I Am Second Josh Hamilton
I wanted to get into the story of Josh Hamilton and how great it was during the World Series, but of course, the Rangers did not cooperate by exiting early so I had to wait for another opportunity.
Winning the American League MVP award seems like a good enough second opportunity.
It is, in almost every way that I can see, a story of redemption.
Just like the Michael Vick story.
Just like your story.
Just like my story.
In many ways, it is in fact intertwined with "The Greatest Story Ever Told".
It's a story we should never tire of hearing about.
Regardless of who the story is about.
A British evangelist by the name of Leonard Ravenhill once said:
"The wonder of the grace of God is that God can take an unholy man out of an unholy world, make that man holy, then put him back into that unholy world and keep him holy in it."
That is the story of both Michael Vick and Josh Hamilton. Period. End of story.
Both are practical demonstrations of the gospel of the grace of God!
The frustration that comes from those who lie in wait for a relapse, so they can sit in judgement -- like God among men -- and say "gotcha", miss the point.
The point is made poignantly by Mr. Ravenhill in a sermon titled 'It is Finished' made shortly before his death in 1994.
In it Ravenhill refers to the phrase 'It is Finished' as the 'three most important words in history'. Further, he refers to these words as 'The Greatest Words Ever Uttered, By the Greatest Man That Ever Lived'.
Those are pretty bold statements. Let's see how he backs them up.
http://www.ravenhill.org/finished.htm
Again, going down that road the people mocked Him - that's what the Bible says. "They that passed by reviled Him wagging their heads." What a bunch of dumb, blind, senseless folk. If Caesar comes down the road they bow the knee and say, "Hail, Caesar."
If the priest comes, they stand in awe. But, you see, He not only was, He IS. In this mad, insane, world in which we live, HE STILL IS DISPISED AND REJECTED OF MEN.
We shouldn't put our tongue in our cheek and say this in a whisper. We ought to shout this from the house top. To a world that is groping in darkness we ought to proclaim with a trumpet voice, "It is FINISHED,
you can't buy salvation,
you can't crawl on your knees through the holy city,
you can't go on a pilgrimage,
you can't offer your righteousness,
there is nothing you can do, but bow in humility and confess and accept it."
So it really is a simple process -- this redemption thing.
Have faith, be humble, repent or confess of what you did wrong and and turn away from it.
Seems to me like that is the process that both guys have gone through and are continuing to go through daily. It's between them and God at this point. Not for us mere mortals to come between.
We all should have our own problems to work on don't we?
In his book "The People of the Lie" author M. Scott Peck walks through some of the issues. And they are a bundle of paradoxes.
I started reading this book (highly recommend it to all) when the Vick issue initially came to a boil and I am fortunate that within our church family and community groups we hear about and examine these issues routinely.
I don't pretend to have total understanding of all the issues, however, in the process of examining, I feel like I am coming to a better understanding than I had before. For that, I am very grateful.
In the Introduction of the book -- titled "Handle with Care" -- Peck makes some rather bold declarative statements about evil, recognizing it and dealing with it.
The first thing he says is:
- This is a dangerous book
- evil people are easy to hate
- remember Saint Augustine's advice to hate the sin but love the sinner
- Remember when you recognize an evil person that truly, "There but for the grace of God go I"
- We cannot begin to hope to heal human evil until we are able to look at it directly
- judgments need to be made about people
- such judgments cannot be made safely unless we begin by judging and healing ourselves.
He concludes by saying the "battle to heal human evil always begins at home. And self-purification will always be our greatest weapon."
He goes on, in the last chapter titled "The Danger and the Hope" to talk about
The Danger of Making Moral Judgement:
Even atheists and agnostics believe in Christ's words: "Judge not, that ye be not judged.".....
If we examine the matter closely, however, we will see that it is both impossible and itself evil to totally refrain from making moral judgments. And attitude of "I'm OK; you're OK" may have a certain place in facilitating our social relationships, but only a place.
Was Hitler OK? Lieutenant Calley? Jim Jones?...
What kind of father would I be if I discovered my son cheating, lying or stealing and failed to criticize him? What should I tell a friend who is planning suicide or a pateint who is selling heroin? "You're OK"? There is a such a thing as an excess of sympathy, an excess of tolerance, an excess of permissiveness.
The fact of the matter is that we cannot lead decent lives without making judgments in general and moral judgments in particular....
You and I go through our day making decisions that are judgments, most of which have moral overtones. We cannot escape from judging.
The sentence "Judge not, that ye be not judged" is usually quoted out of context. Christ did not enjoin us to refrain from ever judging. What he went on to say in the next four verses is that we should judge ourselves before we judge others-not that we shouldn't judge at all.
