Stop Using Your Faith as a Weapon

A handful of baseball players recently wrote Bible verses on their hats. And I think it was the exact opposite of what Jesus would have wanted them to do. Let me tell you why.

The San Francisco Giants recently celebrated Pride Night at the stadium. Like many other celebration days (Mother's Day, Memorial Day, etc.), this meant they had something unique on their jersey. That night, the team wore hats with a rainbow-colored logo on the front. The Giants offered this night as a way to reach out to community members, even posting resources on their social media for LGBTQ+ people, families, and allies.

So far so good, right?

A few players decided that wearing a hat with a rainbow logo was a direct violation of their Christian faith. The pitcher Sam Hentges refused to wear the hat entirely, while Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker, and Ryan Walker decided to write a Bible verse from the book of Genesis on their hats.

The passage they referenced was Genesis 9:12-16:

Then God said, “I am giving you a sign of my covenant with you and with all living creatures, for all generations to come. I have placed my rainbow in the clouds. It is the sign of my covenant with you and with all the earth. When I send clouds over the earth, the rainbow will appear in the clouds, and I will remember my covenant with you and with all living creatures. Never again will the floodwaters destroy all life. When I see the rainbow in the clouds, I will remember the eternal covenant between God and every living creature on earth.”

Which means that these players wanted to make it clear that the rainbow on their hats was tied to God's pledge not to murder all of humanity rather than their support for any community.

As the starting pitcher that night, Landen Roupp explained:

The rainbow is a symbol of God's covenant to us, and us as believers to stand firm in that... There's no hate at all. It's just what I stand for and what I stand in. I believe in God, and that's me.

I invite you to remember that the Giants play in... San Francisco. Which means that not only is this a statement against a particular community, it's a statement against a community that makes up a core of their fanbase and is likely in the stadium to see this on Pride Night.

When asked his response to someone from the LGBTQ+ community who might be hurt by his actions, Roupp replied:

First of all, as a believer, I would push them to read the Bible. I think God has blessed me in so many ways, and I don't think I would be here right now if it wasn't for him. So, like I said, there's no hate in it at all, you know, like I said, we live in a country where you're welcome to believe what you want. There's a freedom of speech and stuff like that, so that's really all I have to say about that. I'm just thankful that God has put me in this situation and that I can go out and share his kingdom.

In case you find it tempting to follow Roupp's diversion, this isn't about free speech. MLB determines the rules for professional games in which players are paid. MLB issued a statement after this happened and reiterated that "Writing of any kind, with any message, is prohibited per Major League Baseball's Uniform Regulations."

And notice the repeated emphasis of how his actions were not about hate. It's almost as if he knows that's how they come across. We might also wonder if there's an implied connection to a story about God killing sinners for their wickedness.

Here's the biggest thing that these players' performative displays of Christianity miss: Whatever they are about, they are not about love. This is especially noteworthy given that he wants to share God's kingdom through this.

If it's not love, what message is he sharing?

Sam Hentges deserves a different sentence than the one I am about to give the other three. He declined the hat. That is a man living out his convictions without making anyone else carry the cost of it. If Roupp, Brubaker, and Walker had done the same, quietly opted out, declined the rainbow, gone back to their regular caps, I would have nothing to write about (much less at least). Conviction is not the problem. Disagreement is not the problem. A pitcher who believes the Bible teaches something specific about sexuality and lives that out by simply not participating has not wronged anyone. What he did instead is the problem. He took the hat the team asked him to wear in solidarity with a community, kept it on, and used it to broadcast a message to that same community on the one night built for them.

I can't help but think of the passage you've probably heard quoted primarily in wedding ceremonies. In 1 Corinthians, we see Paul expand on the nature of real love.

If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

If I wrote Bible verses on my hat, and told everyone about my faith in Jesus, yet did not have love...

The question isn't whether there is truth in what Roupp and the other players said. The question is whether their pursuit of truth communicated love. The passage they chose to defend their truth is worth unpacking.

Genesis 9 is not a small passage to reach for. It is God's first promise after wiping out almost everything. The flood is over; the ground is still drying out, and God says, essentially, "never again." "Never again will the floodwaters destroy all life" (Genesis 9:15). The rainbow is not decoration on that promise. It is the promise.

Which makes it a strange choice of weapon.

Roupp did not reach for a verse about marriage, or holiness, or sin. He reached for the one passage in the entire Bible where God is on record promising restraint. A sign that says I will not destroy you, written on a night built for a community that has spent generations being told God wants to destroy them. The Pride flag and the Genesis 9 rainbow are not actually competing symbols. They are doing almost the same job. One is a community saying, "We are still here; please don't hurt us." The other is God saying, "I will not hurt you." Roupp picked the second one to defend his right to make people fear the first.

I do not think he saw the irony. You do not need to hate someone to wound them. You only need to be so sure of your own innocence that you never stop to ask how your actions affect others.

The normal hat was available all night. Hentges wore it. The other three could have too. But that wouldn't have made the same kind of statement, would it?

Instead, they decided to wear the rainbow hats and to write their verses on them. This way they could make a statement against the LGBTQ+ community, hijack both the conversation and the marginalized community the entire night was about, and ultimately draw attention to their heightened sense of morality in the process.

Somewhere in that stadium, on the night built for them, there was a person in the stands who has spent their whole life being told God can't stand them. They watched their pitcher take the mound in a rainbow hat with a Bible verse written across it, a verse about God promising not to destroy them, and felt the promise turn into a threat in real time.

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Photo by Malcolm Broström on Unsplash