Note: My wife and I send out a monthly newsletter by e-mail. This is taken from our Sept. 1, 2011, edition. – DAS

It’s the summer of 1957 and I am in the kitchen of our home, a pastor’s parsonage in a little town about 90 minutes outside of New York City. I’m 11 years old, and indulging in one of my favorite summertime activities – listening to the Yankees on the radio (it’s hard to believe how much I now dislike the Yankees). My mother is ironing nearby. And now time stands still because my hero, Mickey Mantle, comes to the plate.

Mickey wore #7.  Now if that isn’t theologically significant, I don’t know what is! Bible scholars often say that seven is the number of perfection. Mickey’s teammate, Clete Boyer, once said, “What does seven mean? It means Mickey Mantle.”

I stand still as I envision the Mighty Mick at the plate. He takes a powerful swing and breaks his bat. Over a half century later I still clearly recall my euphoric jubilation as I ran around the kitchen shouting to my mother, “He broke his bat! Mantle broke his bat!” I also can visualize her motherly smile at my childish exuberance. Back then I didn’t realize that it doesn’t take much to break a bat – that it’s usually a flaw in the bat that breaks it, not the power of the swing.

But the Mick could do no wrong in my eyes and pretty much everybody else shared that opinion. In the words of a teammate, “His aura had an aura. The way he walked, the way he ran, and the way he presented himself once he put on the uniform – he was a symphony. Ever hear Beethoven’s Ninth? The Ode to Joy? You see him hit and then you see him run, and it’s like going into the chorale.”

If you haven’t already guessed, I’m currently reading “The Last Boy” by Jane Leavy. It’s about “Mickey Mantle and the end of America’s childhood.” If I close my eyes, I feel like I’m eleven years old and The Mick is coming to the plate. Flies buzz at the screen door, my mother is ironing, and I stand mesmerized in the middle of the kitchen floor trying to imagine someone whose craft is so sublime, so perfectly executed, a person so elite in his profession, that one gropes for a way to tell others about it without diminishing it.

Apart from the nostalgia and wistfulness, I feel another more powerful emotion. It’s the sensation that engulfs someone who has seen Ray Allen hit a jumper, Bobby Orr make it look like he’s playing hockey against a bunch of junior highers, Lou Gehrig or Cal Ripken show up for work night after night, or actually heard Beethoven’s Ninth. It’s the feeling I got when I first viewed “Chariots of Fire” and heard Eric Liddell say, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.”

I have just returned from getting my hair cut. The barber asked me what I did for a living. It’s always a challenge to try to explain my vocation to people, so I told her that I do a lot of speaking and teaching about the Bible. She said she could never do that because in elementary school her classmate passed out from nervousness and hit his head on the desk as he was trying to make a speech. I told her I had a similar problem when I was young but now I find public speaking very natural. What I really wanted to say was, “I believe God made me for a purpose, and gave me the desire to teach the Bible. And when I teach His word I feel His pleasure.” But I didn’t. She may have passed out and she had scissors in her hand.

We might all benefit from asking the questions, “For what purpose has God made me? What did He make me able to do well? Do I feel his pleasure when I do that thing?” If anything hits you out of my short journey down memory lane, may it be that God has a purpose for you, He has made you to do something well, and when you do it, you can feel His pleasure.

There has been a noticeable development in our society, perhaps most demonstrable among professional athletes, a theological trend of sorts. It is a worldview that prompts people to give God credit for the good things that happen. What could be more right than that?

It is seen in athletes who give God credit for home runs, touchdown passes, and throwing down a slam dunk. While I like the fact that there are believers in the sports world who are willing to express their faith in that way, I wonder about the depth and breadth in understanding God’s ways when I see this on TV. Here is what these athletes aren’t typically doing: giving God any thanks or expressing awareness of his involvement in their activities when things don’t go well, when they strike out, drop the easy touchdown pass, blow the wide open layup, or strike out on a bad pitch.

