Keep Your Eye on the Ball

I'll tell you a little story. When I was a kid, I have a brother, a younger brother, two years younger than me, and a younger sister. And we were a little league family. We didn't play soccer, we played baseball.

And you know, I was always a pretty good baseball player all the way up to high school age. And you know, there was one year that my brother was not quite old enough for the full field team, we used to call it major leagues, I think some people call it Babe Ruth, but basically when you have 90 foot bases, you know, like the big leaguers, my brother wasn't quite old enough for that.

But it was my first year in that league where you've got, you know, real pitchers and all that kind of stuff. And my parents were in a situation where they wanted, they didn't want to take us both to different games, they only wanted to go to one game.

And so they requested that my brother would be on the same team as me, even though he wasn't quite old enough for it. And they accepted that request. And so he was on my team, we were the Giants, the San Francisco Giants, that's the hats we had.

And it was really hard for him. I was a good hitter. You know, I think I played second base at the time, all around a good player. I remember being one of the better players in the team. And my brother struggled big time.

And it was no fault of his own. I mean, he was a little kid. So he couldn't catch up with the pitching. He couldn't catch up with how to hit. And I remember he would strike out a lot. And I felt really bad for him.

Although at the time, I probably laughed at him and made fun of him. But that's how it was. And so he just didn't, he couldn't, he couldn't keep up with the bigger kids. It just wasn't his fault. It's just how it was.

But anyway, he always said that he kind of had like a mental block about hitting ever since then. And then so he, the best part about this story is even though it is relevant to our topic today, it also makes my brother look stupid, which is good.

But anyway, by the way, I have permission to share this story. So he had this kind of mental block that was a traumatic experience for me. He always talks about how the trauma of being on my team that one year.

And so he played on a softball team years later. This is after he's an adult, after he graduated college and all that. He played on a softball team and he struck out in softball because he had this mental block of hitting, this trauma in his past.

And I think he struck, I might be telling the story wrong, but I think he struck out more than once in his first game and he called me and he told me about this. And I gave him the advice that everyone gives.

Keeping Your Eye on the Ball in a Conversation

But actually, so when you're a kid, when you're playing little league, what do your coaches tell you? They say, keep your eye on the ball, right? Keep your eye on the ball. Now that advice never really made any sense to me.

What does that mean? Keep your eye on the ball. And that never really affected me much. So I told my brother, keep your eye on the ball. And he's like, what are you talking about? Whatever. Everyone always says that.

What does it mean? But actually, there was something one of my coaches said when I was in little league, and I credit this coach for how good I was at hitting during little league. He didn't say keep your eye on the ball like everybody else said.

He said, watch the ball hit the bat. And what that really means is what keep your eye on the ball, what they're trying to say is you need to stay laser focused on that ball. You keep watching that ball all the way to the point when it hits your bat.

Watch the ball hit the bat, stare at it, like obsessively stare at this ball, because that's how you're going to hit it. And it's the same in golf, right? If you get, if you take your eye off of the golf ball, you're going to miss it when you swing.

But if you watch it, you just keep laser focused on it, and you swing and you hit it, and then watch it go out, see, because that's what people do. They want to anticipate where the ball is going to go.

So they take their eye off it looking in the distance, and that's how they miss the ball. So what you got to do is you got to watch the ball hit the bat. Keep your eye on the ball. I remember I told my brother this, and he ended up being a really good softball player.

He was a good hitter, probably a better power hitter than I am. Anyway, so he has a little redemption in this too. And the story makes him look good too. But watch the ball hit the bat. Keep your eye on the ball.

Why Misdirection About Critical Theory Misses the Point

And this is relevant to this discussion, right? Because here's something that I've seen recently. And I've seen this before, but definitely recently. I think sometimes we get caught up in the weeds. And this is, look, this is natural.

When somebody asks you a question or when somebody wants to miss or redirect the conversation to something else, it's natural to respond in kind. This is a tactic that a lot of people use. They don't necessarily want to talk about what you want to talk about.

They want to talk about something else. And it's only natural to go with them there. Because you want to have a conversation, at least if you do want to have a conversation, it's only natural to go with them there.

But the reality is we need to keep our eyes on the ball. We need to watch the ball hit the bat and stay focused, laser focused on the things that matter in this conversation. And let me just be honest with you guys.

I'm talking to myself here. Because I can get easily distracted by other things and other topics and things like that. And I need to stay laser focused on what matters. Here's a perfect example of what I mean.

So this is Amin Hudson. He's a writer for The Witness. And he's friends with all of these social justice people and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, he's talking about a blog conversation between Bradley Mason and Neil Shenvey.

I like Neil Shenvey. I've said many times on my channel that me and Neil have completely different approaches. But I like Neil. And I think he's on the right side in this issue. And I find his work very helpful in a lot of different ways.

