Corked Bats, Corked Souls

From my journal this last month: Sammy Sosa was kicked out of a baseball game the other night because it was discovered that he had used a corked bat. He’d hit a ball; the bat broke; and there was the embarrassing evidence that the bat he was using was illegal. Sosa apologized to the fans after the game and said that he simply picked up the wrong bat. The league announced today that it had examined all 70 of his other bats (He’s got 70 bats?) and that all of them were “legit.” Unfortunately, not everyone believes Sosa’s explanation—unless they live in Chicago.

I’d never heard of a corked bat before and wasn’t sure I understood what this was about until this morning’s newspaper explained that some hitters drill out the core of a “hardwooded” bat and fill it with cork. Result: the bat retains its hitting power, but it becomes lighter, easier to swing. Sosa says he only uses a corked bat in homerun contests and in batting practice. The fans love to see him hit the long ball, he said. I also learned that experts believe that there is no evidence that corked bats offer that much of an advantage. Maybe it’s a mental thing.

Sosa’s corked bat smells like a real good parable about spiritual life to me. Here’s a Louisville Slugger, let’s say, and on the surface it really looks like one great bat that could help someone join the ranks of the Babe Ruths and the Mickey Mantles. And then one day the bat cracks and the truth comes out. The center is hollow or light-weight. What you see on the outside is not what you get on the inside. Bottom line for those who are trying to explain the significance of a heart full of God’s presence: don’t be a “corked person!” If there’s “cork” in the soul, it shows sooner or later. Lot, Samson, King Saul, Solomon, Simon Peter in his earlier days, and Demas could have used this parable.

Well, the idea needs a little work, but I think I’m on to something here.

Something to brood on: from William Cowper: — Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, — Have oft-times no connection. Knowledge dwells — In heads replete with thoughts of other men; — Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. — Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; — Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

A bothersome thought: one of the tests of any particular Christian tradition (or a church, maybe) might be how many wise men and women it produces.

I can get a lot of mileage out of this idea: Basil Pennington in his life of Thomas Merton writes, “We are broken persons and live in broken communities in a state of brokenness. We are alienated from ourselves and from each other. We do not readily fit together. We are like a bunch of porcupines trying to huddle together for warmth who are always driven apart out of fear of the wound we can inflict upon each other with our quills.”

A rebuke of sorts: “(People) who are always studying themselves, going over all their words and all their thoughts, and going back over all that they have done, afraid of having said or done too much. These people are sincere, but not simple… not at ease with others… (in them) nothing is easy, free, ingenuous, natural. (God wants) people who are not concerned with themselves as though always making up before a mirror.” (Francois Fenelon)

Do people talk like this anymore? “It takes a saint to be in the ministry of intercession. There are many kinds of service that make no demand upon spirituality for their success. Preaching may be an art in which there is no power of the Spirit. The ecclesiastical ministry of “outer-court” stewardship may be rendered by the gifts of the office and the (bean)counter. Social service may make a fair show in the official (reports) without any glow of Spirit-mindedness. Church music may be of the kind that does not call for the travail and anguish of intercession. The (person) of prayer must be a (person) of God. (Samuel Chadwick, 19th Century Christian leader).” (Words in parenthesis are mine and are meant to clarify what Chadwick was trying to say.)

A thoughtful book I want to give to several people:Journal Keeping: Writing for Spiritual Growth by Luann Budd (Intervarsity Press). This book argues a hundred times better than I can for the value of a verbal “photograph album” that tells the story of a person’s walk with God.

Bestselling author Gordon MacDonald is Leadership editor-at-large and chair of World Relief.

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