Tebow’s Narrow Religion
– October 15, 2009
It was only a matter of time before someone wrote a scathing editorial about Florida Gators QB, Tim Tebow’s Christian beliefs.
About the Author
Richard Clark (Co-Founder/Editor-in-Chief) has spent his entire life writing, reading, listening, and playing. He has a Bachelors in Theology from the Baptist College of Florida and has a Master of Arts in Theology and the Arts from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He lives in Louisville, KY where he is the classroom technology manager at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In addition to writing at Christ and Pop Culture, he is also a staff writer for Kill Screen Magazine's website and has written for various other outlets such as Paste, Gamasutra, and Collide.
Email: deadyetliving [at] gmail [dot] com. Twitter: @deadyetliving. Xbox Live: deadyetliving 
“65% of American Christians believe that many religions can lead to eternal life.” Good for Tebow. Two concepts clearly come from this article: Christians like Tebow have the best of those to whom they witness as they believe in Christ as the only way to salvation. A majority of Americans believe that no such evangelism is necessary or polite as salvation can and is apart from Christ and, it seems, pretty widely dispersed.
The question, then, is this: what is the relation between truth and public opinion? If most or all roads lead to everlasting bliss, then its truth content doesn’t need the assent of 65% or more of any population. It is simply true and it is popular opinion that needs to come or stay in line with it. If Tebow is right (as I believe he is), then it once again doesn’t matter as far as truth content what a poll says. Krattenmaker’s article screams for the reader to address that problem better than he did, since he seemed to say that the majority of Americans, if not “right,” certainly by their majority and plurality of opinion should be deferenced to.
Ultimately, Christ must be the foundation for tolerance, not one who is excluded or minimized because of tolerance. That doesn’t mean people couldn’t be insulted. The Gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing. But instead of having tolerance exclude genuine Christian faith, we should ground our respect for other’s beliefs (in not discriminating or abusing them) in the work and message of Christ. He died to reconcile us to him and to each other. And only he can and will forcefully bring the unwilling to bow down and confess his lordship.
The subtle flaw I see in the USA Today’s article’s thinking is that somehow an athlete represents the people. He (or she, in other cases) doesn’t. The athlete plays sports, and has a job because people will pay to watch, or will watch on TV and sit through the ads, or whatever. It’s ridiculous to think that an athlete can’t espouse views that other “normal” people can espouse… unless the author doesn’t actually think it’s okay for you and me to believe what Tebow believes either, which is quite possible–and problematic.
Pat, I agree completely. To require athletes to “represent” their audience is just ludicrous on every level.