I don't love the "doing" of golf, but I do love the idea of golf. I love the fact that no matter how much a player works on his physical game, it is his inner game that ultimately determines his destiny on the links. Golf--combination of finesse and focus as well as strength and power--provides a metaphor for life's journey that is too great to be ignored. In the book, The Legend of Bagger Vance (known to many only in motion picture form), Steven Pressfield presses the metaphor into full service. Like so many spiritual ideas coursing through society, the eastern thought expressed in the book bears no specific religious label, leading most Christians to suspicion and distrust. But, I have never seen honest eastern thought as a threat to a way of life founded by an eastern Savior and conceived by the God of the univserse in whom both east and west find their origin. The book inspired me, and I am a Bible-type Christian!
I especially like the part where Bagger, caddying for the shattered war veteran, Rannulph Junah in the most stressful match of his life, is hammering him with the question, "Who are you?" Bagger, ignoring the mounting score due to Junnah's self-destructive play, just keeps asking, "Who are you?...Are you your name?...Are you your roles...Are you your virtues...your sins?" Junah, simply trying to survive the humiliation, has no answers and grows increasingly frustrated. Finally, Bagger Vance explains that who we really are is what is left when all the "selves" of our mind's making have been stripped away. The roles we play, our own estimations of our performance, feedback from all the significant (or non-significant) others in our lives, false religious ideas that deny the value God places on us--when all these things are stripped away, we are finally left with who we really are. (I've gone beyond Bagger: this is me talking now.)
The problem with having all the "selves" stripped away is that we feel naked without our scorecard! We are accustomed to bolstering ourselves against inadequacy with thoughts like, "Well, at least I'm..." or "At least I'm not..." Let's face it, we are addicted to performance and no matter how many messages we hear about having our identity rooted in God, it is so much easier to nod than kneel! But, life finds us, and if we let Him, God finds us in the midst of life. I believe if we have truly committed ourselves to knowing Him, He does strip us of all the "selves" that hinder authentic relationship and cloud the issue of our life-worship. He wants his question, "Who are you?" to us to be followed by expectant listening, rather than frantic rationalization.
After Bagger tells Junah that he has been stripped of all the "selves" that could have been, he says (and I like to imagine with authority), "Now hit the ball with what is left." Junah protests, "But there's nothing left." And Bagger says, "Exactly." Junah hits the ball and, you guessed it, he found his swing.
I have noticed that God often calls us to strike the ball just at those moments when we think there is nothing left! ("Why couldn't some of these doors opened when our confidence was in tact?" we often feel.) God just might be saying, "Exactly. Hit the ball now and see what happens. You might just be about to discover what is beyond your own strength!" I can just see God, smiling at us in our desperation with understanding love, and saying, "Swing now with all you've got left--take a shot at your dreams now!" He would be smiling because he knew that our feelings of inadequacy are only artifacts of our shattered performance addiction. As we step up to strike the ball with our false securities toppled, He would know that we were about to find the joy of our authentic swing--the joy of simply expressing who we really are, as created by God, with no disclaimers. No, we're not talking about golf...this is worship...this is life...the metaphor works. Let it.
John 4:24--True worship is in spirit and transparency...authenticity...
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