The Phil Files

Okay. Ricky (one of my ministry teammates) challenged a bunch on our leadership team to pray and fast either Monday or Tuesday. So, during my appointed “lunch time” today, I was munching on leadership principles from Numbers. I know, the Old Testament book of Numbers doesn’t sound exotic or life-changing — more like walking through a bunch of sand. But when you dig a little deeper (sorry about the bad pun), there is a lot there to be found.

From good ol’ Moses, the greatest leader ever before Jesus, came some interesting insights.

• I got a good dose of raising holy hands (wave offering) in relationship to leadership — the laying on of hands and the raising of hands was a key part of placing new leaders before God!
• I got a large dose of falling on my face before the Lord interceding for the people of God.
• I got a reprimand on not listening for the voice of God and not being more passionate to live out His clearly stated will.
• I got a reminder that leaders are going to have to deal with a lot of whining and blaming and complaining and questioning — even from those closest to us.
• I was blown away by the importance of obeying and responding to the call of God when given the opportunity, or it may not come again in our generation.
• I saw how negative voices are much more easily heard in a crowd and nay-saying can swamp the vision of God’s people and drown out the promises of God from their hearts even if the clear word of God is declared.

But the one thing that haunts me most, especially as we deal with learning how to communicate God’s truth to post-mod adults and how we help them experience the presence of God in their lives is this:

“‘You said your children would be carried off as plunder.’ Well, I will bring them safely into the land, and they will enjoy what you have despised. But as for you, you will drop dead in this wilderness. And your children will be like shepherds, wandering in the wilderness for forty years. In this way, they will pay for your faithlessness, until the last of you lies dead in the wilderness.” (Numbers 14:31-33 NLT)

I am a boomer. Not proud of it, but it was when God chose for me to be birthed. So as we sit around and complain about the church’s past and we moan about the present and we navel gaze about what pleases us … I fear we do not demonstrate that Jesus is found in action and emotion and service and challenge and …

Enough said. Only 15% of the leadership had the vision in God to act … so the 85%, with the support of the “led,” missed the opportunity and cost their children 40 years of experiencing God’s power and grace! They had to wander around in the sand until all their parent’s fears and faithlessness were buried.

That being said, who suffered most? I say it was the parental generation who never got to see their children experience God for real. Of course those children did experience God for real, it’s just that their parents were buried and gone … under the sand.

Please, dear God, may it not be so of us … of me!

I remember that as a little boy, I would go to bed in the summer, pull the sheet over my head, turn on my transitor radio, put in the earphone, and list to the Colt 45’s (now the Houston Astros) play baseball.

I played baseball as a boy. I collected baseball cards. When I was in high school, I sold peanuts down the first base line at the old Rangers baseball park in Arlington the first three years after they moved from Washington. Baseball has always been an interest. Sometimes it has been my passion.

Unlike the so called baseball purists, I have always known and admitted there were cheaters in every era of the game. In fact, there is a an element of baseball that has always turned a deaf ear to cheating — stealing signs, scuffing up the baseball for the pitcher, putting foreign substances on the ball or spitting on the baseball by pitchers, and sharpening of cleats. All of these were done for a “competitive advantage.” While all of these were illegal, none were regularly enforced for long periods of time and many were — wink and nod — considered part of the lore of the game. Many of the records and record holders and Hall of Fame members did these things.

When Jim Bouton wrote his frank book about life in Major League Baseball (MLB), Ball Four, he told about real life in professional baseball in the late sixties and early seventies. The powers that be in baseball did all they could to discredit him. Yet his book exposed what the press and MLB had hidden for years — drug use was rampant, womanizing was part of the game, and cheating was a routine part of baseball. The drug use included using illegal drugs (like pot) and legal ones (massive amounts of alcohol and prescription drugs) to come down from games. It also included the use of illegal and prescribed drugs that enhanced ones ability to get up an play and be in the line up on long road trips and double headers: these bennies and greenies, amphetamine uppers, were widely used. Because of the long and grueling season, guys would get up with one set of drugs and get down to rest with another. For years, baseball players had been involved in the use of the substances and baseball did nothing to address them.

