Timothy of Florida

     Well, I was sorry last night to learn that Tim Tebow, unquestionably the most beloved young man in the state of Florida, will not be leading his Gators to a third national championship game.  I am breaking with long family tradition in feeling sorry; we are Penn State fans, and adhere to a certain hierarchy of hate, according to which Florida has long been pretty low down on the list -- or near the top, depending on how you want to look at it.

     Nevertheless, I am fascinated by the Tim Tebow phenomenon.  It is true that he is a talented quarterback, and anybody who brings two national championships home is going to be treated like a prince.  But sports allegiances do not come within a hundred miles of explaining why people love him so much.  No doubt there are visitors to this site who can fill in the details, but from what I gather (and sports reporters these days are notoriously unwilling to write about such things, as any number of people like Kurt Warner and Albert Pujols will testify), Tebow is the homeschooled son of Christian missionaries.  He won't ever be President of the United States, because he was born in the Philippines, where his father still works, and where he himself has gone many times to assist as a missionary.  His mother apparently was advised by Filipino doctors to abort him, because the placenta had gotten detached; they told her that the child would certainly die, and that her own life would be in grave danger.  I am not sure of the specifics of the medical situation.  Suffice it to say that she turned the doctors down and put her life, and her baby's life, in the hands of God.  Timothy Tebow was born, rather long of limb and skinny, but healthy.  His body shows no signs of ever having been undernourished: he is six feet five inches, upwards of 250 pounds.

     It seems that Tim Tebow heard the call of the missionary early on in life; also heard the call to play football.  The two callings were united in his childhood hero, Florida quarterback Danny Wuerffel, who went on to play a while in the NFL, and then who established something called Desire Street Ministries, for the destitute (and the often criminal) in New Orleans.  Wuerffel, not coincidentally, is a devout Christian.  Tebow possesses that drive to excel that characterizes all great athletes, but what distinguishes him is a strange hunger to love others; as if he could not get enough of making people happy.  He leads his teammates, or as many of them as are willing to go, on a run roundabout the stadium before a home game, to greet people, shake their hands, wish God's blessings upon them, or just thank them for being there.  Men slap him on the back, boys shout, girls cry, "We love you, Timmy!" -- and for all of that, there seems not to be the trace of arrogance in him; he is a big kid, in love with God, and therefore in love with life and people.  The fans apparently have taken to imitating his eyeblack: he always wears a patch under his eyes, with a different scripture verse noted upon it each game (Hebrews 12:12 against arch-rival Florida State).  There's a great picture of him in what looks like a leather imitation of ancient armor -- he's got a beaming smile, because he's Goliath in a little church production, and a six-year-old boy is about to bring him down.

     He says that his four priorities are God, family, academics, and football, in that order.  And because they are in that order, while he may not be the greatest football player graduating from college this year, he has certainly touched more lives than any other player has, by far; and not only touched the lives, but brought perhaps something infinitely more valuable than a national championship in football.  He has -- I don't think this is an exaggeration -- been the means whereby they have been reminded of the holy; he has therefore brought them hope.

     Now this is exactly what the secular world cannot do.  It can, with some considerable inefficiency, bring people food and medicine.  It can run families into the ground and destroy communities, replacing them with the wraiths called mass education and mass entertainment.  It is very good at that.  It cannot bring hope; in fact it is almost the definition of secularism, that there is no hope to bring, other than a modest amelioration in one's physical conditions, before death.  It does not plunge into the worst of all slums, the dilapidated heart of a man or woman steeped in evil, to say, "You are of incomparable worth; I love you; we are brothers, because we have one Father."  That is what Danny Wuerffel does.  It is what Tim Tebow will likely go on to do.  And note the power of one good young Christian -- who is the light whereby a stadium filled with strangers becomes, for a few fleeting moments, a society.

     Why should it not be so?  "I praise you, Father in heaven, and give you glory," said Jesus, "for you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned of the world, and have revealed them unto babes."  God reveals Himself to the innocent and the humble, not because He is playing a kind of ironical trick upon the learned -- as I used to think.  It is because God by His very nature is, though glorious, also innocent and humble.  Abraham Joshua Heschel, in Man Is Not Alone, makes the point again and again.  The deities of the Greeks were passionate about their status on Olympus, and which nymph to ravish.  The Lord is passionate about widows and orphans.  The Lord appears to Moses in a thorn bush -- as if to say, "I am in the smallest things."  So he appears to Elijah, in the still small voice.  That is the Lord's glory.  He is everywhere to be found, says Heschel, except in arrogance.  Mainly he is to be found in love, for ubi amor est, ibi est oculus, says the mystic Richard of Saint Victor.  Mr. Tebow may or may not read such things; it hardly matters.  He knows Jesus.

     One last point.  Thomas Merton wrote once that the history of the world is led by great saints and great sinners.  Let all the young people glancing at this post take heed.  I am not young anymore, and it has taken me many years just to acquire sufficient wisdom to appreciate, as from afar, the goodness and the saintly courage of that young quarterback.  Imagine, just imagine, if there were a hundred such, or a thousand.  Imagine young men and women, with the beauty and the ardor of Christian faith, touching a college, a school, a street, a home.  Merton recalled World War II and wondered whether -- and he wasn't being arrogant; his point was that all Christians should have wondered the same thing -- it might have been averted if only he had been holier.  You Christians who are young, never understimate the power of the goodness that Jesus has planted in you, to bring hope to souls in despair, and light into a dark and silly world.

