But the public division over Tebow is stunning. His fans love him; his enemies hate him.
They hate him because he’s a public advocate for Christianity. He bows in prayer before games. He leads prayers with members of the opposing team after games. He’s a religious class act. And this freaks members of the left out. In fact, people began tweeting me during the Broncos game about how much Tebow irritated them. “Tim Tebow sucks cuz he brings God into football,” wrote one poster. “Just throw the damn ball & shut up.”
That basically summed up the problem. The goal of the left is to make religion private and irreligion public. That’s why we have a president who is considered urbane for leaving God out of a day specifically dedicated to God, and a famous quarterback considered controversial for openly mentioning Jesus.
If the left has its way on this, America is in serious trouble. Religion has always been the basis for our republic; as John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Rejecting religion leaves us adrift from our principles. In fact, it leaves us in Obamaland.
In one interview prior to his election, Obama was asked by a reporter whether he believed in sin. He said yes. What, the reporter asked, did sin mean to him? “Being out of alignment with my values,” he said.
Such narcissism is dangerous and troubling. And that’s why it was worth mentioning. That’s also why I root for Tim Tebow now, much more ardently than I did before. We need more Tim Tebows for our country to recover its sense of balance– and far fewer Barack Obamas.
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SHAPIRO: "The goal of the left is to make religion private and irreligion public."
EXCEPT when it comes to Islam, of course.
God is Christian but Barack had islam and allah in his mind and could not mention because of election year 2012.
Nice post, Ben; calm, understated, and absolutely true. I agree about Tim, and his place in the NFL and America. I recall a similar firestorm over a few pro-life TV ads he and his mother filmed; pitiable.
One minor quibble, coming from a Christian. The goal of the Left is to replace true religion with its own. Evangelicals often get ridiculed for preaching "a relationship" with God,as opposed to a religion which distances man from His creator.
But Adam and Eve walked with God, Abraham was called friend by God, and Jesus told his students that soon he would call them friends as well.
Obama does not know God, and Tim does; that is simply fuel to the fire for so many of your Twitter friends, as both the TaNakH and Brit HaDashah claim.
What's your evidence for claiming that Obama doesn't know God, but Tebow does?
His definition of sin is pretty solid evidence to begin with, but my own conclusion comes from the race back in '08 and his response to the furor generated by his association with Jeremiah Wright (And no, I do not take him for a pastor, or any such thing).
Remaining in that place for 20 years, picking him as his spiritual advisor (And then dumping him when the heat got too high), and ultimately claiming to be completely ignorant of Wright's racism and other anti-American rhetoric tagged him as an inveterate liar and hypocrite in my mind. For me Wright is a heretic.
As for Tebow's knowing God, my evidence is a good deal thinner, but the media's focus on his faith, and the pro-life ads he filmed with his mother, strongly point in that direction.
I've never met either man, so I can only go on what I've seen, and this is how it looks to me.
What is your evidence that I've misjudged either one?
Speaking generally, the Left has its own morality. Not one that I care for but it is a moral code. They are willing to punish apostates and are merciless toward heretics and infidels. To them, it is not "What Would Jesus Do?" but more like "What would Comrade Jesus Do?". I can't do anything about how they think but I watch them the same way I watch the Taliban.
I like Tim Tebow because he is an underdog, who the "experts" claim is not talented enough to be an NFL quarterback.
I sort of admire a person who exceeds expectations rather than someone who constantly fails to meet them.
What is surprising is that here is a World Leader and he disregards G_d. I can't imagine thinking you can get away with that for very long. He pays lip service and claims to be a Christian and then denigrates it by claiming his description of "values" is the moral code that controls his heart rather than the values that transcend any one person.
Psalm 14:1-3 The fool says in his heart "There is no G-D." It goes on to say "The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if any act wisely, that seek after G_d."
It is obvious that if he measures his nature against the "values" he has conjured he clearly does not "Seek after G-D."
Many of our Founding Fathers were far more contempuous of religion, and unlike Barack Obama, there's actual letters and documentation for it.
Do me a favor and provide a quotation from one of those "contemptuous" Founding Fathers showing their contempt for religion, will you?
"I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology." Jefferson
"Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites." Jefferson
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus…will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." Jefferson to Adams
"Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind." Adams
"Indeed, Mr. Jefferson, what could be invented to debase the ancient Christianism which Greeks, Romans, Hebrews and Christian factions, above all the Catholics, have not fraudulently imposed upon the public?" Adams
Can you imagine any politician today with the guts to say any of this? Note: they do not denigrate the Creator–but religion was quite clearly to them a bugaboo to be carefully managed. Kind words for certain audiences, candid words when in like company.
Yeah, we all know about Jefferson, but you are pretty clearly misreading Adams.
Two does not make many, at least not in my math book.
