SERIOUS BASEBALL

One area of theology has been under attack for a long, long time and no surcease is in sight. Because of a history of past and on-going attacks, even people inside our churches firmly hold to beliefs that have been declared heretical throughout church history.

Those filling up pew after pew aren't the only ones who are the heretics, albeit it silent ones; pastors, missionaries, and popular Christian authors hold to heretical ideas as well and propagate them all over the place. The problem is further complicated by the fact that, because folks are weak in two areas, church history and Christology, they have no idea that they're either falling for and/or promoting heresy.

An example of this occurs when well-meaning folks try to explain the Trinity with this illustration: I am a teacher and I am a father, and I am a husband--three different roles yet one person. This heresy is called modalism and has been around for a long time.

"Modalism rejects the Trinitarian belief that God exists at all times as three distinct persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Rather, the modalist believes that God is one person made known in three modes. In the Old Testament, God manifested Himself in the mode of the Father. With the incarnation, God manifested Himself in the mode of the Son. And following Jesus’s ascension, God made Himself known through the mode of the Holy Spirit.

"Problematically, modalism rejects that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist simultaneously, which means that modalists deny the distinctiveness of the three persons in the Trinity. This problem is compounded when you consider the baptism of Jesus. At His baptism, we see all three persons of the Trinity present. The Father speaks from heaven, the Son is baptized, and the Spirit descends upon Jesus like a dove."

These heresies spring from a paucity of knowledge of church history and in a knowledge of Christology (the Person and work of Christ). Instead of instruction in Christology which could incorporate a look at the battles fought in church history to cleanse the church of various heretical infections, many are content with "biblical" instruction in "How To Live Your Best Life Now," "How to Conquer Depression," and "Conquering Disease."

We're talking serious here. According to a 2018 survey conducted by LifeWay Research, over 70% of people in our evangelical churches hold to a heretical belief about the Person and work of Christ. Something is wrong, very wrong. Deep Christological books Paul's letter to the Colossians, II Peter, Jude, and a host of texts like Philippians 2 are treated like the red-headed stepchildren of the church.

Let's talk baseball. Serious baseball. The winningest high school coach in America, the winningest ever, took baseball seriously and expected nothing less from every player and every team he coached. They were either serious or they quit or he ran them off.

He was so serious about winning baseball that every new player had to take a written test of over 200 questions, a test so hard that no one could pass it as it dealt with situation after situation that could arise in every game and where the player, no matter his position on the field, should be when that situation occurred. Things like that. The test was designed to show the player, "You don't know as much as you think you do about this game."

Then, every summer, he ran a baseball school. This wasn't a baseball camp for a week or two. It was every morning, the entire morning, five days a week all summer long. He took kids starting at age 7 and they would come back, summer after summer through high school. By the time they got to that level, they were BASEBALL PLAYERS.

When the player got to his high school team, they would practice 6 days a week starting in February and the practice sessions included each player's taking 200-300 pitches in the batting cage from the pitching machine. (The average high school team would have each player take 6 or 7 swings in the batting cage.) The practice sessions would begin after school at 4 PM and continue until it got so dark, they couldn't see the coach. The question is, with that level of seriousness, how did that coach ever lose a game?

Can you imagine what the results would be if we took kids starting at age 7 and every summer through high school used the best teachers to give biblical instruction 5 mornings a week, specializing in Christology? A pipe dream? I know, you're right.

So, all this boils down to a plea to get serious about Colossians, II Peter, Jude, and Christology.

Really serious.