Over the years baseball catchers have adopted a practice that is called framing. When a pitch is just out of the strike zone, the catcher will receive the pitch and immediately move his mitt into the strike zone, hoping to fool the umpire into calling the pitch a strike. This doesn’t work very often on major league umpires, but occasionally a catcher will pull off the trick. It works often enough that catchers will automatically try to frame every borderline pitch.

In life, God is our umpire. He is the one who calls the balls and strikes. God determines which behaviors are out of the zone for a Christian and which behaviors are permitted.

Some people try to “frame the pitches” for God. They try to take an action that God has expressly forbidden and move it into the realm of things that are permitted.

That never works with God. Ever.

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”—Isaiah 5:20.