And anyway, anyone with a proper knowledge of God alreay knows that "religion" is opposed to Christ, no matter the scriptures or vestures…
The first and third quotes could justifiably be said to be contemptuous of the Christian religion, so there's two.
The second quote is about coerced uniformity and uses Christianity as an example. It expresses no contempt for religion, but is critical of church practices.
The fourth quote is about the secular nature of the state governments and is not contemptuous of religion, in fact, the quotation makes no reference to religious belief at all.
The fifth quote is drafted in that 18th-Century syntax that the modern mind finds confusing (or at least my mind does), but it appears to say that original Christianity, that practiced in the first centuries after Christ, has been debased by pagan and Jewish frauds, and that of modern Christian sects. It is not clearly contemptuous of even Christianity, much less religion in general.
So yes, you have two quotes by Jefferson, one Founding Father, long known to all of us as a Deist, a believer in the mechanistic, Newtonian, clockmaker theory of God, who attended church regularly anyway, but not more than one Founding Father.
Just a question here Stephen, why are you writing G_D instead of GOD? We're not banded from writing God's name.
Tim Tebow goes down on one knee and prays when good things happen for his team in games. People get upset about that. Why don't they get upset when a player scores a touchdown and does his idiosyncratic dance in the end zone? Some of those little dances are far weirder, annoying, time-consuming, and imposed on the public in a far more extensive way than Tim Tebow's sideline prayers. People only notice it at all because Tim Tebow is currently in the public eye, and people watch him.
As the U.S. Supreme Court held in the case of Cohen v. California, a First Amendment case where a person wore a jacket in a public place with the words "F**k the Draft" written on it, if people find what is done to be offensive, let them avert their eyes.
Because praying for a game outcome is just as ostentatious and absurd as a touchdown dance.
Oh, I'd say praying is much LESS ostentatious than a touchdown dance. Less ostentatious and FAR LESS absurd. Only someone with some sort of unresolved grudge against religion would say differently.
Really? Do you seriously think God cares for the outcome of a football game, or awards games to teams with the greatest amount of faith? That is the HEIGHT of both absurdity and hubris, to think God would care.
Whereas scoring a touchdown is a thrill which might make a person pull a pen from his sock and autograph the game ball.
Listening to Kurt Warner, I would suggest you haven't been paying attention.
Besides, far as I can tell, Tebow prays whether he wins or loses.
But, to answer your question, yes, God does care. Does this mean that He "awards" victory only to those who pray right, or more? Pretty hard to say, don't you think, especially considering how many teams seem to have "prayers" on both sidelines.
It is not hubris when one takes God's word at its face that He does indeed concern Himself with out petty issues. The entire Bible is full of such things. The idea that God cares about certain issues and not others is utterly foreign to the Bible. The misapprehension you are suffering is thiinking that we humans fully grasp just what God is doing minute to minute within our individual and corporate circumstances.
God's caring about us does not in the least mean that we get what we want every single time there is some conflict to resolve.
If you have difficulty reconciling such things in your own mind, I suggest finding a Bible and reading it.
I don't know what God cares about, and neither does anyone else. It is the height of arrogant presumption to assert that God does not care about some particular thing, such as a football game. God is immanent and omnipresent. But since believing Christians believe that God's "eye is on the sparrow," it seems understandable that a football player might pray for some benefit in a game. In the Catholic high school I attended, our football team (and basketball team, and even for Heaven's sake the rifle team) prayed before every competition, praying for such things as to do one's best and not let the others down, and so on.
My conception of God is not anthropocentric, so "caring" is something I haven't, in my human imagining of what God is like, yet reconciled with an impersonal God. But people far more intelligent than you or I have insisted that even if God is a force that is beyond human comprehension, He must nevertheless care about humanity in all its aspects. Personally I don't know, but I guess I find that believable. Obviously you think it's all a myth. Fine. Believe as you like and allow others to believe as they like. Remember Pascal's Wager.
Last tiome I checked the game was about winning. Philidelphia is 3 and 8 and I suppose Vince Young and Mike Vick are great QBs eh? A good quarterback is a guy who wins. TeBow will keep winning and Whitlock can go cry in his soup.
Obama is Lucifer so it is impossible for him to mention God. He is an evil person with no redeeming qualities.
I love what Tebow is doing. The guy is a winner on and off the field.
You are Lucifer.
Wrong Einstein, I am Spartacus.
Snappy comeback, there Jimbo; hope you didn't have an aneurysm…
I love Tim Tebow for his faith and trust in the Lord. There's another player that is a very fine Christian boy and shows it and says it, is Cam Newton. He's from Auburn and prayed with the players and taught the bible to children every week. Now Cam is playing for the Carolina Panthers, he is still giving thanks to the Lord for his ability to play, and saying to God give the glory. So like Tebow we have some ver ygood role models coming up in sports. I only wish there were more.
