Joseph Bottum - The Gospel According to Tim (Kindle Single)

The Gospel According to Tim

Joseph Bottum

A MirrorDarkly

Before you try to tackle the theology of Tim Tebow,the gospel according to Tim, you have to start by trying to pin down the youngman himself, and the glorious, horrifying, victorious, defeated, triumphal,catastrophic spectacle he gave America during the 2011 professional footballseason.

And that proves no easy thing. In some ways, Tim Tebowis the most straightforward character on the American scene today. He is who heis, he knows who he is, at leastas well as any twenty-four year-old can, and hes perfectly open about hisdevout Christian faith. What he wants, he has said and who are we todoubt him? is to use the athletic ability God has given him as a meansto fund his charities. To inspire others to charitable works, for that matter,all in aid of spreading faith, hope, and love, as he says of the hospitalhes building in the Philippines.

Actually, of course, hes not saying the words forhimself so much as hes referencing the Bible St. Paul in FirstCorinthians, Chapter 13, as famous a biblical passage as exists: When I wasa child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child;when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirrordarkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understandfully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, thesethree; but the greatest of these is love.

But thats our Tebow. In the midst of all the praisethe young man has attracted, hes also drawn an extraordinary amount of abuse,much of it of the variety that insists hes forcing his religion down ourthroats. Personally, I dont see it. The cameras of the nation have zoomed inon him, no doubt, and the endless focus on the young mans every deed and wordgive a real prominence to his gestures of faith.

The gestures themselves, however, dont seem all thatunusual. For years now weve had baseball players crossing themselves beforethey bat. Weve watched quarterback Kurt Warner thanking the Lord Jesus afterwinning a Super Bowl (the same Kurt Warner who would, this season, publiclyadmonish Tebow to tone down his use of Jesus name). Weve seen Cassius Clayconvert to Islam, rename himself Muhammad Ali, and announce that he was givingall glory for his victories to Allah. Weve observed Sandy Koufax refuse topitch on Yom Kippur and Orel Hershiser calm himself between innings by singinghymns. For that matter, the great defensive end Reggie White was an ordainedminister who never stooped to hiding his faith. Each year, according to the ColumbusDispatch , more than 2 millionathletes, from junior high school to college, participate in the Fellowship ofChristian Athletes.

In fact, American sports are so intertwined withreligion, especially football and evangelical Christianity, that its pointlessto try to disentangle the two. This January, Fran Tarkenton the wild,scrambling Hall of Fame quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings and New York Giantsfrom 1961 to 1978 took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to say... well, its not entirely clear what hisop-ed was after. It rambled a little (not that I, a rambler in writing from wayback, have any objection), and the Journal clearly published it simply because it was by Fran Tarkenton FranTarkenton , of all people, and howcool is that?

Anyway, the piece opened as though it was going to bean attack on Tebow, along the lines of Kurt Warners strictures. You know thekind of thing, structured as though to say, Im a religious person, a reallyserious Christian, but Tebow is taking this whole public Christianity thing waytoo far. And yet, Tarkenton neverquite made the turn into the but partof that argument, and he ended the column by throwing up his hands and sayingthat the nations fascination with Tim Tebow was maybe a pretty good thing:Isnt it refreshing that the chatter around the NFL is about a great athletewith great character who says and does all the right things and is a relentlessleader for his team and not about more arrests and bad behavior fromour presumptive heroes?

Tarkenton salts in some interesting anecdotes alongthe way; Wellington Mara, the long-time owner of the Giants, emerges afascinatingly bizarre character, apparently determined to see all his playersconvert to his devout Catholicism before their careers ended. But the op-ed ismost compelling when Tarkenton looks at the unquestioned presence ofChristianity in the game.

The son of a Pentecostal Holiness minister wewere charismatic before charismatic was cool, he wryly observes Tarkenton slipped into footballs religiosity like a duck into water. Faithhad a place in every locker room I was in, he notes, and every football gamehe ever played began with a prayer, usually led by one of the players on theteam known by the coaches to be devout. And, of course, after the prayer wasdone, everyone would shout, Now lets go kill those S.O.B.s! asthough they didnt have a clue about what was meant by the words they had justsaid. As though their prayer to the Christ of justice and peace, ofturning-the-other-cheek and plucking-out-the-eye-that-offends, was anintellectually empty ritual, however emotional it may have seemed at the time.

And yet, Tarkenton doesnt quite turn the corner onthat argument, either, by taking his reminiscences into a hackneyed kind ofattack on apparent Christian hypocrisy. What he mostly observes instead is thathe and his teammates did have aclue that they did get it:The prayer was always pretty much for the same thing: Let there not be anyinjuries, let everybody play a good game anything except to win thegame. No one ever asked to win the game.

That refusal, even fear, to pray for victory reveals apretty high level of theological sophistication in the American footballtradition. Maybe its only implicit theology, built into the words theyve allbeen trained to use, but its nonetheless about as much as one can ask fromordinary believers hard at work at their secular profession. The title ofTarkentons op-ed was Does God Care Who Wins Football Games? and the answerhe suggests that every football player understands is No . Or, better, No, and yes, to the extent that God,in His providence, cares about all things human . That caring might not take the form of nudgingvictory along. It might not take the form of nudging at all.

According to a probably tongue-in-cheek ESPN poll inJanuary, 43 percent of American football fans believe that divine interventionplayed a role in Tebows game-winning pass in the Denver Broncos overtime gameagainst the Pittsburgh Steelers in the first round of the seasons playoffs which, if the polling question were seriously asked and seriouslyanswered, means that 43 percent of American football fans are even lesstheologically sophisticated than the players they watch.

And yet, however joined the worlds of religion andsports are these days, however joined theyve always been, Tim Tebow and hisfaith have nonetheless come to seem something strange and new over this pastyear. Much of that is, I think, more symbolic than actual: We take him as uniquely religious, and so, what startsas a faith fairly common among football players is, by the alchemy of publicsymbolism, transmuted into the towering example the prime and salientinstance of the thing we fear or embrace, the historical tides we loveor hate.

In other words, Tebow didnt shove his faith down ourthroats. At least not any more than dozens of other sports figures have before,from the American outfielder Billy Sunday and the Scottish Olympic sprinterEric Liddell, back in the opening decades of the twentieth century, to KurtWarner and safety Brian Dawkins on Tebows own Denver Broncos football team,here in the opening decades of the twenty-first century. In the circus thatbecame, during the 2011 NFL season, the Tim Tebow Show,