{"id":9520,"date":"2012-01-15T00:00:30","date_gmt":"2012-01-15T06:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidmcelroy.org\/?p=9520"},"modified":"2012-01-14T23:42:06","modified_gmt":"2012-01-15T05:42:06","slug":"if-god-had-caused-tim-tebow-to-win-did-he-change-his-mind-saturday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=9520","title":{"rendered":"If God had caused Tim Tebow to win, did He change His mind Saturday?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>For weeks, we’ve been subjected to talk about God being responsible for Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos winning football games. If God has been pulling strings for this young man who’s so open about his faith, He must have taken the night off Saturday, as the Patriots destroyed Denver 45-10<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This isn’t the first time Tebow has been humiliated in a big game, of course. Two years ago, in his last important game as a Florida Gator, he entered the SEC championship expecting to win and move his team to the Rose Bowl to play for the national championship. Instead, it was my university’s team — the Alabama Crimson Tide — that left Tebow crying on the sideline as the last of the game ticked away<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I don’t bring up these crushing losses in Tebow’s career to make fun of him. I admire his athletic ability and I admire him far more as a person. He’s tremendously talented on the football field at times, and he’s an even better human being off the field. What I’d like to know is why people can’t let the game be the game and real life be real life.<\/p>\n

Too many Christians today are trying to make God into a spiritual Santa Claus. They want you to believe that if you follow God, everything is always going to go your way. This is just plain bad theology, but it’s been presented to shallow church audiences so much that they eat it up. What’s worse is that many people outside the church have picked up on the same strange belief. (We found out earlier this week that 43 percent of Americans believe that God has been causing Tebow and Denver to win<\/a>.) Because of this, I don’t know that most modern Americans understand what the Gospel really is.<\/p>\n

One of the most egregious examples I’ve ever seen of this came in a Christian-themed sports movie called “Facing the Giants<\/a>” that was very popular in churches about four or five years ago. (You can now watch it spread over 11 segments of 10 minutes each on YouTube<\/a>, if you have the stomach for it.) I happened to be in a test screening for that movie before it came out, and I was disgusted. It was artistic garbage and bad theology.<\/p>\n

The producers of the movie meant well. That’s the sum total of the nice things that I can say about it. Other than that, it’s an absolute disaster. It’s horribly written, horribly acted and directed by someone who might be appropriate to direct commercials for small-market late-night cable. Theologically, it presents a false gospel that pretends that if people just start acting religious, they’ll get all the desires of their hearts. The words never say<\/em> this, but that’s what is shown<\/em> happening.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Real faith has costs. The kind of religion shown in this movie has no cost. You just start acting the part and everything around you becomes rainbows and butterflies. A football team that can’t win a game can become a state championship team. (God even changes the direction of the wind so a luckless boy can make a winning field goal.) This is the kind of schlock that gets people emotional and ready to sign up for baptism and church membership, but it produces empty people who don’t have real relationships with God.<\/p>\n

I don’t believe God really cares whether your team wins a football game. To think so, you have to assume that He doesn’t like the people on the other side. In the movie, the other side is seen as the equivalent of a bunch of cartoon cutouts, especially their coach. We’re apparently supposed to loathe them, not love them.<\/p>\n

In sum, it’s quite simply blasphemous to call this a presentation of the Gospel. This is not<\/em> the Gospel as presented in the Bible. It doesn’t reflect God changing people’s hearts and having them pay a price for following Him. It’s a “me-centered” gospel which is a perfect reflection of our selfish age and our selfish modern church. Almost as bad, the movie is very, very horrible art.<\/p>\n

I think it’s silly to pretend that God directs the fortunes of football teams (or any sports teams) based on whether certain players are good Christians. It’s absurd on the face of it.<\/p>\n

I admire Tebow. I like it when people whose lives and faith I admire do well and when their success can reflect well on the faith we share. But I see no reasonable way to assert that God “fixes” football games. He didn’t rig the games of the previous weeks for Tebow and the Broncos to win. He didn’t rig Saturday night’s game for the Patriots to win. As far as I can tell, God generally lets us play our own games, for better or worse.<\/p>\n

Following God has real costs. The idea that He arranges for you to win football games strikes me as a strange perversion of the important things Jesus spent His ministry teaching us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For weeks, we’ve been subjected to talk about God being responsible for Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos winning football games. If God has been pulling strings for this young man who’s so open about his faith, He must have taken the night off Saturday, as the Patriots destroyed Denver 45-10. This isn’t the first Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9520","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-2ty","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9520"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9542,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9520\/revisions\/9542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}