If you’re a football fan like me, the attention paid to Denver Broncos rookie quarterback Tim Tebow this season may have piqued your interest. In his debut season, Tebow has surprised many critics who claimed he was not ready for the big stage of the NFL. While he has certainly had his struggles, spectacular games like the one yesterday demonstrate that he’s got what it takes to become a great quarterback. In case you missed it, Tebow threw a touchdown pass on the first play in overtime to defeat the favored Pittsburgh Steelers. Prior to the game, one of the sportscasters stated that he didn’t expect the Broncos to score a single point, let alone win.
What makes Tim Tebow unique among his peers is his unapologetic faith in Christ. While many other players in the NFL are devoted Christians, most are never thrust in the spotlight reserved for winning quarterbacks. Yet even under the pressure and heat of that kind of attention, Tebow has never stopped giving God the glory and the credit, even when doing so has elicited sharp criticism and outright mockery from the media and the public.
I have no idea if God is a football fan, as some have sarcastically suggested in response to Tebow this season. I doubt that God puts a whole lot of divine stock into a game for which He already knows the outcome. There are a couple of things, however, that I can safely assume about God and His place with Tim Tebow in the NFL. First, as Tebow has repeatedly reminded us, all true talent comes from God, including athletic ability. The extent to which any of us hones and utilizes our talents is up to us, but the talent is placed within us by God alone. The fact that Tebow continually gives God the credit for that talent must be pleasing to Him. If I’m unsure about that, all I need to do is examine the extent to which it annoys the living daylights out of just about everyone. Truth has a way of annoying those who refuse to believe it.
Perhaps more importantly, it is fairly obvious that sports in general, and football in particular, have become a god in American culture. There’s a reason 30-second ads during the Super Bowl cost a fortune. Our obsession with sports has become so ingrained that we place star athletes on a pedestal far above personal accountability, such that they come to believe they are like God, entitled to whatever they want, whenever they want it. This travesty can be glimpsed in small doses as early as grade-school age all around the country. How many professional athletes have committed sometimes heinous crimes, only to continue playing and earning their millions? As long as they are winning and generating revenue, owners, coaches and fans are willing to look the other way without a modicum of justice. I doubt you or I would encounter such mercy in our own lives.
Enter Tim Tebow, a young man in the midst of the granddaddy of American sports, the NFL. Now, Tebow is not perfect and he’ll be the first to admit that. At some point, he will likely falter in his personal life and the media will respond, drooling. Certainly he will encounter winning moments and bitter defeats in his football career. I’m simply suggesting that maybe God has chosen Tim Tebow as an instrument through which the false god of the NFL can get a little dose of reality. If you or I were to say, "Football is not God. God is God," we would elicit blank stares, confused looks and shrugged shoulders. For a star quarterback to be saying that is quite another thing entirely. But isn’t that just like God, to use an unlikely person from within to get a point across?
I don’t know if God is a football fan, but to ponder such a thing is missing the point. Tim Tebow is unabashedly bringing God into a godless institution of our society. Regardless of the scoreboard, that’s something I can root for.
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