If the speech were a hard-hit baseball, it was high, deep and down the baseline. Some say it was a home run. Some say despite feeling and looking great to many of the “home-team fans” (aka Christians), it went foul.
I’m talking about the speech baseball coach Jonathan Anderson gave his team from Lake Mary, Fla., before the final inning of the Little League World Series. A video of the pep talk went viral online. With his team down by one run to Taipei, Anderson said:
Boys, this inning. (Pause.) One of the first days that we got here, I came down here. A man prayed over me. OK? He saw my dad later. He said it’s already been written. We’re already the champs. The Lord put it in his book. We’re just gonna to finish the story, right here, right now. Stay calm. Stay composed. Stay within yourself. But understand: It’s already been written. It’s already ours. We just have to finish it here. We just have to play this inning. Understand? (Player: Yes, sir.) Here we go. It’s our summer. It’s our game. We’re gonna come out on top. Are we ready? (Player yells, “Yes, sir!”) Here we go. Go get ’em.”
Brad Bull
How might people of faith responsibly engage this viral phenomenon? In 1896, San Francisco school superintendent Madison Babcock gave this advice to teachers to avoid pigeonholing their students: “Find the good and praise it; speak sparingly of the bad. None of us desire our wrong deeds oft spoken of; we are always better for the kindly words of our good actions.”
With that in mind, here’s what I deeply love about what the coach said. (And, yes, following the great stuff, there’s a but big enough to draw the attention of Sir Mix-a-lot.)
The good
I absolutely love Coach Anderson’s energy. It’s contagious. I love the clarity of how he has nurtured his players’ respect. I’m an old-school Southerner who likes to hear young folks showing respect with “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’am.” I love that he uses excellent psychology in telling his players not what to avoid but what to do.
“Always tell others and yourself what you want done.”
I once had a beginners’ ski instructor who said, “The instructor over there keeps telling everyone, ‘Don’t lean back.’ But that puts the word back at the front of your mind. Always tell others and yourself what you want done. So, listen to me: Lean forward!”
Of all my schooling, that’s one of the most important lessons I learned. Coach Anderson does it to perfection. He doesn’t say, “Don’t panic.” He says, “Stay calm. Stay composed. Stay within yourself.”
And after the game? Much has been said about the sportsmanship his players showed in consoling their valiant opponents.
What’s not to love?
I don’t think the speech was a home run or a foul ball. That choice is binary, and it’s a false dichotomy to force a speech to being one or the other. I think it was something else.
As a Tennessean who grew up hearing “find the good and praise it” attributed to the late great author of Roots, Alex Haley, I believe in doing just that. As a Christian, I’ve spent my life barraged by people taking Matthew 7:1-2 out of context, as it has been in online discussions of this speech. People who object to the speech have been told that the Bible says, “Do not judge.”
In its broader context, that passage is saying not to judge unfairly. Scripture actually instructs us to make judgments. For one example, in 2 Timothy 4:2, the Apostle Paul said, “Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage — with great patience and careful instruction.” We can’t correct and rebuke without making a judgment that the behavior in question was off base.
However, I have a major problem with a theology that says God determines who wins ballgames. Some might say: “He didn’t necessarily say that. He just said all-knowing God knows how the game would come out and told about this guy who talked to my dad.” That begs the question of why God didn’t bother to tell folks not to take the route where they died in a car accident.
“I have an even bigger problem with using spirituality to manipulate kids.”
I have an even bigger problem with using spirituality to manipulate kids. For one thing, the coach didn’t say, “Someone of amazing spirituality told me.” It was just “a man” who told the coach’s dad who told the coach. This is stretched into making God into a Magic Eight Ball — and placing the fairy dust divinity into the hands of children.
One wonders why the coach didn’t give the speech at the beginning of the game. And would he have given it before the last inning if they were down by 15?
Having won, the kids — and now those who buy into this theology — think God reveals who is going to win a baseball game. They think that’s awesome. Right up until they put a loved one on a plane that crashes, and they are stuck with the agony of why God cared more about a baseball game announcement than what plane not to board.
Did God really tell you?
And what if the team hadn’t won? I’m reminded that when I was 17, a 40-year-old mentor had taken a job at a new church. He told me, “God told me I’m going to be at this church until I retire.” He was there less than five years and spent the rest of his career elsewhere.
Thankfully, that just gave me a healthy cynicism about folks saying, “God told me.”
But I’ve had many folks tell me that such experiences have driven them from faith.
