David McElroy

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 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.

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.

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.) Because of this, I don’t know that most modern Americans understand what the Gospel really is.

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More and more, we’re living in an age of digital books. I can’t say that I quite object to having books on a Kindle or an iPad, but I also can’t say that I embrace the trend away from “real” paper books. There’s something about the smell and feel of books that a digital file will never capture, at least not for me.

Partly because of how strongly I feel about books, this animation called “The Joy of Books” is a thing of real beauty to me. It presents books as having lives and character of their own. If you’ve ever had a favorite bookstore or library, you might find this short animation as magical as I do, both in its meaning and in its artistic whimsy.

Thanks to a reader for sharing it with me. It’s worth sharing — just as good books are worth sharing.

An Indiana mother is upset that her 14-year-old son keeps getting into trouble with the law, so she’s trying a new tactic. She shamed her son this week by requiring him to stand on a street corner wearing a sign proclaiming his transgressions. (See video below.)

Is this effective punishment that might turn a child around? Or is it small-minded shaming that will only damage him? Or something else?

Dynesha Lax of Fort Wayne, Ind., says that the juvenile court system was of no use in helping to get her son under control, so she believes extreme measures were called for. The boy has been convicted of multiple felonies and Lax claims the court system hasn’t done anything to effectively punish him.

“He constantly chooses to break the law,” Lax said. “I’ve had my son in the [juvenile court] system and he ends up getting nothing but community service. So today I decided that if he wants attention, we are going to get him some attention.”

Some people who saw the situation called police to report Lax, although it’s not clear what law they believed Lax was breaking. Still, it’s understandable that people would be uncomfortable with this sort of public shaming of a minor.

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