During late November 2010, there was an event that served to perfectly highlight this dilemma. The Buffalo Bills were playing the Pittsburgh Steelers. (For Ravens fans like myself, there are few joys in life like seeing the Steelers lose.) In this particular game, the lowly Bills had forced the Steelers into overtime. A perfectly thrown touchdown pass to Steve Johnson (wide receiver for the Buffalo Bills), a pass that would win the game for Buffalo, was dropped in the end zone.

The previous week, Johnson had caught passes for which he gave God the credit. Now that he dropped a pass that would have meant a win for his team, he posted on Twitter that he blamed God for the dropped pass. (At least he’s consistent: God gets the credit when he makes the good catch, and God gets the blame when Johnson drops the easy pass.) This seems to me to be a clear indication of a terribly deficient theology. But it’s not just athletes who can be bad theologians.

More recently, presidential candidate Michele Bachmann suggested that God’s purpose for the recent hurricane and earthquake that impacted the mid-Atlantic region was because of Washington’s out of control spending. Previously we have heard Pat Robertson attribute Hurricane Katrina to God judging America for its position on abortion. John Piper blamed a tornado that swept through Minneapolis and damaged a Lutheran church on that denomination’s position on homosexuality. Westboro Baptist regularly blames military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan on America condoning homosexuality.

The recent weather events in the mid-Atlantic region have given rise to some Facebook posts by my friends and fellow Christians that I fear can reflect this same deficient worldview and send a wrong message to unbelievers.

“Finally our electricity is back on.” “So glad the worst of the storm missed us.” “We went through the hurricane and were totally unscathed!” And each of these is usually followed by a comment to the effect that “God is so good!” In these comments is little thought about how “the goodness of God” was displayed on those who basements were flooded or cars were smashed by falling tree limbs. Or is God only good when the storm passes me by? Maybe we don’t really believe that “God is good ALL the time.”

And then there are the opposite posts. “Our basement is flooded.” Or “a tree branch landed on our car.” Or “the power company is sure taking its good old time getting us up and running again.” These are often followed by something like “Bummer!” Or “I’m pretty upset.” Where is the goodness of God for these people? Is he only good when we like the outcome of events?

Obviously this trend reveals a disturbingly shallow view of God. These opinions have roots in a worldview that assumes I can figure out what God is doing at any given time based on my own opinions. Once I form my conclusion, I can pronounce God’s view on the outcome of the event. So, in the locker room, the victorious athlete can “give God all of the glory.” And the owner of the unscathed home can say “God is good.”

In short – and this is important – when the event has a satisfactory outcome that I am pleased with, I will give God the credit. By this reasoning, “God is good” when I recover from the flu, when the new recipe was tasty, and when I got the job I really wanted.

But when doors I want to go through are closed, when things do not go the way I prefer, God is apparently “not good” since the baseball player never says “God is good” when he strikes out. Does the sick person ever say “glory to God” when he remains sick or his condition actually worsens?

I love the way the Book of Genesis begins and ends. Genesis 1:31 – “God saw all that He had made and it was very good.” Genesis 50:20 – “As for you, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” In other words, not only is God good when He is exerting His awesome creative power. He is also planning good out of the nastiness of life. If Joseph being sold into slavery in Egypt was the catalyst for some profoundly good things that God was planning, why can’t God be doing good when my basement floods, when my car breaks down, when a tree branch falls on my car, when my kindergartener has a bad day at school, when my sickness refuses to go away, or when I have to remain on unemployment for another 6 months?

One missiologist has suggested that every breakthrough in the Muslim world has come on the heels of a natural disaster. If that is true, and I tend to think it is, how many other good things does God intend to do through the stuff of life that we naturally don’t like. The outcome that you wish didn’t occur when you would have preferred it work another way, that outcome may actually be the better way that God intends to use for purposes that may boggle our mind. Let’s give God the praise in all things at all times as we wait to see what good thing he is doing through the outcomes we like and the occurrences we do not prefer.

