Basically, I just want people to be happy that they made what they're sure is the right choice, to live their lives according to whichever cherry-picked literary passages they like (just not the stoning-to-death-for-sins ones, please, thanks!), and to quit trying to force it down everyone's throat like a megachurch preacher in an Applebee's men's room. Back me up here, St. Peter!:
"But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect." (1 Peter 3:15)Cool. That sounds pretty reasonable. It sounds here like Peter just wants Christians to live virtuous, Christian lives, and to engage anyone who seeks them out, and to do it with a spirit of what might be best described as "non-dickishness". And truth be told, most Christians - including my parents - live this way. I don't know why the rest of them are so--Wait, what's that, Jesus?
"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:19-20)Fuck. I think we all know that Jesus trumps Peter here the same way the Ace of Spades trumps the "Rules of Poker" card that someone forgot to take out of the deck before the game. So instead of convincing people to maybe come to Jesus by basically being groovy, a lot of Christians tend to feel like they ought to go on extensive obnoxious evangelical roadtrips, with Jesus always riding shotgun. A lot of Christians hear Jesus say things like,
“Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned," (Mark 16:15-16)
and,
and their minds immediately (and rightly) turn to people in countries that aren't Christian - people who might have never even heard of Jesus, much less chosen to worship him - and they (the Christians) are filled with empathy and pity and maybe shame because those poor people are going to get anally penetrated by fireswords after they die, all because they didn't get a chance to high-five Jesus while they were alive. And instead of maybe questioning why Jesus would want to fuck these non-Christians over like that, or why he would give some people a head start/free pass simply because they were raised as Christians -- instead of asking why Jesus would be such an obdurate asshole, or wondering whether a savior like that is worth worshiping, they just accept it and decide to do the right thing given the circumstances: they set about saving as many Jesus-ignorant souls as possible from bullshit damnation (see comments). A lot of Christians do that."I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me," (John 14:6)
Christians like Tim Tebow, inchoate quarterback of the Denver Broncos. Tim Tebow isn't so much modern Evangelical Christianity's spokesman as he is its mascot - a carefully-crafted, cartoonishly-idealized best face for the whole movement. And he happens to stand at the intersection of Evangelical Christianity and professional football - an intersection that I would go a few miles out of my way to avoid because I don't like pickup trucks.All of which makes it sound like I really don't like Tim Tebow, when honestly I don't mind him very much, and actually kinda feel for him (which I'm sure he is grateful for, as a millionaire who is more successful in his field than I will ever be in anything). Still, I am about to talk shit about some things pretty close to Tim Tebow's heart, so I'd like to temper that and prove my non-disdain by first saying a few sorta-charitable interpolatory things about #15:
Sorta-Charitable Thing #1) Tim Tebow is good at football. Whatever you think of his pro prospects, the guy is one of the greatest college football players of all time, and I have to say that he showed more than a small amount of potential in his late-season audition with the Broncos. Unorthodox mechanics aside, he acquitted himself a lot better in his short stint as starter than most rookie quarterbacks do, and better than I thought he would or even could. And though he probably tucks the ball away and runs too quickly and often, he is a powerful and surprisingly slippery runner (even if that slipperiness is attributable to the fact that he is all greased up from five years' worth of jizzbaths from nearly every conservative white Christian male in America). In my decidedly non-expert opinion, Tebow could become a very good NFL quarterback.
Sorta-Charitable Thing #2) He feeds the homeless. The McDonald's on the 16th Street Mall in Downtown Denver might be the saddest McDonald's in Colorado, which would pretty much automatically make it the saddest non-trailer structure of any kind in Colorado. It's not so much the place that hope goes to die as it is the place that dead hope goes. It is a place of bearded schizophrenic fistfights and garbage bags as suitcases, a place where you might walk by a guy scribbling what looks from ten feet away like a bunch of Vitruvian Man/time machine sketches, then while you're standing in line someone might offer you an almost-definitely-stolen iPod for 20 bucks. It smells like antiseptic and despair. Here is what it usually looks like, sort-of:
But not on Monday, December 27th, 2010 - the day after Tebow rallied the Broncos from a 17-0 Halftime deficit to a 24-23 victory over the Houston Texans, capped by a double-pump-fake, six-yard touchdown run in the waning minutes of the fourth quarter. Unbeknownst to me until I was in line for an iced coffee, he had in victory earned a free Big Mac for anyone who presented some plastic keychain thing on Monday. I don't know the specifics of how to get such a keychain thing, but it can't be too hard, because every scraggly-bearded gentleman and nearly-toothless lady within a square mile was now milling about in line brandishing keychain things that were almost never attached to keys or anything else. It was chaos. McDonald's couldn't make Big Macs fast enough. No one was buying anything else, so the ringing-out process consisted of no monetary exchange whatsoever. But the sadness quotient was at an all-time low. There was a fresh energy in the air that belied the stale smell. And it looked more like this:
 |
| God bless you, Tim Tebow. |
Sorta-Charitable Thing #4) And this is the big one, the one that hopefully ties in to what I already said about Evangelical Christians and what I'm about to say about Evangelical Christians: I am not sure how to blame Tim Tebow for being a ridiculous, proselytizing, Bible-verses-on-his-eye-black, fundamentalist Christian. Because Tim Tebow's father is Bob Tebow - famous in his own right as the founder of the Bob Tebow Evangelistic Association, and a man who, in a Sports Illustrated profile of Tim when he was still in college, was quoted as saying,
"When I was out in the mountains in Mindanao, back in '86, I was showing a film and preaching that night. I was weeping over the millions of babies being [aborted] in America, and I prayed, 'God, if you give me a son, if you give me Timmy, I'll raise him to be a preacher.'"...Which is crazy for a lot of reasons. My favorite part is that Sports Illustrated had to change Tebow's verb-that-is-happening-to-babies to "aborted" from something unknown. My best guesses are "killed" and "murdered", but my favorite guesses are still "tickled" and "swaddled" and "taken to the zoo".
