I don’t hate Tim Tebow.
I hate the 43 percent of Americans that believe God helps Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos win.
I hate the 62 percent of sportswriters who have leapt onto that bandwagon. I also hate the 31 percent of non-sports media outlets that started flailing their arms and chasing after said bandwagon as it pulled out of the station when Tebow hit wide receiver Demaryius Thomas on an 80-yard touchdown pass to seal an overtime victory against the dreaded Pittsburgh Stealers last Sunday.
I also hate 100 percent of the CBS Sports broadcast team of Jim Nantz and Phil Simms who compromise Tebow’s virtue by shamelessly fellating him during their weekly two-hour gusher of infinitely insightful color commentary.
And since I’m driving the bus on the highway to hell anyway: Any god that intervenes in a professional football game – in direct contradiction to his Ten Commandments – is not a God I want to worship.
A quick refresher on Exodus 20:8-10: Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do thy work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work (10 completions, 21 attempts, 316 yards, 2 touchdowns / 10 carries, 50 yards rushing), thou (Tim?), nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy cattle (which presumably could also be Broncos), nor thy stranger that is within thy gates (or the more than 76,000 fans in attendance last week?)
If God was sending a message through Tebow’s 316 yards passing in that game, was it because a rainbow afro and hand-lettered poster board just wouldn’t cut it anymore? Or was it because the original Rainbow Man was arrested in 1992 and sentenced to 25 years for kidnapping – after a lengthy standoff with police because he believed the Rapture was only six days away? And what about the fact that Tebow rushed for 660 yards in the regular season – only 6 yards shy of the mark of the beast?
But before we exit Exodus, let’s revisit Exodus 20:4-5 – Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not boy down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.
So if God gives a damn about the outcome of NFL playoff games, how does Tebow reconcile playing football every Sunday and distracting God’s followers as they worship craven images on the graven plasma screen? And how would God – or his lapdogs in the sports department or his minions on FOX News – respond if an equally devout Muslim turned his palms upward to the heavens and shouted “Allahu Akbar” after scoring a touchdown? They both worship the God of Abraham after all…
No, I think God has more important things to worry about (Darfur, intractable poverty, cancer, nuclear war, environmental destruction of the earth) than whether one set of multimillionaires beats another set of multimillionaires on national television.
And so, on another Sabbath, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of rooting for the baby-mama-abandoner (New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady) and his evil mastermind head coach, Bill Belicheater – just as I rooted for the rapist quarterback Ben Rothlisberger and the Pittsburgh Steal(a Super Bowl from the Cardinals)ers last week.
Not because I hate Tim Tebow – but because it will bring me great joy to hear the excuses drummed up by 43 percent of Americans when the Great White Hype lets God down.