And that from within these people he came to live as a truly human person? And that in his own death he dealt with evil once and for all? And that he is even now at work, by his own spirit, to create a new human family in which repentance and forgiveness of sins are the order of the day, and so challenge and overturn the rule of war, sex, money, and power?” And, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, and also the gospel evangelists and apostles of the New Testament, he interprets to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

They arrive at the shore of the sea of faith. The waters, having retreated with the outgoing tide of the past century’s thoughts and beliefs, is full again, as the incoming tide of the present century’s theories and values proves the truth that when people stop believing in God, they do not believe in nothing, they believe in anything. On the shore, there stands a great hungry crowd—people who had cast their bread on the retreating waters of past ideas only to discover that the incoming tide of current ideals had brought them bricks and centipedes instead. The two travelers wearily begin to get out a small picnic basket, totally inadequate for the task. Jesus gently takes it from them, and within what seems like moments he has gone to and fro on the beach until everyone is fed. Then the eyes of them all are opened, and they realize who he is, and he vanishes from their sight. And the two say to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us on the road, as he told us the story of the creator and his world, and his victory over evil?” And they rush back to tell their friends of what happened on the road and how he had been made known in the breaking of the bread.

This is not a story; it is a real-life drama. And the part of Jesus is played by you and me. This is the mission of Christ-followers in this self-illusioned world. The resurrected Jesus is still revealing himself through the men and women who walk among the unbelieving world in resurrection power, sharing his message of victory and hope.

This is the church’s assignment: To give the world the means to overcome disillusionment and despair. Give them a chance—they need it!

Go tell them, “He is risen!” He is risen, indeed.

The Garden Tomb – Jerusalem, Israel

THE PEG

Isaiah 22:25 (ESV): In that day, declares the LORD of hosts, the peg that was fastened in a secure place will give way, and it will be cut down and fall, and the load that was on it will be cut off.

Several years ago, I started substitute teaching to supplement my family income. I continue to do so at a local high school. My ministry began with training teenagers, then transitioned to developing adults—it now seems only natural that I should be regularly involved with young people again. I have discovered they like hanging out with old people. They like our stories (if told briefly) and they appreciate a genuine interest in their stories, both the funny and sad, the pleasant and tragic.

Because of past involvement in education and administration, many career educators like discussing various issues with me. I arrived one morning at school and a member of the support staff wondered about my background. His child had recently been in a class and thought my comments beneficial. He asked about my education. I responded that my field of study concentrated on religion and philosophy with supplemental studies in public speaking. This led him to ask if I had read a book he was presently reading, written by a scholarly theologian. I had not. The book focused primarily on sociological/politological/anthropological notions. The staff member described to me some of the findings and conclusions, deeply enmeshed in science more than scripture, and wanted my opinion. I considered the author’s analyses built on a platform different than mine.

In the brief time available, I stated: “I believe that in the DNA of all humans we are religious, meaning we have a natural propensity to worship something. Some worship the intangible, others worship the tangible and most worship elements of both. In the ’50s, some worshipped Elvis Presley; in the ’60s, many worshiped The Beatles; in the ’70s, several worshipped hallucinogenic drugs.

"There are many wonderful benefits connected to worship. However, some types of worship can be harmful when passionately practiced; they can damage the human psyche—celebrity fame, physical allure, sexual obsession, monetary affluence, assertive power.

“In all religions, there is an object of worship and something that triggers it, a high priest of some sort. Follow this train of thought: If Judaism or Christianity is your religion, the high priest that triggers worship is scripture, and the object of worship is God.

"The chief object of worship in the American democratic experiment is a faith in the one true God, utilizing covenant phrases such as, ‘one nation under God’ and ‘In God we trust’. In 1968, this country changed religions, caused mostly by the unrest and frustration with the nation’s involvement in the Vietnam War.* This modern religious replacement is actually based on ideas coming out of the 16^th Century Enlightenment era.

“Where does this nation find herself today? Her religion is Secularism, the high priest triggering worship is science, and the object of worship is self.

"The Me Generation (my generation) started the shift that now challenges traditional liberties and values. The question we face today is: Have we come to the point of no return? It normally takes three generations to permanently alter cultural values and we are in the third generation since 1968. I will let you come to your own conclusion.”

