I received an email from the brother of my lifelong and late friend Jeff Trollinger today. Robert asked me to forward a tribute he had put together in honor of Jeff to friends Jeff and I had grown up playing ball with and sharing as school mates.
Robert’s tribute would be a bit difficult to share or explain with anyone who wasn’t part of how we all grew up together, but it was wonderful and showed a lot of love between Robert and his brother.
In sharing the tribute (partly centered around the game of whiffle ball) I thought of my own memories of playing whiffle ball with my brother Steve in our backyard. Whiffle ball didn’t have a set of universal rules and we all tailored the rules and how the game was played according to where we were able to play and how many people were playing, much like the way we used to play baseball on the playground when there weren’t enough people to fill out two complete teams. Unless you know what “pitcher’s mound poison” means you wouldn’t understand the way the rules could be altered without harming the game. Robert and Jeff played by their own set of rules when they played whiffle ball at their place which was very different from the rules Steve and I played by. We played in different “backyards,” so we had to modify the rules to fit our playing field.
Tailoring the rules of a whiffle ball game to suit our own situation and way of defining the game is one thing in whiffle ball or playground baseball, but something very different when it comes to faith and following the Lord. We have a set of rules called the Bible. While the Bible is open to different interpretations and different degrees of emphasis, it shouldn’t be re-written wholesale to suit our particular circumstances or situations. It’s the same Bible whether it’s my backyard or yours. It’s one thing to make the rules fit in my backyard whiffle ball game but something else to re-write the rules that are unequivocal in the Bible. I fully understand context, textual criticism, form criticism and all that, but bending the Bible to fit my backyard just doesn’t work.
Not everything in the Bible has to be taken literally (nor should it be); otherwise, we wouldn’t be eating pork and would have to abide by lots of rules and texts that don’t apply equally to our faith. But having said that, the spirit and the tone of having a clear set of guidance and direction as we seek to live out our faith is important.
Do you follow the Bible? Do you turn to the Bible for guidance? Are you able to interpret the Bible in its deepest and fullest sense to apply to your own life? The Bible isn’t meant to be unyielding or code bound, but in it we find the way the game of life is meant to be played and we’re honor bound to give it the rightful place in our pursuit of faith.
Blessings, Dr. Chance