"Thou hypocrite." he said, "first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."
Recognizing the potential for evil in moral judgments, he instructed us not to always avoid making them but to purify ourselves before doing so. Which is where the evil fail. It is the self-criticism they avoid.
The Dangers in Perspective:
The major threats to our survival no longer stem from nature without but from our own nature within. It is our carelessness, our hostilities, our selfishness and pride and willful ignorance that endanger the world. Unless we can now tame and transmute the potential for evil in the human soul, we shall be lost.
And how can we do this unless we are willing to look at our own evil with the same thoroughness, detached discernment, and rigorous methodology to which we subjected the external world?
The Solution?
Peck touches on the need to recognize the concept of Banality of Evil -- noted by Hannah Ahrendt in her book about former Nazi Adolph Eichmann -- and it's close link to the deception -- in many cases the self-deception -- of The People of the Lie. Peck notes in conclusion in the final chapter
A Methodology of Love:
...we are all in combat against evil.
...if our passion is great enough, we may even be willing to blow ourselves up in the process of "stomping out" evil.
But we run up against the old problem that the end does not justify the means.
If we kill those who are evil, we will become evil ourselves; we will be killers. If we attempt to deal with evil by destroying it, we will end up destroying ourselves, spiritually if not physically.
What to do then?....we must begin by giving up the simple notion that we can effectively conquer evil by destroying it.
Are we to throw up our hands - to regard the problem of evil as being inherently insoluble? Hardly. That would be meaningless. It is in the struggle between good and evil that life has its meaning - and in the hope that goodness can succeed. That hope is our answer: goodness can succeed. Evil can be defeated by goodness. When we translate this we realize what we dimly have always known: Evil can be conquered only by love.
It sounds so simple, so obvious. Then why don't we practice what we preach more? The problem is that although a simple concept in theory, it is difficult to put into practice. Peck calls it a "paradox" and a "dynamic balance of opposites" or a tightrope walk between making easy versus difficult choices.
He compares it to the paradox parents face raising a child. If a parent rejects all misbehavior, that is unloving. But to tolerate all misbehavior is equally unloving. A parent walks a fine line between tolerance and intolerance. Sometimes strict in the use of the rod, sometimes flexible. Peck notes that "an almost godlike compassion is required" or the patience of a saint at the very least.
It is not an easy thing to embrace ugliness with the sole motive of hope that in some unknown way a transformation into beauty might occur thereby. But the myth of kissed frogs turning into princes remains.
Peck states that the first task of love is self-purification. A difficult first step indeed. Many of us do not like to take a long, hard look in the mirror. We deceive ourselves. But the benefits are as follows:
When one has purified oneself, by the grace of God, to the point at which one can truly love one's enemies, a beautiful thing happens. It is as if the boundaries of the soul become so clean as to be transparent, and a unique light then shines forth from the individual.
Who wouldn't want that? Peck admits that the results of this approach are not perfect. The "effect of this light varies". Some are encouraged by it and change the course of their behavior (as Vick and Hamilton appear to have done) but even in failure there can be success.
...those who hate the light will attack it. Yet it is as if their evil actions are taken into the light and consumed. The malignant energy is thereby wasted, contained and neutralized. The process may be painful to the bearer of the light, occasionally even fatal. This does not, however, signify the success of evil. Rather, it backfires. As I said in The Road Less Traveled, "It was evil that raised Christ to the cross, thereby enabling us to see him from afar."
BEAUTIFUL!!! Timeless themes really. Good will conquer evil. The Truth will set you free. Love never fails.
In further explaining how this methodology of love allows good to conquer evil Peck quotes the words of an old priest who dealt with the issue on the front lines everyday.
"There are dozens of ways to deal with evil and several ways to conquer it. All of them are facets of the truth that the only ultimate way to conquer evil is to let it be smothered within a willing, living human being. When it is absorbed there like blood in a sponge or a spear into one's heart, it loses its power and goes no further."
The willing sacrifice of another is required to absorb the evil. Peck asks the question of whether this absorption of evil corrupts the good person. What would then be gained by this seemingly meaningless trade-off?
He admits that he does not know exactly how this process occurs, but he believes that it does. The victim becomes the victor.
He quotes C.S. Lewis: "When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards."
....I know that good people can deliberately allow themselves to be pierced by the evil of others - to be broken thereby yet somehow not broken - to even be killed in some sense and yet still survive and not succumb. Whenever this happens there is a slight shift in the balance of power in the world.
Amen to that.
And that's why I continue to find these stories to be remarkable and timelessly beautiful to observe.
This is a fantastic book.
People of the Lie by M. Scott Peck
http://www.amazon.com/People-Lie-Hope-Healing-Human/dp/0684848597
