Tebow

Ross Douthat on Tim Tebow:

Why is Tim Tebow such a fascinating and polarizing figure? Not just because he claims to be religious; that claim is commonplace among football stars and ordinary Americans alike. Rather, it’s because his conduct — kind, charitable, chaste, guileless — seems to actually vindicate his claim to be in possession of a life-altering truth. Nothing discredits religion quite like the gap that often yawns between what believers profess and how they live. With Tebow, that gap seems so narrow as to be invisible. He fascinates, in part, because he behaves — at least in public, and at least for now — the way one would expect more Christians to behave if their faith were really true.

Over the last decade or so it's become automatic to assume that the insistence upon how much someone goes on tv claiming to be a Christian is in inverse proportion to how they actually ACT as Christians, be it politicians "I love Jesus, I'm the greatest Christian in the world and oh by the way only rich people should have healthcare and why the fuck are we not bombing more countries already?" or athletes thanking God whenever they score a td and then make fun of Tebow before going home and being assholes. I'm sure with the crazy 24/7 media hounding him, eventually Tebow will be caught saying or doing something stupid that allows us to knock him off his pedestal and pat ourselves on the backs "he's no better than us!", but in the meantime it's impossible not to think this guy really believes what he says. I have no problem at all believing that as I type this, Tebow is working the phones trying to save 6 more orphans before he goes to bed, or whatever it is that good, productive people do in a working society. I've always been a Tebow guy, I'd take him on my team in a heartbeat, and I like that his God-Squadiness serves to balance out my own atheism. Only one of us can be right, but there's also only one of us doing anything worth a damn to help out anyone else, so.

(I also like Douthat painting him as the anti-Lebron. Ha! Eff you, Bron Bron!!!!)