Pensees: Runner on Base

Runner on Base

Christianity has a runner on base with the St. Louis Cardinals. Albert Pujols seems to be the real deal. I was simultaneously encouraged and discouraged when I read his website today. Pujol’s Gospel presentation is very, very clear. Read his gospel explanation. What’s discouraging is that it is better than a lot of churches’ statements I’ve read lately.

In a SI interview recently he said that he wants to be remembered as a man that loves God. Normally I weary of the Jesus talk that comes from professional athletes because, though many of them would say the same thing, so few of them actually know what they believe. It often strikes me as a sincere effort to gratify their own self-righteousness and the millions of shallow American Christians that will enhance their careers by going all giddy about their “testimonies.” It’s a sincerity that galls me.

On the other hand, when some one says he wants to be remembered for his love for God and then puts on his website an explicitly clear doctrine of salvation in Jesus I tend to think that he might actually really love Jesus! You see, we can’t love Jesus without doctrine. This is something Joel Osteen hasn’t realized.

Anthony Esolen’s comments on Pujol are interesting and true (although Esolen’s Roman Catholic views actually contradict Pujol’s statement of faith as I understand it). The whole thing is good, but the last paragraphs wrap it up:

I could herd a dozen academics into a room for a semester and have them bicker about whether anything can truly be described as “good,” and yet in one flash a simple ballplayer can beat them silly, merely by seeing the good, because he is in love with it, because he is in love with Him. “Love is an eye,” said Richard of Saint Victor. What else but a divine love could turn a troubled teenager into a man so wise and so heartily good that his family radiates peace and joy? . . .

And all these simple people who love Christ, who may not be able to persuade a single skeptic that God even exists, know what they know by their love, and are far the wiser for it. They are my brothers and sisters, my teammates, in the oldest and most glorious communion the world has seen; a communion that has brought the world the odd idea that only in love is there freedom; because Truth has said so.