All this cheating is written into the record books of the “sacred” era of baseball about which the writers and handlers of baseball want to pontificate about today. Into this environment came two circumstances that have now drammatically altered the course of professional baseball: (1) the downward turn of baseball popularity in the 90’s; and, (2) the introduction of anabolic steriods into the fray through the slugging battles for homerun supremacy by Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa in 1998, and Barry Bonds in 2001.

While nearly every beat reporter, coach, and league official had at least anecdotal knowledge of the widespread use of these illegal drugs, they did nothing to address their use — just like they had looked the other way to all of the other cheating going on in the game for years. In fact, the duel for the home run championship in 1998 between Sosa and McGuire was thought to have “saved baseball.” MLB turned a deaf ear to all of the roid parade in its league despite the fact that the NFL had begun to address the widespread use of steroids in their league ten years previously.

When this early use and celebration of records was rampant in the late 90’s, more and more players began to use roids — many to heal faster, some hitters to become stronger, pitchers to increase their stamina, many out of fear of losing their competitive ability to an increasingly “roid pumped up” set of competitors.

As the use of roids hit younger and younger ages, the dramatic effects of its use began to show up in younger people — roid rage, acne, negative impact on genitalia, concentration issues, hardening of the arteries, high blood pressure, paranoia, suicide, etc. Suddenly, public opinion turned. MLB decided it was time to crack down on the issue, but only after going over 10 years with increasing use without doing anything.(Remember that the NFL addressed this issue a decade before baseball would even touch the issue!)

Some of the scandalization of roid users became easier because Barry Bonds, the abrasive and self-centered home run king of the roid era became the evil poster boy. Disliked by media, fans, and even many teammates, the wrath of the purists was unleashed on Bonds and his fellow roid users as destroyers of the “pure game of baseball.”

In 2003, the league and the union did an anonymous test promising that the test results would not be linked to an athlete and the results would destroyed once the results were known. They were simply trying to find out how pervasive the use of roids was in the game. They had finally decided they would address the issue. Today, nearly six year later, those results are being released. Rightly or wrongly, people are going to be damaged. Who leaked this information, why, and for what purpose has yet to be determined.

Meanwhile, MLB is wringing their hands and talking about how these cheating players ruined the game … players whom they have betrayed by leaking names, players they allowed and even encouraged to cheat by their lack of addressing the issue and celebrating the records of those who were roid users.

Don’t let them get away with it. MLB is to blame!

Yes, each athlete must bear personal responsibility for his cheating. It was wrong … even shameful. But when a league capitalizes on what it knows is cheating and does nothing … when it puts into the Hall of Fame others who have cheated … and when it pretends that there was a pure era and these guys who used roids are the real cheaters, then MLB is not being honest. They are trying to polish an image, a myth, a religion of pure baseball. But underneath, we know differently. MLB allowed the cheating. It profited from the cheating in attendance numbers and dollars. It fostered an environment where athletes — pitchers and hitters and injured players — felt they had to roid enhance or get left behind. And for more than a decade it did … NOTHING!

So let’s hold the players accountable. But let’s not punish them forever. Let’s note that we have lived in an era of a live ball, roid enhanced numbers, and cheating. But let’s also acknowledge that many — not necessarily all, but many — of the records the roid squad broke were records set by guys using downers and uppers that are also illegal and no longer permissible. Come on baseball, get off your sanctimonious high horse, clean up the game, but don’t beat up the players while not taking your share of responsibility for not only allowing this to happen, but promoting it.

If you only blame the players … and punish the players … we have only thing left to call Major League Baseball: what it really is — MLB-Fraud!

Postscript:

One final group that has yet to be addressed and yet to own up to their guilt, the Players Association which is supposed to act in the best interest of their members and protect them. Yet their tactics allowed the drug use to go on, did nothing really to try to help change the climate, and is responsible for samples and records of the 2003 tests to still be available to be “leaked” to the press.