For The Love of Life

“I have come that you might have life and have it to the full.”—John 10:10

Baseball helps with theology.

Hang with me.

I’m not very good at baseball, but I love the game. I love the strategy. I love the sounds. I love the history. And let’s be honest—I love the hot dogs (despite the fact I can only smell them these days).

Even if you don’t love baseball, you may remember the 1998 season when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa famously chased the MLB home run record. During that historic season, I took a theology seminar from Dr. Ron Smith. The course was 20th Century Theology, and we were reading the theology of German theologian Karl Barth at the time. Barth’s theology struck me as exuberant, almost joyful. Barth loved Mozart, painting, cigars, and, generally speaking, human pleasure. As a young seminarian, these loves struck me as somewhat “unspiritual.”

During the week McGwire broke the home run record, I asked Dr. Smith about Barth’s lusty love of the world. His eye twinkled. “Barth would have been in the scrum in the stands fighting for the record-breaking baseball if he’d have been there,” Dr. Smith quipped.

He laughed when he saw the surprised expression on my face.

*****

Christians, particularly those who grew up in my tradition, have often feared the world. I grew up skeptical of pleasure itself, particularly things which seemed to be excessively pleasurable (food cooked by my mom and grandmothers was an exception I allowed). I feared pleasure, because pleasure was the road to sin, and I didn’t want to give in to sin, obviously.

Yes, taken wrongly, pleasure can be perverted and lead to sin. Point taken.

But our hollow theology of enjoyment has led us to miss out on the beauty of the gospel.

God made this world good. He made it filled with beauty, wonder, and variety. He made it filled with delicious fruits, vegetables, and plants. He made it filled with stunning fish and animals (many of which are also delicious). He created humans with the ability to paint, to sing, to build. JRR Tolkien noted that we are sub-creators, modeled after our Creator, making all sorts of things. Although we may not immediately realize it, music and mathematics, poetry and pottery are all extensions of the goodness of God. God made us to enjoy this world. He made us to taste, to sing, to love. God could have created a reproductive process without physical sensation; yet sex feels immensely pleasurable. God could have made us without emotional responses to film, to story, to love. And we often weep when we are moved in a certain way. There are no (good) scientific reasons for this. But yet these things are.

The world is a sensory experience unlike any other.

*****

In John 10:10 Jesus says, “I have come that you might have life, and have it to the full.”

That is a bold verse. It flies in the face of of those who believe faith to be only about life after death.

Instead, it says that Jesus did not simply come to give us life after death. He, of course, did that. But Jesus also came to give us life before death. Jesus has come so that we can rightly enjoy the creation he has set before us, living by the power of the Spirit what it means to be Truly Human. There are a number of ways we can mis-use creation—we can hate; we can do violence; we can be stingy. But God has created us to love this world, to have life. Creation is fallen and broken, yes. But it is also filled with beauty and goodness. And we were designed to soak it up.

We are to love the world. Just like God loved it.

Those of us who are living in light of Easter see the world with the eyes of Jesus. So, yes, we work for its redemption. And, yes, we strive to build the Kingdom. But it is not all work.

We also play. We also sing. And cook. And dance. And laugh.

And enjoy baseball.

Of course, there’s no baseball these days. The pandemic has prevented that. But the absence of baseball has reminded me what it is that I am created for—life. So I am working to enjoy the things to which I do have access—family, phone conversations with friends, grilling, my yard, cooking dinner, jazz music filling the house, reading, writing, my lemon tree, my fountain pens. They are small little gifts—just like baseball. These gifts are reminders that God has filled this planet with pleasure—a sure sign that he is a God who is good.

Enjoy this world as God has designed it.

Soak it in, in Jesus’ name.

Play ball.