D@#& Yankees
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

Imagine, if you would, the frustration inherent in being a loser. You may take some comfort in knowing that there are countless other losers, but what really gets your goat is the constant winners. Only a loser loser takes comfort in company. You set your sights on the winners, work your heart out, spend yourself in the fields of glory, but find yourself on the losing end of the score. (If you have trouble imagining such a thing, I cordially invite you to come and challenge the new reigning HSC darts champion for a taste.) Joe Hardy spent a lifetime as a loser. Year after year he watched as his beloved Washington Senators-that's the baseball team; one would have to be a loser indeed to love the politicians-miss out on winning the pennant. The Yankees stood in their way and could not be moved.

The devil saw here an opportunity. Joe was an old man, but the devil offered to make him young again, to gift him with a mighty bat, and to make him an unbeatable force for the Senators. And all Joe had to give up in return was his soul. Such is the premise behind a Broadway musical which I have never seen, but whose name has at least crossed my mind if not my lips from time to time.

Let me try and see if I can clarify my understanding of Yankees one more time without putting my foot in my mouth. There are lots of different ways to use the term. Yankees can merely describe soldiers in the aggressing northern army during the late unpleasantness; those Yankees are dead, but I still don't care for them. Yankees can also describe a baseball team; these I can basically take or leave. (I have a hard time even thinking of them as Yankees, since so many of them proved themselves worthy with other teams before George bought them.) Yankees can also describe people who are or were born north of the Mason-Dixon line; I love these folks because it includes my parents, my sister, my cousins, my grandparents, my wife, me, and I'm sure, many of you. Please understand that I am not addressing these folks when talking bad about Yankees.

Last there is our family definition, which revolves around a worldview. They are universal where we are local. They are unitarian, while we are trinitarian. They are statists, while we are states' rightists. They are individualistic, while we are communitarian. They are industrial, while we are agrarian. They are egalitarian, while we are hierarchical. Yankees are those people who are rude, pushy, and like to live in the city instead of the country. When I speak bad about Yankees, I'm talking about those who hold to that particular ideology. I'm not fussing at those who merely like to live in the city, nor am I saying that the above describes all people living in the north, nor that all those who live in the south uphold the ideals listed above. I will say that there are more of us down here, and more of them up there. But if you aren't a unitarian, statist, centrist, industrialist, individualist, egalitarian person, I'm not talking about you. The world is full of fine folks up north, just as we still have hordes of Yankees living down here. Yankees is actually a gentler term for these folks than what I'd like to use; as is so often the case, when people think I'm being blunt, I'm actually toning it down. Fascist dogs might be more accurate.

In our last issue of Every Thought Captive we went toe to toe with that system of theology which is always winning the pennant with its message of losing the World Series, dispensationalism. We argued that a pessimistic view of the future is at odds with the Bible, and with the sovereignty of God. We have received letters and emails and have been in conversations in which others have wondered if maybe we have our heads in the sand, if maybe we are umpires in need of some new glasses. We are losing the battle to build the kingdom of God. We, like our southern forbears, are indeed overrun by Yankees. We had more Christians martyred for the faith in the 20th century than we did in all other centuries combined. We have watched the church become more and more like the world. The salt has lost its savor. And we have seen the world become more and more like a cesspool of evil and ignorance. The smell of death surrounds us. This is progress? they all wanted to know.

Yes and no. We need to remember Who is running this game. One of the great things about baseball, even in the midst of the Yankees heyday, is that one can never tell who might win the game; on any given day either team might win. The team that loses a full third of its games is doing exceedingly well; in like manner, any batter who can hit safely merely one out of every three at bats is a superstar. We can be pretty sure that the Cubs and the Red Sox will not win the World Series; each of those teams has gone more than seventy-five years without winning it all. But we can't be totally sure, can we? In 1951 the then New York Giants entered into the last six or so weeks of the season thirteen and a half games out; from there they went on a tear, while the Dodgers crumbled. They finished the regular season in a tie, and the one game playoff ended when the Giants' Bobby Thompson took Ralph Branca long to end the game. It was called the shot heard 'round the world.

