You Know...Better?

I was talking with a coaching friend today regarding all the times we've either told our athletes or told our students or our sons and daughters the magic phrase, "You know better!"

I am not removed three days from saying to our seniors, "You're seniors, you know this!" and today have it fall on me like an anvil regarding the grace in which God manifests towards me by not saying this repeatedly.

Sometimes, I am an abject failure and a disgustingly poor excuse for a Christian. I read through Ephesians last night, out loud, and with my voice cracking through some of the passages, all I heard was "keep going". The measure of 'better' is an absolute standard and that standard is found in God. And I know better.

There simply is no escaping the fact that the old phrase "I don't read the Bible, it reads me" holds firmly through each generation.

"Did your parents raise you that way?"

"How many times have I told you?"

"If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times!"

"I know your parents didn't teach you that"

Now, these questions do not require a response. If anything, the right response would be smart alecky because these questions mask a bigger issue with us, namely the desire to absolve ones self from the blame of failing to lead properly.

There are two points to pull from the "We should know better" axiom.
The first is I should know better and God says it to me better than I say it to my players, sons and others. When I screw up, God is not chasing me into the dugout to tell me I wasted an AB or that I should have made that play because...

Yeah, the playbook has been around for a long time and God would like me to utilize it a bit better. That starts with an intentional yielding daily and as Augustine said many centuries ago, we don't need to be taught new things, but do the things we've already been taught.

So, what's my excuse when I don't execute? If I were an athlete in a sport not executing properly, I am  going to be on the bench (disqualified, in essence, which Paul implores not to be in 1 Corinthians 9:27) and I will get to watch someone else do the job I should be doing. Why would it be different for me? If I'm not executing the playbook, won't God find someone who can?

Think about Wally Pipp. He was a good player that took one day off and never got his job back. Lou Gherig stepped in and played 2,131 straight games. Yankees' manager, Miller Huggins, removed Pipp and some others in the lineup to 'shake up' a slumping New York team. A month later, Pipp was hit with a BP pitch, fracturing his skull and then before the 1926 season he was traded to Cincinnati.

Pipp was only supposed to take a day or two off to get himself 'right'. Gherig did Pipp's job better and although Pipp had a decent MLB career, Gherig is the story. Legends about why Pipp lost his job are plentiful, but the main story is Pipp was essentially DQ'd for not doing his job.

Obviously, I don't want to be DQ'd for not doing the things I know already know to do.

The second more poignant point is although I do know better, I don't do it! One thing in my advantage though is I'm not chasing myself down, brow beating until the brow can be beaten no more. I may be my own worst critic, but the one thing I do is judge my intentions, while judging others actions. Lewis writes of the "is/ought" principle and simply, there is a way I act, which often doesn't line up with the way I ought to act.

Sure, God brings the heat and the wrath, opens up the ground to grumblers and piles up quail in large quantities to whiners. Here's the difference between God and I (as if we needed any help figuring it out): He's got the better perspective and is protecting everyone's interests. If I were protecting everyone's interests and not just my own, I guarantee you it would be different when mistakes are made.

Perhaps the reason we react to mistakes by others is to distance ourselves from what it represents: Our failure to communicate, hold other accountable and, specifically, it may highlight our own failures. The good news is that these failures do not result in God opening up the earth to swallow us, rather God affords us the opportunity to rise again, dust ourselves off and keep pushing through until perfection is found in all of us. Until that time, work out your salvation and let others workout theirs, too.

It's OK to demand perfection, but don't expect it. Certainly don't be surprised when failures occur. The real teaching and coaching begins then!

God, give me the fortitude and wisdom to do what you've already taught me to do that I may not shame your name!