I Won't Tebow to Your Idol

Tim Tebow brought the pain to my boys in Black and Gold last night, beating them in overtime with a huge 80 yard bomb that made it the quickest ending to an NFL overtime in history. And when it was over, he knelt down and prayed a prayer of thanks.

And that act probably caused more arguments on Facebook last night than the actual outcome of the game.

On one side, you have the folks who point to Tim Tebow's success as proof of the sovereignty of God. Who see any criticism of his playing form as a criticism of his faith. Who trot out the "if he was a Muslim" argument, generally being the same people who pair "radical" with Muslim far more liberally than necessary.

On the other side, you have the critics. The folks who hate that Tebow uses his platform to proselytize. The ones who toss around Matthew 6:6 ad nauseum. The ones who seem just a little too eager to see him screw up.

Either way, we end up creating an idol. And idols are good for one thing - to serve as a replacement for the the god they represent.

It's easy to see how the fans do that. His faith has become the stuff of legend. A Saturday Night Live skit becomes an example of religious persecution. Tim Tebow is the picture of all that is good and right and just. All praise Tebow.

It's the same from the critics. Tebow is every Christian that has ever been kind of an ass. Any praise that he receives is strictly because of his over-the-top Christianity, not because he might actually be pretty good at his job. He represents all that is phony and shallow and annoying. All hate Tebow.

The thing is, Tebow is just this guy, you know? He plays a sport well. He wins some games, he loses some games. He goes to church. He uses his money to support various causes. He probably likes pizza. Some day he'll probably do pretty well on Dancing with the Stars. He likely sassed his mom at some point growing up.

He's not the embodiment of anything, he's a dude who plays football. Most of us don't know much more about him than that (I tried to find information about the pizza thing, but came up empty. I'm just guessing, based on pizza's extreme popularity, that he likes it.).

Turning people into idols or caricatures is really easy for us. We do it all the time. We do it with politicians. We do it with writers. We do it with pastors. We do it with any group or person that we don't know. We elevate them to a position that they never asked for and then we either worship them or knock them down.

In the meantime, we don't even know if they like pizza. Or Community. Or cats. Or flannel. Or Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain.

If we don't know that, we certainly can't know every nuance of their character. Which makes them a poor representation of God, no matter how virtuous they are or are not.

God has provided us with one accurate representation of himself. If we want to start kneeling, let's bow down to that. I'll take a spot right next to Tim on that.

As long as he likes pizza.

God Hates Fred

I'm a fan of the Never Beyond campaign over at People of the Second Chance. I love the way they encourage folks to pour out grace to those who most would write off as being outside of its reach.

What a beautiful, heroic idea!

I started thinking about it. Who do I look at and think, "You know, if there's a hell, that guy is there for sure." And I realized there was one person that I hate an awful lot. One person that I am pretty sure has used up every single one of his seventy times seven chances. One person who is not is not just preaching a back-handed message of hate, but has a whole site devoted to hate. Not just devoted to hate, but with hate in the domain name.

Fred. Phelps.

Really, I can't think of anyone that I like less than this pastor. He gained mainstream notoriety when he started protesting the funerals of soldiers in 2006, but he and his family/church had been protesting funerals for years, most notably the funeral of Matthew Shepard in 1998. He has, time and again, befouled the Christian moniker. I read through his biography on Wikipedia, watch documentaries about him, and truly, I can't find anything about him that I can admire. And I can usually find some redeeming quality about most people, even folks I don't care for very much.

In my mind, he is pretty much the embodiment of one who is not worthy of any more chances. He scoffs at any hint of gentleness or compassion. He teaches children, those who are the most accepting among us, that hatred is a virtue and that love is weakness. At every turn, his rights are protected while those he speaks about with such vitriol are struck down time and again.

How do I find grace for this person? Because honestly, I'm not interested in extending grace. I see him or a family member being interviewed on a news show or in a podcast and all I can think is, "Why are you trying to reason with these people? Why are you giving them a platform? They are just media whores. They will never change."

And in my heart, up goes the big banner declaring "God Hates Fred."

Suddenly I'm stopped cold.

Because I know that God doesn't hate Fred any more than he hates any of the people that Fred claims that God hates. God looks at Fred Phelps and sees a broken, hurting, messy guy who puts conditions on God's love, just like me. God looks at Fred Phelps and sees a person who is more interested in being the center of attention and uses God as a prop to make that happen, just like me. God looks at Fred Phelps and sees someone who needs to know that he is loved, just like me.

And if God's love is big enough for Fred Phelps, then it's big enough for me.

It's big enough for all of us.