I was able to watch a good deal of the Masters Tournament this last weekend. I hadn’t just sat down and watched hours of golf in a long time, although much of my childhood was spent at my grandfather’s side doing just that. The game itself was being played at an especially high level this weekend, even for a Masters Tournament. There were multiple holes in one, and Phil Mickelson had consecutive eagles (he came within an inch of a consecutive third) on Saturday. But when that level of golf is played risks are taken, and not all are successful. There were plenty of shots from the pine straw, through the trees. Nick Faldo who was doing color commentary for CBS would lament in subdued tones following each of these bad shots – “Well, that’s an unforced error there.” Every bad shot was described as an “unforced error.”
It’s not that I hadn’t heard that phrase used before, or used by him before, but hearing it so many times made me think – What, in golf, would be a “forced” error? Golf isn’t a contact sport – it’s not like you rushed your swing to avoid being sacked. Golf is not a team sport – not like baseball is anyway, so you can’t blame a bad throw by the cut off man for your missing that four foot putt. I guess a Canadian goose carrying your ball into the water, or someone ruining your drive by shooting you with a super-soaker during your back-swing might be a forced error.
During the final round, on the third green, eventual winner, Phil Mickelson, had a short putt for birdie go wide of the cup because just as he struck the ball a seed-pod fell from a tree directly into its path, causing it to veer off course as it rolled over the seed-pod. That was an unforced error, I guess. I used to play golf with my granddad at a course in Eastern Kentucky whimsically named “Rolling Meadows.” It was a course from which you basically shot from hilltop to hilltop (my dad called it “The Billy-Goat Farm”). The fourth hole was a par four. You teed off from one hill and hit onto a slightly lower ridge at a right angle to the line of the tee (that was whimsically called a “dog-leg” on the score-card). A huge headstone stood in the middle of the fairway, and my granddad would always say, “Take a 3-wood and aim for the headstone and you’ll be all-right.” One day I hit the headstone dead-on (no pun intended) and my brand-new Titleist shot off into the Eastern Kentucky forest like it had afterburners. My granddad called that an unforced error, and let me drop a ball without taking a penalty. But things like that happen so rarely they are barely worth building your jargon around.
They do happen, though. So I guess there are forced errors in golf.
But what about life?
Years ago Flip Wilson, as Geraldine, used to say when caught in an indiscretion, “The Devil made me do it.” It was a sure laugh line at the time. We laugh at things because we perceive them to be absurd but true. The truth in that absurdity is not that the Devil makes us do anything, but that we like to believe our sins are “forced errors.”
There are forced errors in golf, but not in life. Not if by “error” we mean sin.
There are two reasons for this assertion. The first is that sin, by definition, is an act of will – the culmination of an involved mental process which turns desire into action (James 1.13-15). In Genesis 3, when sin enters the world, Eve’s thorough knowledge of the truth, and her decision to rebel against it are described in detail. Both Adam and Eve, when confronted by God, claim their sin was, somehow, a forced error. God is unconvinced. Sin is an act of will or it isn’t sin at all. If it is an act of will it is an “unforced” error.
In addition to this we are promised that God manages the level of temptation each of us faces so that it is not beyond our ability to bear (I Corinthians 10.13). Since that level is different for each of us it is a sort of a way to handicap the process. The verse cited above tells us that God provides strength to bear-up, and also a means of escape when we are tempted. Endurance and escape, provided by God, means that sin can never be an “unforced error.”
And so, if we were able to hear Nick Faldo and Jim Nantz doing commentary on our lives as we live them, there would never be a reason for Nick to say, “Well, Jim, that’s another unforced error.”