That’s why it’s perplexing to me when people make comments like the following one, which as of this writing had 518 likes on Facebook:
Indeed you all are correct that the Lord doesn’t care who wins ball games. I don’t know how to put it into a way that unbelievers can understand. In the most simple way I can understate this, he said what needed to be heard. Maybe not by you, maybe not by the team, maybe not by 99% of the people who did hear it, but someone somewhere will be inspired by this man’s faith and invite God into their life. You don’t know this coach’s life, you don’t know how active he is in the lives of these boys and if his involvement extends past the field and into the church. His faith is the message, not the outcome. While baseball championships may seem trivial and irrelevant compared to all that’s going on in the world, faith and conviction in something greater than yourself isn’t something anyone should take away from or want to take away from. To each their own, but that coach’s speech in the dugout and post-game speech could change the trajectory of someone’s life forever whether you want to believe it or not.
In other words, saying something nice about God makes God look good to folks, regardless of whether it’s true or not. I heard the same argument in 2015 when Michigan State beat University of Michigan in football, in the closing seconds of the game, due to a fumbled punt snap. In a post-game interview, one of Michigan State’s players thanked God for giving them the game. When I later disputed this as bad theology, a friend said the comment gave glory to God, so it didn’t matter.
“When I later disputed this as bad theology, a friend said the comment gave glory to God, so it didn’t matter.”
Does it not? I know the saying “God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick,” but Christians surely have some responsibility to grow more deeply than “fairy tale” faith. Or is God just a showman like P.T. Barnum who said, “Say anything you like about me, but spell my name right.”
Emotional reasoning
Christians, in my experience, are, ironically, often caught up in what psychologists call emotional reasoning: If something feels good, it is good, and if it feels bad it is bad. This is ironic, because they reject that notion when it comes to adultery on the side of feeling good and volunteer service in a slum when it comes to feeling bad. Yet, in the case of a baseball speech, it’s deemed good because it feels good.
If we make God into a P.T. Barnum show ticket hawker, concerned only with publicity, some will like it. But they probably already were headed to the circus. The impact I’ve more often seen in college students is that speeches like this coach’s have indeed changed the trajectory of people’s lives: a trajectory in which they have tripped over a stumbling block and have left their faith.
Jesus said, “Woe to anyone through whom (stumbling blocks) come.” So, we must be careful not to use faith manipulatively, because that can backfire gravely.
Some will say, “Hold on. What about Romans 14?” Yes, the Apostle Paul said: “Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister.”
So, some will say, maybe by this article I’m being a stumbling block. Well, I hope not. In context, that “therefore” was referring to “disputable,” meaning wishy-washy notions, like personal diet and what days to worship. Paul was talking about personal choices, not those that negatively impact others.
“We need to have constructive conversation about how we present faith.”
This speech has drawn lots of attention. It will draw more when Angel Studios or the like makes a movie about it. We need to have constructive conversation about how we present faith.
Heaven knows, I’ve said and done some things that have not glorified God or my faith. I want to give Coach Anderson the benefit of the doubt that he was caught up in the moment. However, I’m also struck by the fact that Little League is a secular organization. What about players and parents on a team that don’t share the Christian faith? How do Christians effectively show faith without force feeding it? That question applies regardless of the pragmatic effect a speech has on winning a game.
The speech wasn’t a foul ball. It got the job done. But it wasn’t just a home run. The speech was something else: A glorious victory to biased observers and a tragic stumbling block to others.
What’s the alternative?
What was the alternative? If I were re-writing the script, it would go like this:
We are one of two teams in the final game of the Little League World Series. We already have won by being here and having this experience. We also are going to win by the character we show regardless of the final score. But I know we are capable of having the higher score. And we can do that by doing this: Stay calm. Stay composed. Stay within yourself. We have often scored way more than one run in an inning. Let’s go do it.
Where is the overt expression of faith in that? It’s not there. It shouldn’t be there, any more than a grocery store manager should announce: “Hello, shoppers. God ordained a sale on sandwich meat at the deli. Hurry on over and grab yours before the less-blessed take yours.”
Where should personal expressions of faith be made? In personal moments like when Jesus spoke with Nicodemus or to a crowd who voluntarily gathered for preaching or when the disciples were sent in pairs to strike up conversations and show love but where people had the freedom and space to walk away.
I know, right? The Bible is so dull, and — according to Ecclesiastes 3 — respectful to there being “a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.” When we put things out of place, we create stumbling hazards.
Brad Bull has served as a hospital chaplain, pastor, university professor and currently as a private therapist. When he was in sixth grade, the city Little League championship was tied in the bottom of the ninth inning. With runners on first and third, Brad hit to the right field fence, driving in the winning run. Sure, the pitch was high and outside, but it was delivered by a pitcher who went on to play for the Atlanta Braves. In an earlier game, Brad — not knowing it was against the rules — was ejected for questioning a called strike. Neither the ejection nor the championship win was predestined.