So, you people all realize that George W. Bush only mentioned God in 7 of his 8 thanksgiving speeches, right? And you also realize that your worship of Tim Tebow is idolatry, correct? Ok, have fun being lunatics.
When you attempt to pimp God, one day He will demand his cut. tbow isn't the only christian or doer of good deeds in the nfl.
Nobody is idolizing Tebow. That is left for those who like Obama.
This guy posts a tweet whining about Obama and watches a football game. Then he writes some vacuous article about both, picks up his paycheck and everyone nods.
FPM is the easiest gig in the world.
Why don't you crawl out of your parent's basement and go occupy Wall ST.
I agree with Shapiro. BUT…as I think we would all have to begrudgingly admit, there have been many vile things done by people who publically professed to be devout Christians. There are a lot of people out there who are very turned off by the hypocricy of many supposedly devout Christians, and so they take that anger out on people like Tebow. Plus, I think there should be a healthy skepticism about people like Tebow. I want to believe he's as good a person as he appears, but I also thought Tiger Woods was a great role model (works ethic, husband, father, etc.) and look what happened there.
Durrr, Obama can’t be a militant atheist, radical liberation theologian, and secret Muslim ALL AT THE SAME TIME.
Pick one and stick with it or you’ll look stupid. Well, slightly more stupid…
Normally hate or jealous is caused by the feeling of inferiority. Apparently the left couldn't stand to see that Christians have higher moral value and alway rejoicing and would want to raise attack to bring Christians down so Christians may have miserable lives like the letf!
It's statements like "Christians have higher moral value" that makes alot of folks ridicule Christians. Many Christians have outstanding virtue and others have have the "moral value" of rats. It's INDIVIDUAL works and deeds that determine moral value, not some collectivist label that blanketly covers everyone who calls themself a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist or Atheist.
trickyblain, I'd love to hear and discuss your thoughts on a small book I would have you read. It is called "The Abolition of Man" by C.S. Lewis and covers this topic of morals, values, individual or collective, etc.
Seriously, I've noted before how you touch on this issue and I’ve wanted to respond but could never hope to put it into words as Lewis does. I think you'll enjoy it. BTW, he WAS an atheist out to prove Christianity wrong when he started this journey. Let me know when/if you read it. Thanks.
Dude, we could all learn a lot from your composed demeanor and non-confrontational style. I said it before, but one of the most striking aspects of your wisdom old buddy is that you DON'T profess to have all the answers.
Another of my favorites is GK Chesterton, who had a similar gift for keeping grave matters light.
Actually, I know many Christians like yourself who love being Christian because it allows them to feel smug and superior. The label itself–just like grouping people into "the left" doesn't mean a damn thing, and only a fool considers the outer trappings and "testimony" proof of virtue.
It was President Abraham Lincoln who made Thanksgiving a national holiday, in 1863, not George Washington.
Unlike Barack Obama, Thomas Jefferson was fairly contempuous of religion, though like many of his peers he recognized its value in maintaining social order and inculcating virtuous values.
The fact is, if our president were as irreligious as Jefferson and many others of his place and time, you'd be riding him on a rail. But no articles bemoaning Jefferson or the other Founders who had little personal use for religion. Instead, people with nothing better to do comb Obama's Thksgvg speech for a reference to God and speculate like twits over his "real beliefs."
"virtuous values"? Come up with that on your own too?
Do you not get it; how does it make sense for one to be contemputous of religion while simultaneously recognizing that it can make people virtuous? If it does in fact lead to people being good, why does it make sense to scorn it?
Jefferson was too smart for his own good, beside being just as much a hypocrite as Obama. If there is one thing TJ had in his favor it is that he at least admitted that he despised the christian churches and the "scum" clergy who led them. Obama is simply a coward.
Or are you just upset that a NEWS blog is not doing any current events articles on a man who's been dead for nearly 200 years?
What "real beliefs?" I doubt Obama knows what a "real belief" is. To the best of my knowledge, one didn't have to be a baptized Christian to be a member of the
Trinity United Church in Chicago. All that was required(and probably still is) was/is
the patience(read: sympathy) to sit through 20 years of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Sunday rants. Obama has also, not surprisingly,given numerous indications of his sympathy for Islam. And who are "the other Founders who had little personal use for
religion?"
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Tim Tebow praying with the opposing teams is not unique.
Several players from both NFL teams will gather on the field, kneel and pray immediately after the game.
A lot of times a camera at the game will pan over these players while they are holding hands and praying
Rom 14:11 It is written: " 'As surely as I live,' says the Lord, 'every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.' " 12 So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God. It's time for Obama to recognize the real God before its too late. Pray for the man.
but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he knows their day is coming.
Psalm 37:13
If you don't repent Obama your day is coming.
The Left will not stop until it replaces Christianity and Judiasm with moral relativism.
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you look like an idiot when you try to find political and religious agendas behind things when they're simply not there. it was a good speech don't take away from it by acting like a dumbass
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