‘Tis the season for overdosing on football–college and the pros. And in the mix of such craziness–does any college team, hyperbolically speaking, not get to go to a bowl game?–is what is being called, these days, “Tebowing.” With high schoolers staging the posture, according to media accounts, as among the latest of teenaged fads. It could, I suppose, be worse.
The term refers, of course, to the sensational Tim Tebow, a left-handed quarterback with the size and strength of a tight end who, in his college career at the University of Florida, led the Gators to a national championship while also winning the Heisman Trophy as the best offensive player in college football.
Tebow was then drafted in the first round (involving, naturally, some big bucks) by the professional Denver Broncos, which scandalized the football purists who claim his throwing mechanics are flawed, rendering him incapable of being a successful NFL quarterback. Forgetting, at least, Bernie Kosar, another quarterback who had a successful college and NFL career, but threw side-arm. Or even the spectacular Drew Brees who’s supposed to be too short to throw over 6’7″ defensive linemen.
Except Tebow has had some unexpected success, upon being inserted into a season of accumulating losses, as the Bronco’s starting quarterback. Until the last two games, where the defenses of the New England Patriots and the Buffalo Bills appear to have discovered the talented Tebow’s possible Achilles heel. But then that’s what defenses in any professional sport are paid to do. Find a flaw somewhere, anywhere in whomever the him or them. Football being, of course, the ultimate “team sport.” Since Michael Jordan could dominate a basketball game and Sandy Koufax, a baseball game–almost by themselves–but not in football, where everyone, on every play, has a job to do.
That, however, is not what “Tebowing” refers to. It is, rather, the fundamentalist Christian posture of an athletically talented young man–who, by the way, appears to “walk the walk,” rather than merely just “talking the talk”–a posture captured when Tebow, contrary to Jesus’ admonition to “pray in secret” (Matthew 6), often kneels on one knee appearing to pray. Not that public praying in pro sports–since they involve private enterprise–isn’t protected by the First Amendment to our nation’s Constitution. Just as public praying in public institutions is a violation of that same amendment.
Even if anyone who ever played (or at least practiced) football has heard a coach bark, “Take a knee, men.” And when that “take a knee” command occurs during the August dog-day-heat of pre-season, two-a-day practices, whoever isn’t praying, “God, please deliver me from this hell,” surely deserves all the punishment a game like football is meant to provide. Or as someone has said, in military jargon, “There are no atheists in foxholes.”
What is lost, however, in all the “Tebowing” enthusiasm is how revealing sports, in general, and football, in particular, serve to package the shallowness of a fundamentalist kind of Christianity.
Or as we say, here in the South: “Football’s like NASCAR–it isn’t a sport–it’s a religion!”
Fundamentalists of the Christian kind–which popular media tend to define as the exclusive caricature of Christianity–fundamentalists claim to read the Bible literally. Except if the Bible claims to reveal the God of Jews and Christians, at least, the same Bible hardly claims that such a God can ever be understood, much less expressed literally. Hence, the Bible’s consistently figurative way of referring to God. Which doesn’t make it less true, only truer than literal truth could ever be true. At least when it comes to God.
Except, of course, when fundamentalist Christians claim to read the Bible literally, such so-called literal-ness betrays the selectivity such a way of reading the Bible requires. As, for example, the mentally ill patient I once encountered who, in his psychosis, had seriously injured his eye, trying to “gouge it out” (Matthew 18) for looking at pornography. ‘Though I suspect even such a bizarre incident pales in comparison to the selectivity involved when, in claiming to read the Bible literally, one encounters such an injunction as “giving all of one’s wealth away to the poor” in order to be a Christian (Mark 10). Not to mention, the “hating of one’s family” (Luke 14). As if any of those were literal statements, even if attributed to Jesus.
Christian fundamentalism is an “either/or” kind of religion. In contrast to the God of the Bible who is the ultimate “both/and.” For indeed, the God of the Bible is more “in-clusive” than the tragically flawed “ex-clusive” god of the fundamentalist. Fundamentalists read the Bible statically rather than dynamically, seeing it in legalistic rather than relational terms; they forsake ambiguity at the idolatrous altar of certainty, a need to be “right” that trumps much of anything resembling “faith.” Such a caricature of Christian faith: it reduces the God of the Bible to the “objectivity” of most sports, excluding gymnastics, figure skating or ballroom dancing. Since say what you will, if you want to know the “truth”–of a football game or who God is, according to the fundamentalist–just look at the scoreboard.
And if you don’t believe football’s a religion, don’t get in the way the next time the fans are tearing down the goalposts or be a referee making a “controversial call” that “goes against” one team or the other. In case you haven’t noticed–speaking of fanaticism–so-called “cheering” at your typical football game: it makes ecstatic, slain-in-the Spirit, Pentecostal revivalism look like the reverence of a Quaker meeting.
Indeed, if there’s any difference between going to church and a football game, it’s hardly to be found in whatever “Tebowing” religion would claim to be. One can only hope, however, that beneath such a posture there yet remains an athletically talented, well-intentioned young man who somehow knows the difference.
