Is There Anything Peculiar About You?

I recently read about Adam LaRoche’s sudden decision to retire from Major League Baseball after he was informed by the Chicago White Sox that his 14-year-old son, Drake, could no longer accompany him to the club house every day. Adam walked away from $13 million he would have been guaranteed for the remainder of his salary contract.

The interesting thing to me about this story is the reactions of people all over the internet. While many supported his decision believing LaRoche did the right thing, the majority of people criticized him for the decision. Some believed he had no business taking his son to the clubhouse every day in the first place and should have simply followed their demands. After all, who else can take their son or daughter to work every day? After all, it’s stupid to throw away $13M and let down the team just so his son could join him everyday in the clubhouse. What would it hurt to hang on six months and then retire? That’s just plain weird.

LaRoche, on the other hand, doesn’t see it that way. While admitting that he was mad when Ken Williams, the team’s vice president, told him he could no longer bring his son to the team clubhouse, he also acknowledged that he “gets it” and doesn’t hold a grudge. He even said he “can’t blame him’ for the decision. He gets it.

It’s just that Adam LaRoche has a different, in fact, peculiar, perspective  on life and the game of baseball. As he says it, “Honestly, it’s not the end of the world to me. And I thank my parents for that. The way I was raised. Because baseball — and I’ve said it before—I don’t want to be defined by this game. I know there’s a lot more to life.”

LaRoche, a devout follower of Christ, recently experienced another event in his life that probably had as much to do with his decision to leave baseball as the issue with his son. It was a mission trip with Exodus Road to go deep undercover in the red-light districts of Southeast Asia to rescue girls caught in the sex-traffic trade. As Adam’s friend, Brewers pitcher, Blaine Boyer, shares about it, “Something huge happened there for us. You can’t explain it. Can’t put your finger on it. If you make a wrong move, you’re getting tossed off a building. We were in deep, man, but that’s the way it needed to be done. Adam and I truly believe God brought us there and said, ‘This is what I have for you boys.’”

Because his life is not defined by baseball, Adam LaRoche understood that his life was much more than a game. In fact, on the way home from Southeast Asia, Adam asked Boyer this question: “What are we doing? We’re going back to play a game for the next eight months?”

John Stonestreet, in a BreakPoint Daily commentary about LaRoche’s exit from baseball, uses the word peculiar to describe what he did. What he meant was that the world looked at Adam’s decision as something that doesn’t conform to peoples’ expectations of an athlete, but Adam saw it in the biblical sense of our status as a peculiar people (I Peter 2:9) who are called or set apart for something more grand that anything money or fame has to offer. He wants the better treasure and his pursuit of that treasure seems to the world as weird.

I wonder if my grandchildren will recognize that peculiarity in me because of what I treasure in life? When Moses commanded parents and grandparents to teach the next generations to love the Lord God with all their hearts, minds, souls and strength, what he was really saying was that what we treasure needs to stand apart as peculiar in the world. It has to do with what defines you and me. Are we defined by some worldly game or pursuit, or is it God’s purposes for us and our relationship with Jesus? Adam’s son, Drake, saw what his Dad did as peculiar… yet it is precisely the kind of peculiarity he also wants for himself. Will your grandchildren want to embrace the kind of peculiarity you display? Perhaps the greater question is: Why wouldn’t they?

I think we all want to hear the Father say to us one day, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter now into my rest”.

GRANDPAUSE: If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead. –William Law