There was a previous shot that earned that moniker, when in the battle of Lexington and Concord a rag tag team of minor leaguers took on the World Champs and shocked the world by winning. God runs an orderly universe, but every now and again He upsets that order to remind us that He is the one running things. He brought the mighty Egyptian empire to its knees and set free the slaves. Having placed them in the Promised Land, time and again He delivered victory after victory when the odds were against them. He benched tens of thousands of players and then led Gideon in what looked like an impossible upset. Later still, as the Yankees laid siege to Jerusalem, in the bottom of the ninth, two outs, two strikes, a few starving lepers headed to the enemy clubhouse hoping for a sip of champagne, only to find the place deserted and the banquet feast laid out.

In like manner He took a crew of tax collectors and fisherman, and made of them "these who have shaken the world". This after He had accomplished His greatest victory with the gruesome death of His champion. When it appeared Rome was on its last legs, He surprised us all and gave life to Constantine, and then victory on the battlefield, against all odds. He took a neurotic, dyspeptic monk, and brought the rolling army of Romish clerics to a halt. He took the hapless Mets and made them the Miracle Mets of 1969.

This is the God we worship. He is the unhittable closer and the unstoppable batter. He has the range of Willie Mays and the arm of Roberto Clemente. He is the true Great One. We think we're losing, that the Yankees will always win, because we don't know God. He delights to lift up the lowly and to bring down the mighty. He not only decides the winner but He decides when the fat lady will sing.

It is only when we forget Him that we end up blowing the game. We see the failures all around us and decide to take matters into our own hands. We figure, like the "nobles" of Scotland, that the best approach is to negotiate with the devil. If we can show him our strength, maybe we can at least salvage something. We in effect bench our only power hitter because He won't play that game. When we cut a deal with the devil, we cut out the King. We leave Him behind and then wonder why the Yankees win year after year. We have dead babies because, instead of being faithful, we cut deals and put men like the Bushes in office. We have Columbines because we were satisfied with being allowed to pray at graduation or before a football game. "We're not asking that the Lordship of Christ be affirmed over education, for goodness sake. That frightens us as much as it does you. We just want a moment of silence", we argue.

The Broadway musical had one thing right. If we want to defeat the Yankees, we do need to sell our souls; there is no hope without this. As long as we are holding onto what we are, to what we have, we're playing for the Yankees whether we know it or not. When we sell our souls we receive the promise that not only will we defeat the Yankees but that the postgame celebration will last forever. For we do not sell our souls to the devil but to the Savior, who bought them not with lies but with His life, death, and resurrection. We need to recognize not only that we need Him on the field but that we belong to Him. He is the star, the coach, the manager, the umpire and the owner.

Why do we know the Yankees will go down in defeat? Not ultimately because of all that God has done in history; that He has brought to pass surprising victories is no argument that He always will. Instead we know it because He has promised it. When I look out over our dying culture I cannot be pessimistic, because He told me to be of good cheer, for He has already overcome the world. We are called to walk by faith and not by sight.

That is part of what we mean by being simple. We need not, in order to determine the future, stick our fingers to the wind or crunch the numbers from the leading cultural indicators. Instead we, like the children we are, believe our heavenly Father. We have the utmost confidence in our hero to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

This too is part of what we mean by being separate. We do not play the game by the same rules as everyone else. We are set apart by our conviction that the sky is not falling, that all things are as they should be. Our peace passes understanding because it is grounded in the immeasurable sovereignty of God. We do not lose sleep over the fate of the Washington Senators, whether it is the baseball of political variety, because we cheer for the true home team, the Kingdom of God.

This too is part of what it means to be deliberate. We do not bury our heads in the sand when we affirm that we will win the game. Instead we realize that more trustworthy than any box score is the very Word of God. What it says, if we are smart, we will believe, because it is God who is saying it. We do not succumb to panic, nor to depression, because we believe God.

All of this works together to build the kingdom, to round those bases and return safely to our home, an Eden that has been remade and that now covers all the world. As we rest, we move forward in victory. As we have peace, we win the war. As we surrender to Christ, Christ breaks the kneecaps of His enemies, not with a mere bat but with a rod of iron. It is the d@#& Yankees who would be wise to learn to fear us, who should know that the fool who leads them onto fields of glory has been losing for as long as he has been lying. And we are honored to play on this field of dreams.