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By Andy, June 26, 2007 5:13 am

Tonight I was at AT&T Park with Hank for a father/son baseball outing as my Yankee-beating Giants took on the San Diego Padres (winning 4-3 in 11 innings). We arrived shortly after 7 pm in time for the 7:15 pm first pitch.

As we made our way to our seats, the PA Announcer announced a moment of silence for Rod Beck, the former Giant, Cub, Red Sox and Padre relief pitcher who died at his home this weekend at 38 years of age. The moment of silence was preceded by a video montage of some of Beck’s moments with the Giants.

The crowd stood up in silence, caps over our collective hearts as we paid tribute to a 3-time All-Star with the Giants, who had 199 saves in a Giants uniform. A lone sign several rows in front of me was raised - “We’ll Miss You Shooter” - “Shooter” having been his nickname during his Giant years.

A couple of innings later, during one of the mid-inning breaks, an interview was replayed from several years ago with a Giants announced and then-manager Dusty Baker, talking about Beck’s role in the 1997 NL West Championship season. That was the season in which I personally attended the most number of games I ever had in a single year…26 games…mostly with my wife, a couple of them solo, and a couple with some friends. The most memorable was on September 18 - a key moment which was highlighted in the Dusty Baker video on the high def scoreboard.

The Giants and Dodgers were in a heated race that September - going into a 2 game set on the 17th and 18th of September, the Giants were down 2 games in the West. After winning on the 17th (a game which I also attended), the Giants and Dodgers went into extra innings at Candlestick Park. In the 10th inning, the following occurred (courtesy of the Giants’ website):

Beck, who had blown a save and taken the loss two games earlier, entered to a smattering of boos from the crowd, and things turned downright ugly when Piazza, Eric Karros and Mondesi all singled to load the bases with none out. With the huge crowd voicing their disapproval of Beck’s continued presence in the game, Baker went to the mound and told his pitcher to dig down deep for something special.

The man nicknamed “Shooter” delivered, striking out Todd Zeile. Facing pinch-hitter Eddie Murray, Beck got the member of the 500-homer club to hit a slow grounder to second, where Jeff Kent picked it up and fired home for one out. Johnson’s throw to first beat the aging Murray to end the inning.

Beck went on to pitch 2 more innings until catcher Brian Johnson ended it with a HR to the left field bleachers in the bottom of the 12th.  The Giants had caught the Dodgers, and little more than a week later, beat San Diego at Candlestick to clinch the NL West title.  

That 10th inning was a definitive “Shooter” moment. Beck was pure guts on the mound, a player who took command of the mound and the field when he was in the game, and showed no fear…he simply challenged the batter. He was the “everyman” on the diamond - he looked like you and me, not a professional ballplayer, and I know that’s why I loved him as a player.

I don’t know why he had to go at such a young age, leaving behind a young family. The physical suffering that his family must endure with his loss is not something we can easily understand - only to the extent that we know each of us must face physical death at various points in our lives as we lose loved ones.

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By Andy, February 9, 2007 5:12 am

As I sit at the blank screen and ponder the week that was with one day left in the work week, I pause and think Whoa, what is God telling me in preparation for my blog-fast?.

Certainly, this has been a week filled with difficult questions, with difficult answers, and testing of that which I thought was black and white, only to be reminded of the grayness of the world in which we live. Seeing the gray daytime skies this week has only served to reinforce that reminder, as the view of the Golden Gate Bridge from my office has been obscured by the low-lying gray clouds that continue to head eastward, dropping rain on this city.