But yeah, I can't help but think that with a father like Bob Tebow, Tim never really had much of a choice other than to be a devout Evangelical Christian, the same way that a kid who grows up in a village that is never exposed to Christianity has no chance (again, see comments), according to the evangelists, of getting into heaven without some expository intervention, and the same way Jesus grew up a carpenter because Joseph was a carpenter, even though Joseph was only a carpenter because he figured he should be nailing something. There is a certain inexorability to these things, because whoever has control of you during your formative years gets to for-better-or-worse decide a lot of things about who you are. Of course, ultimately you have the nominal choice to do whatever, but there is no doubt that we are a lot more likely to choose what we have been primed to choose. Christians tend to raise Christians (and Baptists Baptists, and Catholics Catholics, etc.), Muslims tend to raise Muslims, Scientologists tend to raise Scientologists, liberals who are going to hell tend to raise liberals who are going to hell, and tornadoes tend to raze barns. It's the fucking way of things. And the, like, I guess underlying unfreedom of it all makes my head hurt.
So what I'd like to do rather than come to some sort of empathetic conclusion, or rather than just shrug my shoulders and say that life is crazy, is to quit trying to understand and instead just dismissively make fun of Bob Tebow's life's work a little bit. And I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm straight up mocking these people. I'm trying to just mock their crazed ideas, but when your crazed ideas are by your own admission central to who you are as a human being, it's tough to avoid some collateral damage. Anyway, Bob Tebow's life's work is
"to preach the gospel to every person who has never had an opportunity to hear the good news of eternal life in Jesus Christ. Most of the world’s population has never once had the opportunity to hear the only true message of forgiveness of sins by faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone."The current epicenter of the Bob Tebow Evangelistic Association is mostly just the Philippines, a country composed of over 7,000 islands and 92 dickloads of people (where one dickload = one million), making Bob Tebow's task a pretty goddamn daunting one, to say the least.
Good thing he has a lot of volunteer missionaries willing to cross oceans and rivers and climb mountains to spread Jesus' word. A lot of these volunteers are young, Tim Tebowish people, brimming with enthusiasm and megadoses of the holy spirit, and also willing to write little snippets detailing their most memorable evangelistic moments for yearly newsletters - newsletters which I love for their absolute tone-deafness. Every testimonial snippet is great in its own way, but here, in bold, are some of my favorites, arranged from awesome to most-awesome (my mean responses are in plain text):
7) Charles S.: One day at McDonald’s in Thailand, three college students were eating at the table next to us. They spoke English; so, I shared the gospel with them. They were very attentive and even asked some questions. Though none of them openly prayed with me, I will never forget the hunger in their eyes, as I talked about the peace in my heart that Jesus gives and the gift of eternal life. I pray that we can go back to Thailand and preach in the villages. With so few Christians, there is a great need for Christ there.
I'm not sure why this is the experience Charles decided to put in the newsletter, because to me it just seems like he bothered some college kids who were patient enough to engage him, then the students sat and watched blankly as Charles started praying by himself in the middle of a McDonald's. (As someone who has obviously seen some crazy shit in a McDonald's, I can confidently say that seeing this would have ranked right up there with the best of them.) And I think Charles hasn't considered the possibility that the "hunger in their eyes" could be pretty easily attributed to the fact that THEY ARE IN A FUCKING MCDONALD'S.