So I like Neil. He's having a blog conversation, a blog debate sort of with Brad Mason. And here's what Amin says about this debate. He says, this is a great discussion between also a carpenter and Neil Shenvey.

I suggest you all follow and check it out. I think Brad makes some great points in this piece, especially highlighting how these tenets were around much before the Frankfurt School and critical theory even existed.

So he's talking about the tenets of an oppressor class and an oppressed class, that kind of a paradigm. And he's saying, well, people were talking about that way before critical theory. So critical theory isn't really a problem is essentially what he's trying to say.

It's not critical theory. This is something else. And Thabiti did the same thing last week. Thabiti starts talking about whether or not there's a movement that exists. And we all started laughing at him.

We made some videos about it. We did blog posts. We spent some time talking about how obviously there's a movement. But I think this is an example of a time when I did not keep my eye on the ball. I think those videos were great.

And there were some funny times. And they were good videos, effective, I think. But we need to focus on what matters. Because at the end of the day, and Amin, I'll address you because I'm talking about your tweet, but this is not only about Amin.

This is about a lot of people who try to misdirect and make things the issue that are not the issue. Does it matter if it didn't start with Frankfurt School or critical theory? This idea of chopping up humanity into oppressor and oppressed?

If the idea is correct, and we can do that, and that's a legitimate way to divide up Christians between oppressor Christians and oppressed Christians and things like that. If that's legitimate, it doesn't matter if it's Frankfurt School or critical theory or it came earlier or something else or whatever.

It doesn't make a difference. If it's legitimate and biblical, then who cares? That's great. Let's show how it's biblical. If it isn't biblical, and it's not right to chop up the church like a pizza according to your intersectionals and your oppressor oppressed status or all that kind of stuff.

If it's not legitimate, who cares if it's critical theory or Frankfurt School? These ideas existed before critical theory. It means nothing to me if it's not biblical because there's a lot of ideas that started before critical theory and socialism and all this stuff that are completely anti-biblical that we need to oppose.

This idea of whether it happened before critical theory or these ideas existed before, that might be fun and intellectually stimulating for you, but at the end of the day, it does not matter if they're unbiblical ideas.

It doesn't matter if they started in the garden or if they came in the 1940s. Who cares? I'm against it. I'm against it. That's what I'm against. So here's this. He goes on this. He says, were they all influenced by critical theory before critical theory even showed up?

Well, who cares if they were influenced by critical theory? If they have bad ideas, then that is something we ought to oppose, correct? It's the same thing with this whole thing with the movement. Is there a social justice movement or not?

Who cares? Who cares? I think obviously there is. But if there isn't and it's just bad teaching and it's not really a movement, it's just terrible teaching, we ought to still oppose it, right? We ought to still oppose the bad teaching.

That's the problem. That's the problem. And so my advice to you today is to keep your eye on the ball. It's okay to do videos of, you know, side tracking, you know, to prove that critical theory is infecting your favorite seminary.

That's okay. You could do videos about that because I think that's important too. But at the end of the day, if you can demonstrate that it's really not official critical theory, these ideas existed before critical theory and we're just borrowing.

Well, it doesn't matter if they're unbiblical ideas. That's the point. That's the point. So I don't care if you get your idea of justice from the Frankfurt School or from socialists beforehand or from Frederick Douglass or from Republicans or from people who call themselves Christians in the past.

I don't care if your idea of justice is not found in scripture and taught by scripture, then I reject it. I absolutely reject it. I stand against it. And it is evil. It's just that simple. It's just that simple.

And so, you know, keep your eye on the ball, guys. Watch the ball. Hit the bat. That's the best advice I can give you having these kinds of discussions because you want to focus on, you know, is it taught in the Bible?

Is it something that you can point to either a proof text or a good and necessary consequence? Because it doesn't have to be a specific proof text, but it does have to comport with the teaching of scripture and it can't violate other teachings of scripture.

That's the other thing. It can't violate it. We need to have the same hermeneutics here that we would have when we're talking about the Trinity, right? We have to say the same exegesis here that we would have when we're talking about soteriology.

That's the bottom line. We need to make sure that these things are biblical and not just, well, you know, the Bible talks about justice and this is justice because I say so. Like, that's not how it works.

That's not how it works. We need to bring this thing back to scripture. That's what we have to do. Do I care about critical theory? Yeah, I care about critical theory. Do I care about the Frankfurt School?

Yeah, I care about the Frankfurt School. But at the end of the day, what I actually care about is whether or not these ideas are taught in scripture, imperatives, taught by the law of Christ and that kind of thing.

That's what I care about. That's what matters. Keep your eye on the ball. Anyway, I hope this is helpful. God bless.