On Watching Baseball

I went to a local high school baseball game last night to see one of my youth guys. I took my friend Robby along with me so that I didn't have to go sit in the stands and watch the game by myself. After all, I didn't want to look like that creepy 23 year old college guy who likes to hang out at high school events for one reason or another....

As soon as we got to the field and sat down to watch the game, we immediately did what I'm sure thousands of other people do when they attend such games: reminisce. Oh yeah. We sat down and immediate I said, "I actually played on this field once.....," and the conversation went from there. We proceeded to talk about the "glory days" of when we played baseball for several minutes, not even really paying attention to the game at hand.

It was a pretty sloppy game. There were a lot of errors, and it just wasn't very pretty. I enjoyed watching the game, but I found myself evaluating everything and almost judging the plays to see what the players were doing wrong rather than simply watching the game for pleasure.

I then realized that I committed a fault that many Christians run into in their spiritual lives: the sin of judging. Watching the game, criticizing plays and errors, thinking I could do things better than the kids that were out there....Haha. It's so foolish, I laugh at myself right now. There I was, Old Man Peek up in the stands, harkening back to the glory days of when we used to play baseball the right way, thinking that I could do it better than the kids on the field.

We do the same thing with our faith. We look back at the way we did things and judge the way that our contemporaries do them. But here's the thing: at least they're doing something. As I was sitting in the stands, I wasn't on the field. I wasn't fielding those balls or swinging at those pitches. Who was I to think I could do it better then them? Yet we do the same thing to our brothers and sisters in Christ, judging them for doing things "wrong" in church or in their spiritual lives. At least they're doing something! Too many times we sit there and judge the way our fellow Christians operate while we are doing nothing except glorying in the past.

We cannot continue to do this. The Lord does not call us to hold up our trophies of our past accomplishments and judge those who are living out their faith right now. He wants us to continue working hard for him, growing in our relationship with him, and encouraging the people around us to do the same thing.

And we can't do that when we're just sitting there criticizing people.