Tim Tebow and Me*

By now, unless you’ve been locked in a vault the last few months, you’ve heard of Tim Tebow, the Denver Broncos’s quarterback—that guy whose last name has become a verb, whose person has become synonymous with overt displays of piety. Maybe you admire or idolize him, in which case, I don’t need to convince you to keep reading. But maybe you’re sick of hearing about him. If so, I beg you to indulge me.

I once was a little like Tebow, so I now find myself in the odd and distinctly uncomfortable position of both defending and criticizing him. The main thing I’d like to say to everyone on both “sides” is: calm down. He is neither some fantastic miracle man nor an unbelievably obnoxious religious person. He’s just a young man with passionate convictions.

I emphasize “young” for a reason. I don’t know about you, but I remember being young. It wasn’t so long ago (okay, twenty years, but it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long). And when I was in my twenties, I thought I knew a great deal. I was ready to change the world and was idealistic enough to think that I could do it.

At the time, I was attending a Presbyterian-affiliated college in the Pacific Northwest called Whitworth College—now Whitworth University—in Spokane, Washington. Our campus population was heavily populated with P.K.’s (preachers’ kids) and was very influenced by the evangelical movement (which is not the same as the fundamentalist movement, though people often conflate the two). Many of the students who were believers, including myself, were very passionate about their faith but not literal in their biblical interpretation.

How did this translate, you might wonder? Well, almost everyone bowed their heads over meals in the student cafeteria. There was some social activism—a protest against Apartheid, for example; cafeteria-supported fasts, where the proceeds went to this or that cause or charity, etc. I would say that the majority of students regularly attended church. In addition to having resident assistants in the dorms, we had resident chaplains, who counseled peers and ran weekly Bible studies. Our infirmary didn’t prescribe or give out contraceptives, and alcohol was banned on campus. Of course, you could still go to an off-campus doctor for the former, and if you didn’t live in a dorm, you could drink all you wanted. There were obvious and not-so-obvious pluses and minuses about this set-up.

How all of that translated for me was this: my best friend and I, when there was no Ash Wednesday service at the chapel one year, performed our own private rite with ashes she’d gathered from a dorm fireplace (one of my favorite memories); I begged my father to allow me to go on a mission trip to Pakistan, and he (wisely) refused; I dated a couple of guys with whom I had pretty chaste relationships; I became a resident chaplain; at one point, I lay in bed for a full twenty-four hours, paralyzed with the fear that I was lesbian (much later confirmed). I also got a great education.

At the time, I thought I was going on to seminary, and for two summers I worked at a nondenominational evangelical church in Richland, Washington, home of the former Hanford Site, a facility instrumental in producing plutonium for the first nuclear bombs and, reputedly, now one of the most contaminated. My little anti-nuke self hadn’t realized this before I went there, and I wonder if knowing would have changed my mind. In any case, I went.

The first summer, I lived with the minister and his family, so I wasn’t confronted much by the politics of the situation. I did, however, sit through an interesting presentation by a lay person in the church about the ethics of nuclear energy. His discussion was fascinating and pretty compelling, I admit. Even if I wasn’t thoroughly convinced, I had a much better understanding of how someone who believed differently from me was thinking about this topic. I essentially figured out that good people can hold very different views from me, which was a great thing to learn.
 
The second summer, I lived with a middle-aged couple from the church. The first night in their house, at dinner, the husband told me that he was at work on the Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as the “Star Wars” Plan. My jaw must have dropped because he then began defending the program, telling me how their research had taught them many useful things, even if none of it was ever used in the way that had been proposed. I was not fully reassured, and I had that uneasy feeling you get when you know you’re about to be taught a lesson.

The wife was an amazing cook, but I learned to stay out of the house while she worked in the kitchen. Not because the scents were overpowering and hunger-inducing (they were) but because she listened to a talk radio station that left me silently spluttering if I happened to be in an adjoining room. This was the summer of the Oliver North trial, and the station she listened to was adamantly pro-Ollie. In absenting myself, I managed to postpone the reckoning I faced weeks later when this couple and their friends sat in front of the TV one evening cheering on Oliver North. I will tell you: I was upstairs and apoplectic. I realized what I’d gotten myself into and wondered how I could accept the church’s money when I finished work in August (I was so in denial and naïve that it was just sinking in that that “scholarship” was mostly nuclear-facility-generated). I knew the people I’d lived and worked with were good people; they were doing what they felt was right. But I also knew I had compromised myself. I’d like to say I turned the money down, but I didn’t. I knew I’d made a mistake, but I was young, and I vowed to do better next time.

No matter what your politics may be, please understand that that is not the point. I tell this story to illustrate what one might do when one is young, how one can unwittingly stumble onto a stage one is not fully prepared for, armed with faith and conviction.

Obviously, Tim Tebow has a more visible stage than I had or ever hope to have. But I understand his from the perspective described. I say this not so much in regard to his kneeling thing but about something more serious, to my mind. Remember when Tebow was still a Florida Gators quarterback, and he met up with James Dobson, the head of Focus on the Family? As a result of their joining forces, Tim and his mother produced a Super Bowl commercial, the end of which referred viewers to Dobson’s site and an anti-abortion message.  No matter what you might think of that, I believe the ensuing firestorm had an impact: when he was recently encouraged to endorse a candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential contest, Tebow refused. (Score one for carefully monitoring one’s influence?)

I’m not saying that anyone should not or cannot be held responsible for their choices. But maybe we need to cut Tebow some slack. He is undeniably trying hard to do good in the world, whether you agree with his actions or not. When he talks about his faith, he quite literally shines. And he has inspired his teammates to pull off some amazing comebacks. He’s forced some of us to talk about what we believe and how best to express it. He’s sparked some backlash and discussions about what prayers the Divine cares about (football? Well, personally, I hope the Divine cares a little about football because I’m a fan but also because I’ve prayed about such “trivial” things as tests, dates, that child that won't go to sleep, etc.).

If Tim Tebow were my son, I’d be plenty proud of him—what mother wouldn’t love a big, healthy, handsome, talented boy? I’d probably have some quiet conversations with him about his P.D.A (public displays of adoration), but he might not listen to me, which would be fine. Even though I still refer to myself as a Christian, I doubt I fit anyone else’s idea of one. But I’m just stubborn enough to refuse to let other people define it for me. Why should I? People have struggled for centuries to clarify what Christianity means and will clearly continue to do so. I place a premium on personal growth and change. I figure that if I don’t question orthodoxy, my faith risks becoming a fetish, so I’m always in a process of tearing my beliefs apart and putting them back together. I guess you could say I’m a tinkerer.

So it’s as a tinkerer that I worry about Tim. He likes to kneel and testify—so be it. I’d defend him in just the same way I’d defend someone’s wearing a yarmulke, a head scarf, an abaya, or for that matter, a Gingrich-slogan T-shirt, a pink-triangle, or Black Power colors. But what if Tim Tebow decides not to kneel, not to testify every time he has a microphone? Will the very public nature of his faith become a litmus test for him? What about for other Christians? What if other aspects of Tim's belief system change? Will we allow him to transform? Will he allow himself? I pray that it is so.

*I know the grammar of the title sucks, but I chose the vernacular on purpose.