Ed Harrell
In August, I worked for a week as a Marshal at the PGA Championship Golf Tournament at the Shoal Creek Country Club in Birmingham. Among other things, a Marshal controls the crowds and helps the players locate their balls in the rough.
It was lots of fun—for me, that is, not for the players. Those who watched will remember that the course was so hard and the rough was so deep that the players stayed in a state of frustration bordering on rage. I have studied Pentecostal religion for twenty-five years, but I heard more speaking in tongues during that week at Shoal Creek than in all my years of research.
The thing that most golf—and football, driving a car, reporting our income taxes, etc., etc. Golfers know the rules. When they don’t, they consult with others to be sure they are following them. That surely would be a good idea for Christians. impressed me during the week was the fastidious attention given to playing by the rules. A player would not touch a ball unless he was in clear agreement with his playing partners that he was following the rules. If there was any doubt, rules officials were located on every hole to tell the player his options.
For instance, if a player hit his ball into Shoal Creek, as quite a few did, he took a penalty stroke and dropped his ball. But where he dropped was a matter of careful, and sometimes slightly contentious, discussion with his fellow players and the rules official.
Like it or not, in the end, he put his ball exactly where the official pointed.
You might have guessed that as I watched these negotiations, my mind ran to the spiritual applications. I wonder why it is that people are so skeptical about the need to do exactly what God instructs when we accept that kind of conformity in golf—and football, driving a car, reporting our income taxes, etc., etc. Golfers know the rules. When they don’t, they consult with others to be sure they are following them. That surely would be a good idea for Christians.
The reason golfers are so careful about the rules is because of the consequences of disobedience. Ignorance is no excuse, and good intentions get you nowhere, so the players are students of the game, and they consult and consider things seriously before doing anything questionable. The application is obvious.
Golf, someone might say, sounds like a terribly tedious and legalistic game filled with the terror of doing wrong. No one really understands this game. Its technicalities lead to endless bickering and disputes.
Not really. I watched for a week and saw only about a dozen rulings made by the officials. Most of the rules of golf are quite clear, and they are routinely followed by the players. On those rare occasions when one encountered a hard ruling, he was careful. But those occasions did not cause people to question that when you swing at the ball, it counts as a stroke, and when the ball goes into the 18th hole, you are finished for the day.
So it is with Christianity. Most of what is right and wrong in the sight of God, such as the “works of the flesh,” is “evident.” When we arrive at difficult places where we are dealing with things “hard to be understood,” we need to be careful and to consult. But don’t use those controversial and knotty problems as an excuse for throwing away the rule book.