I recently read something penned by E. Stanley Jones, onetime Wesleyan missionary to India: “If God goes, then everything worthwhile goes too. Everything lacks basis, permanence, and ultimate meaning. The whole situation is summed up in these words: ‘And then—so the Lord of hosts declares—the peg driven in so firmly shall be wrenched out and give way, till everything that hung upon it shall come down’ (Isaiah 22:25 Moffatt). When the peg of material civilization upon which we have hung everything is wrenched out by economic dislocation and gives way, then everything we have hung on it—our plans, our hopes, our futures—gives way with it and goes down in a crash. We have hung everything on the wrong peg, the insecure peg of money. That peg should have been God; for, as God holds amid the stress of things, everything holds."

It is not easy today to choose faith in God because the basis of existence has changed from the traditional (things evaluated) to the scientific (things weighed and measured). In the traditional realm, you evaluate what was passed on from generation to generation and determined true, but in the scientific climate, everything must be weighed and measured and verified as true because science believes only in verified knowledge. Can the information we live by be solely a verified knowledge when the understanding of life is an evaluated hypothesis? This is an impossible dualism.

Jones concludes by writing, “The pegs on which we have hung our modern civilization are coming down. A 'sensate society' (a society formulated by the scenes) has exhausted itself against the facts of life; it is becoming bankrupt.”

Then what is the answer? Where does one turn when it is determined that society has become culturally bankrupt? Where does one find hope, which is critical for living with certainty, calmness, and confidence? Where does one gain peace when the basis of human existence is now built only on a verified knowledge instead of rooted in an evaluated hypothesis? Where does one search for truth when science, the current benchmark for knowledge, appears laid on unstable ground, only temporal, having conclusions often proven untrue by better details and more exact evidence?

The ancient prophet Isaiah gave God’s solution just two verses before his warning: “And I will fasten him like a peg in a sure place, and he will become a throne of honor to his father’s house.” (v.23)

The place made sure is the crucified Christ who was nailed to a cross and resurrected as the everlasting truth.

“We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever….” (Hebrews 6:19–20 ESV)

Pray for divine grace and tender mercy to be upon the nation, pray for a revival in the church and a spiritual awakening throughout the land (it happened before; it can happen again), but let the Holy Spirit fasten you to the sure place of Jesus Christ, who is seated on his throne in the Heavenly Father’s kingdom—the place of everlasting hope. Make sure your hang your hope on the Peg in a sure place.

*The upheaval brewing in the ’60s is also linked to the 1963 sensational singing group The Beatles, the precursor of worship displacement. When Beatlemania became a religion, the high priest that triggered worship was sensual music, and the object of worship was utopia. Beatlemania (the urge for utopia) and Vietnam (an unwarranted war) created the perfect dislodging force working against tradition.

**For those who like to ponder and think, three books can help give a more in-depth reading on the subject. I recommend they be read in this order: Mark Sayers’ books The Road Trip and Strange Days, followed by Os Guinness’ book Last Call for Liberty. Warning: This is not bedstand reading material, browsed when weary and wishing to sleep. Your thinking cap is required. 

REALISM

One of the odd irregularities of believing in Christ is that the greatest realist in history was turned into the greatest idealist. Jesus’ realism was so amazing that believers did not know what to do with it. They knew they had to act on it or reject it but could not bring themselves to do either, so they found a way to do both. They learned a way to abide in Christ and continue in the old manner of living. He was made into an ideal; something that would be lived someday but not now. They satisfied a sense of loyalty to a higher calling while living in the realm of lower standards. Jesus was put on a cross of irrelevance for today but of significance for tomorrow.

Many have adopted abiding with Christ as an ideal, something beyond this life, operative now only in small ways. The result? Abundant life is limited and marginalized.

What is misunderstood is that this idealism is nothing more than concealed materialism; the present becomes divorced from the future. Abiding in Christ is relegated to a future hope and thought spiritual, while daily living remains present and controlled by the material.

Jesus was incredibly real, but people have made faith in him an ideal. When he said to love your neighbor as yourself, most made this a future goal, an ideal. But Jesus meant it to be real, to live like this now. He was telling us this is the only way that life will really work. If our lifestyle remains self-centered, we are committing collective and individual suicide, and the world falls apart from our failure to live out this truth. Sincere love for others can only begin with those who first love the God of sacrificial love.

Jesus also said we are to lose ourselves to find ourselves. This is not idealism; it is realism, one of the basics of real life. When we lose ourselves, abiding in Christ merges the present with the future and becomes realistic. Until believers humble themselves, the realism others must see is only idealized, and the world grows increasingly chaotic. The time is past due for lovers of God to live in real faith. He merged the present with the future and abiding in Christ demands we do the same.

“Lord, save us from any misguided ideals about faith that act like heroin, distorting reality and causing us to evade truth and responsibility.”