SPORTS: April 14, 2008 Issue

GOD—ENHANCED PERFORMANCES

PETE PACIOREK

"IMAGINE WHAT YOU could do if you got on the juice." Suggestions that I start taking steroids came my way many times during my professional baseball career. I was playing at a time when reliance on performance—enhancing drugs was a serious and persistent temptation to many ballplayers looking for an edge.

Sometimes it can be tempting to take what seems to be the easy way out of a situation. It might be to lie about something, procrastinate, cheat on a test, or use drugs illegally to make the human body more powerful. At this point, however, I was rescued by my upbringing in Christian Science, which had taught me that these are false foundations on which to build a life or career.

The Bible makes it clear that such foundations will eventually fall or fade away: "He that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great" (Luke 6:49). Regular prayer has convinced me that we need to stick to the spiritual high ground rather than look for shortcuts.

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