A few weeks back Barry Bonds was indicted on charges of lying to a Grand Jury about alleged steroid use. It is an old story now with Bonds being one of the last they have gone after in the Victor Conte Bay Area Lab Co-Operative (BALCO) scandal that has rocked the sports world. It brought Olympic Track great, Marion Jones, to a tearful apology after she finally fessed up herself (after being sentenced) for lying to Federal Investigators back on October 5th. Bonds pleaded not guilty to the charges, as he was arraigned last week and will fight the government's case against him. They are actually charges (perjury to a Grand Jury) that are hard to prove. We'll see where this goes with baseball's all time home run leader*. Of course, this all comes weeks before the George Mitchell report is due. He is the former senator from Maine who is investigating steroid use in baseball and has a report due any day. Baseball is in a bit of a dilemma with one facet of their game, the home run, being tarnished with "roid" use.

On November 15th, the same week Bonds was indicted, Joe Nuxhall died. Joe was the beloved "ol' lefthander" who played for the Reds and then broadcast for them on radio from 1967 to 2007. During World War II when pro-players were leaving the ranks for America's greatest generation who fought in Europe and Asia, the scouts for the Reds went to Hamilton to watch one Orville Nuxhall (Joe's father) pitch in a semi-pro league he played in with son Joe. Joe was pitching that night. He was in the ninth grade at fifteen years old and was six two and weighed a hundred and ninety pounds. Forget about Dad, when the scout saw Joe throw, the Reds were after the "ol' lefthander". They signed him to a contract as the youngest player ever to sign and play in the pro's. June 10th, 1944 the youngest pitcher in the modern era went from throwing to eighth and ninth graders in Hamilton, Ohio to facing Hall of Famer, Stan Musial of the Saint Louis Cards. He was fifteen years, ten months and eleven days old.

In 1967 after 135 wins and 1372 strikeouts and fourteen years, Joe gave up the field for the press box and broadcast Cincinnati Reds baseball until he died. The last three years he was more sporadic than daily. He called some great teams. He was a staple through the Big Red Machine years of the early and middle seventies. He had a style all of his own. My personal favorite was his patient quiet style some innings that would simply allow the stadium ambiance to fill his mic as he watched the game. Oh sure, he would come in and out, between the beer vender who could be heard and the hot dog man and the general hub-bub that filled the air in the midst of a flat inning. Then of course, he was famous for his trade mark sign off: "This is the ol' lefthander rounding third and headed for home". He would use it after he finished his post game interview and finished his work for the evening. That quip made the Great American Ball Park facade as it is illumined right next to Reds stadium on the side that runs along the interstate. Of course, there is also the "ol' lefthander" in bronze with that characteristic follow through that is on the pavilion grounds of the stadium. All Cincinnati grieved when he died. The Reds nation mourned his passing. Joe is gone. A piece of ol' baseball was buried with Joe.

Joe was a relic of an age gone by which had much less money and much more hard work at the forefront of competition. The Babe and Ty Cobb may have drunk, but no one considered their hard living "performance enhancing". Joe was from the "leave it to Beaver" days of pro-baseball. We're sure beyond those days. It is a new day and a new game. Money wins. The American pastime is not so much like the past times. But in that sense baseball is a metaphor for life.

The world has changed. Things are not like they used to be. We may look romantically to the ol' world and envy its return. But Doogie, Lucy and Beaver and Andy and Opie are not coming back...even if we whistle the Mayberry song and carry our poles to the fishing hole and skip rocks. Those days are gone. And remember while Opie and Andy skipped rocks adultery was pretty heartily enjoyed, alcoholism was accepted, they smoked on tv and the fear of God did not seem too much more absent than today. Post World War II was just giving us the first chances after the depression to ensconce the dollar as our central idol. We were way too self righteous also...we just kept going to church. We must now learn to live in our age. More importantly for the follower of Jesus, we must learn how to navigate in our age and raise our children, be faithful to our spouse (if we are married), live a chaste life (if we are single) and penetrate our community. Faithfulness to Christ at work and at play has to fit in there somewhere. We are called to get next to the rampant brokenness and engage the world on its turf, which is unfamiliar and can even be obnoxious. We may like the retro world of Beaver and his neighborhood, but that world had its own issues. But there sure seemed to have been simpler days that were less devious and more straight-forward.

The way forward in our time is not to go backwards. Randolph Hurst was told once that his paper was not as good as it was before. His quip has always intrigued me, "It never was." I still don't know entirely what he meant, but he was looking forward, not impressed by any accomplishment of the past.

We have come into the twenty first century and find ourselves ministering at a tough moment. A bright friend and observer startled me in a conversation earlier in the year when he commented, "Eric, our culture is dying." I wanted to say no, but found little strong evidence to push back. But God has placed us in our times. He has chosen us to be right here right now. While the assumptions that we could make about people's knowledge of the gospel in years gone by gave us a platform to talk to them about Jesus, sin is now a foreign concept to most. Since estrangement (because of sin) is the starting point for gospel understanding, where are we to go with people who start by rejecting "first base"? What are we to do? Do we give up in our days? (By the way, the key is to attractively bring them to the text. The Holy Spirit is the persuader!)

No, at Southgate we are galvanized by the challenge of our times. We are not naïve. We will not influence our culture by cute initiatives, although creative thinking honors our Creator. The day has long passed for small dreaming coupled with little effort. Nothing short of bold winsome effort that attracts people to Jesus is in order. We have to get Him in the middle of what we are trying to do. He is the dynamic that draws people in ("if I be lifted up..."). And our ace in the hole, though times change and culture's die and people grow away from Christ haunted Grandma's and auntie's who reminded them all about Jesus, is Jesus Christ himself. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. Hebrews 13:8. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us when the whole world turns upside down and goes crazy with living outside of God's boundaries. Who knows, maybe in our day God will chose to use us, not unlike century one (which our new century is beginning to bear a striking resemblance to), to start a movement that will turn the whole world upside down...or is that then, right side up (Acts 17:6)?