Alex and I talk a lot, so here's a little window into one of our heated conversations from this week--
This article (http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,2103742,00.html), an opinion piece in Time magazine by Jon Meacham, does a decent job of chronicling Tebow's impact, but the conclusions and inferences he draws made me really mad, particularly this section:
"This cultural Passion play of red-state piety and blue-state scorn is at once familiar and dispiriting. If Christians like Tebow are going to bear witness so publicly, then they ought not to be surprised when they are talked about in ways that require them to turn the other cheek. To insist that criticism of Tebow--even vulgar criticism--is evidence that American culture is hostile to Christianity is wrongheaded."
Really? Seems like hostility to Tebow's Christianity would be pretty good evidence of American culture's hostility to Christianity.
Rick Reilly's piece in ESPN.com (http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/7455943/believing-tim-tebow) was a much more concrete, clear picture of Tebow himself--Reilly actually spent time with him and so he shares stories of Tebow's selfless acts such as the following:
"Every week, Tebow picks out someone who is suffering, or who is dying, or who is injured. He flies these people and their families to the Broncos game, rents them a car, puts them up in a nice hotel, buys them dinner (usually at a Dave & Buster's), gets them and their families pregame passes, visits with them just before kickoff (!), gets them 30-yard-line tickets down low, visits with them after the game (sometimes for an hour), has them walk him to his car, and sends them off with a basket of gifts."
While most of the media hoopla focuses on the unlikely comebacks of the Broncos or the eerie 3:16 game stats (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/10/john-316-tim-tebow-bible_n_1195221.html), it's worth remembering that Tim Tebow himself is simply a Christian who is trying his best to live his life and do his job to the glory of God, and sometimes that means lots of throwing practice, sometimes it means praying before a game to get his priorities straight, and sometimes it means spending time with terminally ill people. At the end of the day, I think he's doing the right thing.