Comments

[DBP+]

From a proud alumnus: GO GATORS!

[Kevin in Texas]

Great post, Professor Esolen!

As a 1995 UF alumnus, I'm a passionate Gator fan and a HUGE supporter of Tim Tebow. With that in mind, just two small corrections first to your post, neither of which affect the points you so validly and graciously made: Tim measures "only" 6'3" and he actually wore Heb 12:1-2 on his eyeblack last week (which I happened to think was a more appropriate set of verses!)

I was at UF with Danny Wuerffel and got to meet him a couple of times, but now live in Dallas and have never had the fortune to meet Tim. Both men are truly humble men of deep and lasting faith, as evidenced by all of their behind-the-scenes work, "walking the walk", as we often say. I sometimes read comments about Tim that are filled with rage and anger, esp. at his Christian faith, and after last night's devastating SEC championship loss, a very gratuitous and unfortunate shot of Tim crying on the sidelines was blown up on the Cowboys' jumbotron screen and shown on TV sets across the nation. Now people are taking all sorts of foul and nasty potshots at him online and in conversations, and universally they all seem to misunderstand that Tim was not crying out of being a "sore loser", but crying in disappointment in himself for not leading his team the way he felt he should have. He was extremely gracious after the game with Nick Saban especially, and you'll NEVER heara single coach in the country, nor a sportscaster who has ever met Tebow personally, say an unkind word about him. He's the real deal, and that shines through in a world of college and pro sports that's filled with narcissist personalities and their sycophantic hangers-on. I've heard from people who, like you, dislike the FL Gators immensely, but who think Tim Tebow is perhaps the greatest role model that college football has ever seen, and many who have taken their children to meet him and see what true class and sportsmanlike spirit in a college athlete looks like.

All of that said, Tebow is humble enough to realize that he has nothing that the Lord did not grant him, and that therefore he has tremendous responsibility to give back to others far from the limelight. He has never been shy about his faith and his values, but nor has he ever betrayed them and thus risk being labelled a hypocrite by the secular world. The hatred that people spew on him is just one more example in our modern world of Christ's teachings that we are in the world, but not of the world, and that we are blessed when we are hated by the world for doing what is right and for the right reasons. Tebow's star power has shown this on a national stage, and people despise being shown by clear example how wrong and/or baseless their choices and values are. God bless Tim as he continues on in life--like Wuerffel, I have no doubt he will have a much more lasting and profound impact on the world off the field than he has ever had on it!

[RedHatRob]

Great post Prof. Esolen.

Fortunately, Tim Tebow IS eligible to be elected president. The constitution says that one must be a "natural born citizen" to be elected. The US Congress has spelled out who is to be considered a "natural born citizen" and includes this clause:
"Any one born outside the United States, both of whose parents are citizens of the U.S., as long as one parent has lived in the U.S."
http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_citi.html

Because both of Tebow's parents are US citizens, he was a US citizen at birth and is eligible for the presidency, even though he was born outside the US.

[caroline w]

I cannot tell you how much I look forward to a weekly post by the incomparable Anthony Esolen. By the second paragraph, I can always tell.

[Maclin Horton]

I'm a University of Alabama graduate and Crimson Tide fan. I was thrilled see the Tide beat Tebow and the Gators Saturday. It was a great achievement to beat a great team helmed by a great quarterback, the most gifted college quarterback most of us have ever seen and maybe will see. The fact that I wanted my team to win does not mean I have anything but the utmost respect for Tim Tebow.

I was very impressed with his post-game behavior, tears included. I'm surprised that anyone would take them as evidence that he's a sore loser, but then a lot of sports fans are incredibly nasty and are best ignored, especially when mouthing off anonymously. I'd say the tears were evidence of a big heart. I was astonished that he was willing to talk to Tracy Wolfson when he was still struggling to get control of his emotions. His remarks to the press afterward were all class.

I'm impressed by his witness and wish him the best in whatever he does next.

[Kevin in Texas]

Well Maclin, I can forgive you for your unfortunate alma mater because you've demonstrated true class and Christian spirit in your comments about the Gators and especially Tebow ;-) Your guys played perfectly on Saturday and we played like a bunch of 2nd-string high schoolers out there!

Bring home another BCS NC trophy for the SEC in Pasadena, and I say that as I'm surrounded by hundreds of Longhorns fans here in Dallas! Roll Tide! And no, those words will never again cross my lips! :-)

[MCModerator]

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[Maclin Horton]

Thanks, Kelvin, and I reciprocate the sentiment. I'm definitely a regional patriot, and pulled for the Gators and (hard to believe) LSU in recent BCS bowls. I have a January 7, 2007 post on my blog titled "Chomp. Chomp."

[brad evans]

Why couldn't he be president? Mitt Romney's father, George, was born in Mexico to American parents and he was able to run for president.
The courts say that you can't be a naturalized citizen and run for president and you have to have lived the previous 14 years continuously in the US or its territories. "Natural born" means "not naturalized, never previously a citizen of another country".

[Stonechurch]

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/andy_staples/01/26/tim-tebow/index.html?cnn=yes&hpt=T2