6) Michael C.: I noticed a couple of Muslim girls in the crowd at one of the schools I preached at. They were easy to spot because of the headdress they were wearing. I thought to myself, “They are about to hear a better message.” As I was preaching the gospel, one of the Muslim girls started to cry. She was hearing a better message - a message of love and hope, a message that changes lives. When the invitation was given, both Muslim girls accepted Jesus as Lord. “For God so loved,” is the best message ever told.
I don't really know what to say here. This story seems kind of unbelievable, but assuming it's true, I guess these girls went home and told their parents that they would no longer be wearing hijab or subscribing to any other inferior-messaged mumbo-jumbo. And I'm sure their parents were like, "That's cool."
5) Courtney S.: One morning, I went to a high school with 1,200 students (…)
While I was speaking, I noticed a boy in a wheelchair. After I finished, the principal
took the microphone and spoke to the students in Tagalog. I walked over to the boy in the wheelchair and found out that he put his trust in Jesus! (...)
And afterward, she ran around to her missionary friends, shouting, "I got a wheelchair one! I got a wheelchair one! Double points!"
Speaking of weird wheelchair fixations, here's Peter Tebow (Tim's older brother):
4) One day, I was preaching at a small elementary school when I noticed a young boy who had to be carried in a makeshift wheelchair because he didn't have the function of his arms or legs. I got to the part in the message where I asked if anyone wanted to put their trust in Christ, and he almost fell out of his chair because he was trying so hard to raise his hand. After the message, I approached him and told him that he would have a perfect body when we got to heaven and that we would have lots of fun.
Man. That's what you told him? Man. I'm not a very politically-correct person, really. But man. You looked at that kid and all you saw was the disability. Then you dangled in front of that little kid the notion of a perfect, functioning body in heaven in exchange for his faith. And then you said you'd have "lots of fun" in heaven, presumably by doing active things like throwing a frisbee across clouds or something. Man.
I like to imagine a heaven where Peter Tebow comes bounding up to the pearly gates in Under Armour, all pumped to just play sports for all eternity, and then God is like, "Hey Peter, do you remember Isaiah 40:4?" And Peter's like, "Sure thing, God! 'Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low,'" and right when he says "low," God goes, "Bam, dickhead!" and Peter loses the function of his arms and legs and has to watch former wheelchair kids do cartwheels for ten years, then run up to him and say that his body will be perfect someday in MegaHeaven. And Peter Tebow will know deep down that MegaHeaven doesn't exist, and he'll cry and cry and cry. That's what I like to imagine. That and What if I were Spider-Man.
3) Angela L.: While playing basketball one afternoon, I met a young man. Through small talk, I found out he was Catholic. I wanted to explain the good news, and before we left, I got the chance. I took a friend with me, and we were able to explain the love of Jesus. He asked Jesus to come into his heart and to be his Lord and Savior!
My word, a Catholic! I've heard of this tribe! Let me tell it of Jesus and His exploits, that this primitive beast might be saved from its flesh-eating ways! But I fear this is a task that cannot be undertaken alone, for the Catholic is not, under any circumstances, to be trusted in a one-on-one situation, lest you find yourself sacrificed at the altar of the Kennedys in hopes of a bountiful potato harvest!
2) James H.: It is an amazing feeling to preach the Gospel and see most of the people place their trust in Christ. I long for the day in heaven when I will see tens of thousands of Filipinos with tears of joy rolling down their faces saying,“Thank you, James, thank you.”
I am not a Bible expert, but I feel like James might not be getting into preaching for the right reasons.
#1 By A Million Miles) Ben R.: As I shared at a school, the roar of the rain on the tin roof was hard to talk over. Out of the crowd came the face of a first grader, who was seemingly innocent but inherently sinful. She cried as I explained sin and the punishment we all deserve. I had nothing to comfort her with on my own; so, I shared the grace of God. It is incredible how God used our feeble English presentations to extend his grace and glory to the uttermost.
This made my brain melt. This is horrifying. This guy scanned the crowd like RoboCop, locked his '80s-graphics crosshairs on a six-year-old girl, and SINNER: CONVERT flashed across his field of vision in big green block letters. So he busted out the most kid-friendly conversion method in his arsenal: describing the eternal damnation in a sea of hellfire that we all, as sinful humans, inherently deserve. And then she cried because she is a child, and children tend to cry when threatened by adult assholes. I guess she stopped crying when he shared God's Hell-Evading Rocketship Of Grace, even though he never actually says that she seemed to feel better, and it seems like he would mention it if she did. Pretty much, he sliced someone open for no good reason, then clumsily stitched up the wound he created, then said something crazy about God's glory. Amen.
...All of which is to say that I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around why people believe the things they believe. I really don't want to hate anybody in a world where I'm not sure to what extent people ultimately have control over how they see things, but I still have to say that whatever crazy interplay of circumstance and brain chemistry and generational conditioning led to the modern Evangelical Christian movement...that interplay is a dumbass.
