Are you sure the ball was tipped?

I don’t want to talk about the Iowa-ISU game on Saturday. I just don’t want to go there. If ISU wants to play a 3 quarter game, they better be willing to put the other team away early. ‘Nuff said. What I do want to talk about is the travesty that was the ending of the Oklahoma/Oregon game. You may have seen this game that will forever go down in infamy. If not, consider yourself fortunate.

Oregon played a good game for the most part. Sure, they couldn’t stop the run and I have Adrian Peterson listed as an early Heisman candidate because of this. All he did was run for over 200 yards in a losing effort, and losing doesn’t help your Heisman chances. Just ask Troy Davis, who rushed for 2000 yards for ISU in back to back seasons. Troy who? Exactly. Also, I noted the ridiculous look of the Oregon Duck uniforms. Who do they think they’re fooling with that metallic pattern on their shoulders and knees? That was reason enough to root against them!

Toward the end of the game, Oregon was attempting an onside kick. By rule, the ball must travel ten yards before a player of the kicking team can touch it. Nobody bothered to tell this to the Ducks and somebody must have forgotten to explain this to the referees, because even after the instant replay, they let the play stand, though the ball did not go that far before being touched by an Oregon player. Why have rules if they are not to be enforced? And why have referees if they can’t tell when a ball has gone ten yards, even with slow motion playback? Oregon ball.

As the Ducks mounted their comeback, there was a play when the quarterback threw the ball and it was tipped by a defensive lineman. How do I know this? Because it changed direction and went from a spiral to a wobbly throw. I don’t care how good your curveball is, footballs do not change direction or motion in flight unless they are acted upon by an outside force, such as a defensive lineman getting his hands up. Down the field, a Sooner defensive player hit a Duck before that same ball got to him and was called for pass interference. That would have been a fine call, except for the fact that the ball was touched at the line of scrimmage. Instant replay was not able to provide “conclusive evidence” that the ball had been tipped and the call stood. Oregon ended up scoring and Oklahoma couldn’t score again. The home team got the win that they never should have had.

That’s kind of how it works in this world of ours. Rules and laws are meant to be broken, just so long as some minor detail can’t be discerned by one with no discernment. And sometimes, the one with the least discernment is the only one who’s opinion matters in the question of how the result will be listed. Atrocities are committed according to the letter of the law no matter how ridiculous the determined result looks on paper. Perhaps the referee couldn’t see clearly that the ball was tipped, but he could easily see the result of a tipped ball as the motion and direction of the ball was changed.

It’s like that with the church as well. We’re too busy trying to find that point of impact when the sinner accepts Christ. That’s the glory moment, so to speak. If a church can announce so many converts or so many baptisms, it has something to boast about. But does the direction of the life change one bit? That’s the true measure of effectiveness. You can sign a card, raise a hand, repeat a prayer or any other modern construct developed in the deepest pit of Hell and go away thinking all is well between you and God. And as you go from there, you may go in exactly the same direction and motion that you did before, assuming that all is still just fine. I challenge anyone to find such an example anywhere in scripture though.

When the gospel is spoken by a person and applied by the Holy spirit, the effect of this is not like a hand of a defensive lineman in the air. The power of God dwarfs the power of a Mack truck that comes to immediately change the direction of a person who had been walking contentedly on the wide road to perdition. You don’t have to see the moment of impact to ascertain the fact that something much greater than the man changed his direction. This is why we are called to repent. We must change our minds, which in turn will change the direction of our lives. When that happens, there is no doubt what caused the change.

The church needs to break away from the faulty discernment demonstrated by the referee of that game and get back to the way the Bible tells us you can know that you are saved. God looks at the heart and man cannot do this, but we can see the fruit of a life. If someone has been declared saved by any man and dies trusting that man for their salvation though there has not been a change in their direction, they cannot blame anyone for their fate.

The one who says that another’s sins are forgiven has no right to this claim. All we can do is declare how one can be saved. Beyond that, we must trust in the power of God. When God does His work in the life of a sinner, we can then stand back and marvel at the power of God and not in our flashy methodology that is just about as useful as instant replay was on Saturday. Plus, the one who did not rely on non-biblical methods to declare his fellow man saved will not then have to answer for it on that final day. I say that we should do away with instant replay in football. While I’m suggesting things that my opinion cannot influence, I say also that we should repent of the works of our own hands done in the name of the Lord.