Church Voices

This article from the Sports Economist illustrates at least a little bit of the reason why God’s grace is so much larger than ours.

The author makes this note about the chances of baseball players who used performance enhancing drugs on getting into the hall of fame:

Beyond McGwire, what will be the fate of others caught up in the bad press? A Cincinnati Enquirer piece by John Erardi poses this question for A-Rod along with Bonds, Sosa, McGwire, Clemens and others. In a very small sample (10) of baseball writers who have Hall of Fame votes, 7 came out against any of the players while 2 were willing to consider a partiucular guy from their city

Then, from the general to the specific:

The trouble with that view is that players who did not use such substances stand at a disadvantage, albeit an arguable one. The Astros ace, Roy Oswalt, speaks very forcefully to the views of at least one impacted non-users on MLB.com:

“A-Rod’s numbers shouldn’t count for anything,” Oswalt said in a phone interview with MLB.com. “I feel like he cheated me out of the game.” … “The ones that have come out and admitted it, and are proven guilty, [their numbers] should not count. I’ve been cheated out of the game,” Oswalt continued. “This is my ninth year, and I’ve done nothing to enhance my performance, other than work my butt off to get guys out. These guys [who took PEDs] have all the talent in the world. All-Star talent. And they put times two on it.

Of course, like the writers, Oswalt is more gracious to a former teammate, Roger Clemens, than he is toward others.

So, it looks like whether you’re a baseball writer taking a principled stand against the exploitation of the game by dirty players, or a clean baseball player angry that your ability to earn is being reduced by talented players having an unfair advantage the familiarity with a player will result in having a softened attitude towards him.

Consider, then, that God is intimately familiar with each of us. He is our creator and our sustainer, we’re told he knows us well enough that the hairs of our head are numbered. Could it be that God’s intimate familiarity with us results in a grace towards us that is far greater than the grace we offer each other? The concluding verses of the book of Jonah seem to indicate this is the case:

Then the Lord said, “You feel sorry about the plant, though you did nothing to put it there. It came quickly and died quickly. But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness,[a] not to mention all the animals. Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great city?”

If the church is going to be a place where grace is received and given among God’s people, it is necessary that we cultivate relationships with our brothers and sisters. Its easy to condemn unknown baseball players for outrageous sins against the game of baseball, its easy to condemn Christians we have never met for sins that are publicly revealed, it is easy to grow cold hearted towards people who sin against us who we only say hi to once a week before services.

But its very difficult to not offer grace to someone who we are so familiar with that we love.