With the Detroit Tigers in the playoffs for the first time in ten years, I’m pretty excited about October baseball. But it wasn’t too long I was reading about a brawl that broke out in the clubhouse of another pro baseball team.
No one is saying how it started, but reporters became aware of the tussle when a skirmishing pile of players burst through a closed door. We expect a professional team to act like both: professionals and a team. But when asked about the incident, the manager basically said, “this stuff happens more than you think.”
By the middle of baseball season, the players are tired and can be testy from losing. Gone are the fresh and hopeful days of spring training. Rising temperatures and frustrations lead to tempers boiling over. “For love of the game” doesn’t always include loving your teammates.
Now as I write this, I pray, “God, keep this from within Your churches.” May the love of Jesus shine in us and through us, so that we forgive our brothers and sisters when they fail us. “By this all people will know that you are My disciples,” Jesus said, “if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
Though fervent conflict may arise between Christians, we are told to “keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). Our loving God is light, “and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). His light should be shining out to those around us. “But,” John writes, “whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness . . . the darkness has blinded his eyes” (1 John 2:11).
The church should come together and be a place where Christians build each other up, never tear each other down. Love is the answer: from God, for God, and for one another. As Paul writes to the Ephesian church, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:32).
We will not always agree on everything, but as believers in Christ, let us be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3). Instead of a brawl, together we can have a ball.
