My favorite baseball player, Albert Pujols, is up for the National League MVP award to be announced November 17. (Yes, baseball. Why they wait so long to announce the winners is beyond me. I guess just to keep baseball in the news as long as possible.)
I’m hopeful, but not positive, that Pujols will win. The facts reveal he had the best statistical season. He was second in batting average, first in slugging percentage (by a whopping 50 points) and first in OPS by over 70 points. (What’s OPS you say? It’s a combination of on base percentage and slugging percentage, which many baseball analysts believe to be the most important stat of all. Teams with the highest OPS score the most runs – period.) He has won every major “best player” award so far.
But many baseball writers who get to cast a vote would rather not be bothered by facts – at least not all the facts. They prefer to vote their “impressions” of who was most valuable to his team, while only taking into consideration the big three of baseball hitting stats – batting average, home runs and RBIs (runs batted in). Sitting atop two of those is Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Ryan Howard, baseball’s best home run hitter. He hit 48 home runs (to Pujols’ 37) and knocked in 148 runs (to Pujols’ 116). Howard’s poor .251 batting average (to Pujols’ .357) will go against him, but how can you argue with all that run production?
Sometimes you need to look deeper into the facts to get the whole picture. Howard had many more RBI opportunities than Pujols did. Over the course of the season, Howard came to the plate over 170 times with runners in scoring position (on 2nd or 3rd base), and turned those opportunities into 148 RBIs. Pujols had only 114 at bats with runners in scoring position, but tallied 116 RBIs. Now that’s efficient.
I hope baseball writers noticed those things and took them into account, but time will tell. They haven’t always done so in the past. They’re not the only ones who fail to take some of the facts into consideration.
A few weeks ago, I got in an email conversation with a retired high school science teacher named Jack. He was curious about my opinions of creation science. It had the makings of a promising intellectual debate, and the fact that we both expressed ourselves kindly and respectfully was very refreshing. I wrote him a lengthy email, summarizing what I knew about creation science. He responded by telling me what he thought, without addressing any of my points at all. I countered his points with my own, and kindly asked him prove me wrong, but after several emails, he hasn’t tried. He has his impressions about how things are, and doesn’t seem interested in other viewpoints. Here we go again, I thought to myself.
I want my ideas tested by other people. I want to hear what they have to say and be challenged to respond in an informed manner, but more often than not, people simply aren’t interested. The end result of this email conversation is that I lost respect for Jack’s position (not for Jack – he’s a very nice guy). He either couldn’t defend it, or didn’t want to bother.
It made me realize how important it is that Christians be able to back up our faith with knowledge. Knowledge doesn’t save us, but faith in Christ does, and knowledge about Christ leads to faith in him. The Bible tells us to be prepared to give a reason for the hope that we have (1 Peter 3:15), so its helpful to look at the reasons, to bother with the facts, to take an introspective look at who we are and why we believe what we do. If we give the impression we believe “just because,” others will lose respect for us, our position, and our Lord, as I lost respect for Jack.
When I get into a conversation with someone who has different viewpoints than I do, my top goal, of course, is that I would win them over to faith. But even if they disagree, I hope they leave the conversation with the impression that what I have to say is well thought out. It can challenge the idea that Christians believe in spite of the facts. Instead, Christians just may believe (in part) because of the facts.
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