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Monday, February 22, 2010

KEKICH AND PETERSON SWAP WIVES

 

    I have collected baseball cards since I was a boy.  I own a Mike Kekich and a Fritz Peterson baseball card; at least I will until I get home and thrown them in the garbage.  Over the weekend, I heard on ESPN news that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are doing a movie to portray the story of the two pitchers' decision to "swap lives" during the 1973 baseball season.  Apparently, they exchanged wives, children, houses and cars.  I am not old enough to remember anything that happened in 1973 and somehow I had managed to remain blissfully ignorant of this black eye in sports and societal history.  Now, Hollywood is going to make a movie about it.  I cannot help but be concerned that the story will be sympathetic and nonjudgmental in tone and message.  There is much renewed interest in the 37 year old scandal as Peterson released a book last year, "Mickey Mantle Is Going To Heaven," which is, ironically, very religious in tone and discusses several things including the famous "trade."
    The 1960s ushered in some moral changes that still negatively impact our culture today.  Sexual degradation was definitely a hallmark trait of the times and the bar continues to be lowered.  While Peterson and Kekich's wife have remained married for 35 years (the other pair did not remain together long), it is a poignant reminder that time and reformation of life without true repentance does not equal forgiveness.  It also is a reflection on what kind of things are the object of fascination with worldly institutions like the media.  Perhaps there was a time in the national consciousness where the nation's conscience would not have been so seared as it is today.  There was moral outrage among the average person when this news originally broke, but so much polluted water has gone under the bridge since then that it may be hard for a significant percentage of people to blush about the wickedness of such an act.
    God has unchanging standards and principles about matters that govern such things as marriage, sexual purity, and chaste behavior.  Matthew 19:9 still reads, essentially, "One husband, one wife, for life, except for fornication." Romans 7:1-4 would had the additional exception of the death of one's mate freeing the survivor to remarry so long as the one to remarry is marriageable in His eyes.  The Bible still says, "Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge" (Heb. 13:4).  Galatians 5:19-21 still says that those who practice fornication and adultery will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.  The wrath of God will still come upon those guilty of the disobedience of fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (Col. 3:5).  Sexual immorality is still "deserving of death" at the judgment (Rom. 1:29,32).  Up to the present, we are still to "put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts" (13:14).
    May we never idealize, glamorize, or immortalize sin.  May we disdain it and not rationalize it.  May we take pity on, embrace, and love sinners while maintaining a spiritually healthy distaste for sin in any form.
(Facts from New York Times online article, 9/18/09)
 
Neal Pollard

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