God’s reminding me that there are no easy answers for us in this life, not in this physical world. I am nearing completion on a book edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor - Suffering and the Sovereignty of God - it is a compilation of messages given at the Desiring God Conference in 2005. Each message was written by someone who has experienced suffering in their lives, whether due to illness, physical handicap, or the loss of loved ones. What has been powerful to see in these messages is their realization that God ordained their suffering the way God ordained Job’s suffering, and it was in the suffering that they were able to understand the greatness of God’s grace. John Piper explains it this way:

God decreed from all eternity to display the greatness of the glory of his grace for the enjoyment of his creatures, and he revealed to us that this is the ultimate aim and explanation of why there is sin and why there is suffering, and why there is a great suffering Savior. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came in the flesh to suffer and die and by that suffering and death to save undeserving sinners like you and me. This coming to suffer and die is the supreme manifestation of the greatness of the glory of the grace of God. Or to say it a little differently, the death of Christ in supreme suffering is the highest, clearest, surest display of the glory of the grace of God. If that is true, then a stunning truth is revealed, namely, suffering is an essential part of the created universe in which the greatness of the glory of the grace of God can be most fully revealed. Suffering is an essential part of the tapestry of the universe so that the weaving of grace can be seen for what it really is…the ultimate reason that suffering exists in the universe is so that Christ might display the greatness of the glory of the grace of God by suffering in himself to overcome our suffering.

John Piper, The Suffering of Christ and the Sovereignty of God (emphasis mine)

God has used this week to remind me that the world is complicated. Logically and intellectually I know that, but it is easy to forget.

How does this fit in with what I am about to experience with this “Week of Prayer and Fasting” with my church? I’m not sure yet, but I know that the road ahead next week is not going to be easy, given that I use the Internet for work and it will be an easy temptation to hit the bookmark for this blog at various random times through the day. I need to clear the gray fog that sits in my head so that I can have a clear channel open to God next week - clearer than it currently is.

Man…and to think that when I sat down tonight I thought I was going to write a light hearted post.

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By Andy, January 26, 2007 6:11 am

The lunatic is in my head
The lunatic is in my head
You raise the blade, you make the change
You re-arrange me ’till I’m sane
You lock the door
And throw away the key
There’s someone in my head but it’s not me.

Pink Floyd, “Brain Damage”

My brain hurts right now. I am in the second chapter of the compilation edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor titled Suffering and the Sovereignty of God - messages originally given at the 2005 Desiring God conference - and I feel like I’ve got Roger Waters’ lunatic in my head - because the theological discussions about the nature of God and His role in suffering are making my head spin.

It wasn’t that long ago that I first heard of the term “open theism“. As described in the book according to Mark Talbot, open theism addresses…

…how our free wills and our responsibility are related to God’s will and the evils we suffer and see. Open theists want to take God off the hook for the kinds of evil that we do. They explain these evils by claiming that God can’t prevent them without restricting or destroying our freedom. But, they claim, God doesn’t do that because he takes our freedom to be so valuable. He takes our freedom to be so valuable that he is willing to pay the price of there being all sorts of human suffering that is caused by our misuse of it.

The linked Wikipedia entry states that

Open Theism makes the case for a personal God who is able to be influenced through prayer, decisions, and actions of people. Although unknowing of the future, God has predictive (anticipatory) foreknowledge of the future through his intimate knowledge of each individual. As such, he is able to anticipate the future, yet remains fluid to respond and react to prayer and decisions made either contrary or advantageous to His plan or presuppositions.

I must admit this makes sense from a human perspective, and would likely make explaining human suffering much easier to a non-believer. Yet does this not then also presuppose that God is not all-knowing and therefore not the omniscient God we know Him to be? Does this mean that God does not know the future, and doesn’t have a plan for us?

Taken another step further, then why does He allow for suffering? I certainly don’t anticipate that we will come up with the answer here, as we’re all amateur theologians at best and hacks at worst (or maybe I should simply describe myself that way without speaking about the rest of you). And that question has led me to read these sorts of books, whether this one, or Lewis’ The Problem of Pain (which, admittedly, I need to re-read), or even the Book of Job - perhaps the best book on suffering - which I finished late last week.

How do we marry our free will with God’s will? How do you know that what your doing is ordained by God? I think I’m getting somewhat better at it, but I know I miss the signs all the time, not unlike being a teen, standing on 1st base, and completely missing the sign to steal 2nd.

If a non-believer asked you the question about suffering…how would you explain it? I’m not sure where I could begin.

The lunatic, surely, is in my head.