It’s the Baseball’s Fault

Yesterday afternoon in the summer sun my grandson and I went out into the front yard to throw the baseball. After one particularly bad, uncatchable throw, we laughed together and said, “it was the baseball’s fault.” It couldn’t be thrower error; it was because of the baseball. This baseball is a standard weight and size baseball. A “run-of -the-mill,” baseball. A baseball that every warm-blooded American would immediately identify as a baseball. A baseball that has served in the baseball kingdom for decades and can be thrown with the utmost precision, over 100 mph and serves as the baseball for Major League Baseball. A baseball. But with one bad throw, the standard baseball of the baseball universe was in jest made the scapegoat for a bad throw.

I told my grandson that we just developed a homespun metaphor for the Bible version debate. It’s not the reader that the problem, his or her inability to intellectually and spiritually throw and catch the truth of the King James Bible, it’s the Bible’s problem. It’s not personal spiritual weakness or emotional instability or intellectual bias. The problem is with the Bible. It’s not the academic sun in our eyes, or the slothfulness of refusing to practice – it the Bible. After all these years enjoying baseball, I finally realized the whole idea of an error is not really the fault of the players – it was then ball’s fault. If only the ball would have accommodated the thrower, the error would have never occurred. It was a pure moment of baseball illumination!

So, the players, the saints, appealed to the baseball industry to make a better baseball. A baseball that will always go precisely where it was meant to be thrown. It kind of looks like a baseball, but every season it changes. A little smaller, a little lighter and compared to the baseballs of other seasons it really doesn’t look much like the standard baseball anymore. Some seasons the baseball looks indented like a golf ball, sometimes it looks fuzzy like a tennis ball, and sometimes it looks like it’s full of holes like a whiffle ball, but no matter the changes the baseball industry tells the prayers, “It’s a baseball, new and imrpoved.”

But after all the industry assurances, after the season is over, believe it or not, the new baseball is still causing errors on the field. Because the errors on the field are not because of the players – it’s the baseball’s fault. Everything about the game has changed for the better, as advertised, except the baseball that still causes errors..

In other words, the declining spiritual condition of the Church cannot be problem – it’s the Bible. The self-righteous saint who in his self-righteous imagination always throws a perfect spiritual strike cannot be the problem. And of course, the seasoned veteran ball player from the heights of baseball knowledge never made an error in the first place. The money-grubbing publishers are not the problem. No beloved, it can’t be fallen, sinful people or “den of thieves” publishers in the courtyard that are the problem; the problem is the ball, the Bible and we’re going to make everything better for baseball and Church by changing the most important thing – the baseball, the Bible. That way, we don’t have to change ourselves. After all, there is really nothing about the people that needs changing.

Still, errors are made because the root cause of the error is not being addressed. It’s not the ball; it’s not the Bible, it’s the player, the Church that is the problem. But because of pride, sloth, envy, and greed, the solution, a return to a standard Major League baseball, the King James Bible, is made the problem. The solution is demonized for the sake of the self-righteous preservation of those who believe they are able to impose their inability to throw straight to understand and believe, on the written word of God in English, the King James Bible.