The only highlight of my NFL-viewing last Sunday (keep in mind, I’m from Atlanta) was watching The Pass—Tebow to Thomas in the Broncos’ stunning overtime victory over the highly favored Steelers. It helped that former Georgia Tech great Demaryius Thomas caught the pass and outran all those defenders (I’m a Tech alum).
Skye Jethani has a worthwhile post on Tebow—and, specifically, Tebowing—over at HuffPost. As I’ve blogged and preached before, I see nothing wrong with Tebow’s public prayer gesture. Jethani clears up the meaning of “hypocrisy”: As he points out, Jesus doesn’t prohibit public prayer. Tebow’s praying, he writes, would only be a problem if Tebow were doing it to win the favor of others. More often than not, Tebowing would seem to have the opposite effect, given how outspoken some of his critics have been.
Besides, I haven’t heard even Tebow’s fiercest critic complain that he’s faking it.
But what if he were faking it—at least a little? Don’t all of us Christians fake it?
Do our hearts not condemn us as frauds the moment we call ourselves “Christian”? None of us, after all, has the heart of Jesus. None of us trusts God the way Jesus did. None of us loves with Christ-like love. We know we ought to. At our best we earnestly desire to. But even at our best we’re failures and phonies. In spite of this, God loves us, forgives us, and gives us the power to change. Christian living is an ongoing process of change.
At some point, on the other side of resurrection, we will fully become what we say we are now. Until then, it’s O.K. to fake it a little. It’s O.K. to bear witness to Christ’s love, even as we fail so often to live it out.
January 11, 2012 at 2:19 pm
Thanks for sharing and God bless you. I wrote a piece on Tim about two months ago: http://scottsholar.com/2011/11/18/not-ashamed-of-the-gospel/