What's the big deal about Tim Tebow?

This might be the understatement of the year, but there certainly is a lot of talk about Tim Tebow these days. Some talk about him because he has shown great promise despite his unorthodox methods and the ups and downs of the season. Others talk about him for his now infamous prayer stance after plays. Some talk about what a great role model he is; others say his public displays of prayer are--to put it mildly--insincere and that he divides fans the way that Ron Paul divides the Republican party.

In spite of such harsh criticism, what I find interesting is the attention that is being focused on Tebow's intended message. More than one media outlet (and not just Fox News and The Wall Street Journal) has reported the coincidence between Tebow's eye-black (a reference to John 3:16), his total yardage (316), and his average passing distance (31.6) in last Sunday's game. While there will still be some that scoff and judge his motives, according to Sally Jenkins from The Washington Post, "Tebow has never once suggested God cares about football."

But he has suggested that God cares about you.

Stumbling through the dark

I recently read a book a dear friend sent me: Evolving in Monkey Town: How a girl who knew all the answers learned to ask the questions. It's a coming-of-age faith journey that is part To Kill a Mockingbird--in the way the author delightfully weaves Scout-like stories of her childhood into the narrative--and part Christian Living. Author Rachel Held Evans grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, until her family moved to Dayton, Tennessee, when she was thirteen. Dayton is famous for the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, which, for-better-or-for-worse, put Dayton on the map. This was exactly the intention of those who decided to stage this trial and essentially pitted evolution against Christianity. The defendant was a local schoolteacher by the name of Scopes, who admitted to breaking state law by teaching evolution in his classroom. The defense was taken up by agnostic Clarence Darrow, while the prosecution was heralded by fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan. The trial became a spectacle--boasting thousands of spectators--and while Scopes was found guilty, it was the Christian faith that really took a beating.

Evans frames her book with the thesis that faith must evolve in order to survive. She asserts, "Evolution means letting go of our false fundamentals so that God can get into those shadowy places we're not sure we want him to be" (23). While I agree that faith can and should evolve, truth does not. Truth is truth, however "inconvenient" (to filch a phrase from Al Gore). In the history of the Church, truth has not evolved, but our understanding of truth has. The fact that the Church came to reconcile Copernican theory with faith is not because truth changed--the earth had always revolved around the sun--but because the Bible was interpreted in light of this new understanding. Rather than declaring Scriptures that seem to support a Geocentric view of the world irrelevant (after all, don't we still use unscientific words such as sunrise and sunset?), they should be viewed as historical accounts that reflect the scientific understanding of the time. There are those that might suggest that if the Bible is the inspired Word of God, then He should have directed the writers to get their facts straight, but perhaps that misses the point. Our limited understanding of truth does not affect its "trueness." Either something is true, or it isn't; either God is real, or He isn't. The fact that we might hold erroneous beliefs about God or haven't "figured Him out" yet does not negate His existence.

At the same time, sometimes I become incredibly frustrated with my limited understanding or the things in the Bible that appear unclear. I mean, if God wanted us to do something--or not do something else--wouldn't He make it blatantly clear (the Ten Commandments come to mind) so that there could be no argument about it? How are we supposed to sift through moral and sundry laws thousands of years later--now that eating pork is not so iffy--and know which we are supposed to keep and which are to be abandoned? People are protesting at the funerals of gay military with "God hates fags" signs because they think the Bible makes this perfectly clear, yet the aforementioned sundry laws that don't necessarily apply in light of current Board of Health standards. So how are we to know what is wheat and what is chaff?

While I firmly believe that if Christianity is true, it can stand in the face of doubt, reading this book has certainly muddied the waters for me. Evans writes, "Sometimes God uses change in the environment to pry idols from our grip and teach us something new" (22). At times like these, I can stand on one thing that I know to be true: when Jesus was asked about fundamentals, he said, "Love the Lord your God...and love your neighbor as yourself" (Luke 10:27). I'm pretty sure advancements in science and improvements in food handling will never make that one mute.