Newspaper headlines this morning were all abuzz about the death of North Korea’s president.  They didn’t spend a whole lot of time ruminating on his life or his legacy.  Rather, they quickly focused on the fact that his son, Kim Jong-un “the great successor”, will be taking his place and WE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT HIM.  One article even mentioned that even the name of his mother is a secret. ”Mystery surrounds son set to succeed Kim Jong Il” cries the title of one news story. 
Do we hate mystery or what?  Stock markets sure hate mystery.  Reports were that all the major indices in Asia were dropping on the news.  Uncertainty begets retreat.  If you don’t have a reasonably good idea as to what will happen next, the best thing you can do is keep your powder dry and wait to see what happens. 
There are however the hearty few who seem to be impervious to concerns about uncertainty, or at least they are able to get past it.  Warren Buffet, who knows a thing or two about uncertainty summed up his firm’s investing strategy by saying “We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”  Obviously this approach has served him well, as well as shareholders in Berkshire-Hathaway.  Though I don’t know much about Buffet’s spiritual condition, the scripture gives us some similar wisdom. Phillipians 4:6 says “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” 
There is a lot to be “anxious” about in missions these days.  Organizations are running short of money, countries are expelling cross-cultural workers, churches are losing interest and commitment, and the list could go on.  On the other hand, much of the the unreached world, which has been stuck in a cultural and religious deep-freeze for decades, are experiencing upheaval of such a magnitude that no one even a year ago could have predicted.  The Arab spring has people asking questions and voicing concerns that a year ago would never have been on their lips.  Is this the time to “keep our powder dry and wait and see what happens” or is this the time to “be greedy” in a spiritual sense.  Is this the time for us to shrink back because the world is getting scary, or is this the time to move forward with the gospel because the Lord does amazing things in a scary world?

That is the title of a column I read this morning by a local journalist/radio personality in our area; Ron Smith.  He was recently diagnosed with a rather pernicious form of cancer, went through a round of chemo, was advised by his oncologists and others that it really wasn’t benefitting, so has decided to stop the treatment.  He then said that this was his final column and that he would likely pass on some time in the near future.  It’s a sad day.  Though I knew about his diagnosis, there was always this hope that he would respond well and hang around for a long time.  I have never met the guy and likely never will.

He was musing near the end of the article about how he had hoped he would have seen what happens next in American politics and culture.  He wrote, “As I exit, our society faces grave crises, and it’s clear that the current political leadership of both parties is incapable of fixing them. I would have liked to witness the next great unfolding of events, even though I believe these will prove catastrophic.”  But, this is not to be.  He will not live to see this “next great unfolding”. 

He is at a place right now where he can look back on his life and see how his life affected, hopefully for the better, those he was in a position to impact.  In his case, that was quite a few people because of his media presence. 

His quote “My work here is done” is what has really grabbed my attention.  I wonder how we would think if every position that we took, project embarked upon, or role given, when the time came to say “My work here is done” we could look back with the same introspection that a man with weeks to live will do. 

In the movie Band of Brothers there was a short dialogue between a soldier and his superior.  The soldier was confessing his cowardice during the landing at Normandy.  His commander responded “You hid in that ditch because you think there’s still hope. But Blithe, the only hope you have is to accept the fact that you’re already dead, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner youll be able to function as a soldiers supposed to function.”

I wonder if in these roles that we are given throughout our lives, if we “accepted the fact that (we’re) already dead”, whether that might remove the self-protection that so often keeps us from making the hard decisions we need to make, to take that decisive action we need to take.  If you realize you are already dead, what is there to lose?

Galatians 2:20.  “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

When I get to the point where we say “my work here is done”, I certainly hope I lived like a man who realized that he was “already dead”.  Ironically, that is where we will find the most life and freedom, don’t you think?