Fundy Failure

I have decided not to play church softball this year. Now, to some of you this is equivalent to turning my back on Christ or becoming an atheist or, even worse, going to a seeker-sensitive megachurch.

I really just had no desire to play this year.  It’s not like a bunch of people are becoming followers of Christ because of the church softball league. In fact, I have found it tends to bring people’s salvation into question more than anything else (that is if you believe you can lose your salvation by cussing).

In addition, all the stupid rules tend to frustrate me (i.e, you must attend one church service a week even if your only motive for doing so is to play softball). It’s probably just a bad attitude, but I didn’t want to play.

It turns out that our church had to switch leagues but our other league only had something like two or three teams on it. We ended up joining the softball leagues of the much more conservative churches (I think they call it the 1611 KJV league).

I had decided not to play this year before we made the switch. Recently, I received an e-mail from our coach that included the rules for the leagues. One of the rules caught the eye of several players, including myself.  As I said, the rules are one of the reasons I didn’t want to play. The rules of the new league have confirmed my decision. Well, it’s really just one rule in particular:

a neat, clean Christian appearance must be kept at all times.

Yes, that is a quote. Yes, it makes me not want to play. Yes, it makes me wish Jesus was still here and still had his whip he took into the temple when he removed the money changers.

Here’s another quote: “The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart,” (1 Samuel 16:7).

I am still trying to determine what constitutes as a “Christian appearance.” Does that mean no tattoos, no piercings, no shorts, no mandals? What exactly does that mean?

What does a Christian look like? Are they implying that a Christian should look a certain way? Who makes that decision?

It seems to me that part of the reason Jesus came and died was to destroy the idea of judging or labeling someone based on what is on the outside. Anything else is just religious crap.