Sports and faith often intersect as well as boy and girl at a
middle school dance: awkwardly and embarrassingly. There's a lot of faith and
courage, but the result is usually more notorious than it is memorable.
Take the John 3:16 guy often seen at
sporting events.
I am in no way doubting his faith, nor the
courage (or complete lack of shame) it takes to pull this off. But where he and
poster-holders intersect with sports ends up being a dance with two-left-feet,
and not because of the sports side of the tango.
When we are told in Ephesians to
"make the most of every opportunity" (Ephesians 5:16) I just can't
shake the feeling that these sort of displays are NOT what the Apostle Paul
meant. Typically the "John 3:16 Guys" are making the most of the
spotlight, not the opportunity.
The difference is this:
*the spotlight is that fading moment, everyone
has it at least once, some longer than others
*the opportunity is typically a person or a small
group of people whom we actually interact
with
A glaring celebrity instance of all of this is Tim Tebow and
"Tebowing."
"Tebowing" was an incredible
cultural (mostly internet, but also in the office) phenomenon that became a
focus of Tebow's Christianity. His one-knee-kneeling posture with fist on
forehead became such a hit that even a pretzel can do it.
Even tebowing.com is a real thing lending photographs of people
Tebowing at weddings, at the Antarctic circle and even at Machu Pichu.
If that was all there was to Tim Tebow's
faith, i would place him in the realm of the John 3:16 guys, an awkward
Christian participant in sports culture, where we are not sure to commend him
for his time in the spotlight or shake our heads at the fact that our faith was
reduced to assumptions about him praying for his team to win over the other
team.
But Tim Tebow, fortunately, is a man who
makes the most of every opportunity. While shrugging off the fame he got for Tebowing, he quietly
always hosted a family to every game he played, home or away. Often times there
was a child with some sort of disability in the family. He would host them for
the weekend, paying their way, giving them tours, taking them out to dinners.
Then, win or lose, whether he played or was benched, he then would take the
family out for dinner after the games as well, placing a cherry on top to their
already once-in-a-lifetime experience.
So what's the point?
The point is that Tebowing has barely made
an impact on my faith and life (except for those times I have Tebowed
before a crucial point in a game of ping-pong or Foosball... and then won). But it
really impacted me to see and read of him doing something so sincere with his
time and wealth. I'll tell you who his faith really impacted though…
Those families who were in need of a pick-me-up.
In the posts to come i will take a look at
three different circumstances this plays out in:
*as a fan
*as a participant
*and i'll take a stab at "a letter to
a Christian professional athlete"
and try to explain how we often lose our
greatest evangelistic platform in sports when we consider them only worthy of
an evangelistic opportunity.
That platform: loving sports in its right
way.
More to come. Stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment