I don’t usually comment on my blog about a football game, but the Tim Tebow craze has been running so wild that I thought I would at least post the transcript of the Bob Costas monologue he gave last night during the Sunday Night Football in America game (the Cowboys and Giants). It is fascinating to watch the sports commentators opine on the unexplainable qualities in Tebow. Those of us who are believers know exactly what the unexplainable qualities are derived from, but the sports world goes on in unbound fascination to who they deem a mediocre quarterback who brings players to perform at a level better than who they actually are. Tebow himself even goes as far to say (and rightly so) that God is not pulling for one particular team, it’s just football.
There are so many theological arguments one could pull out of the above, and almost countless ones in the transcript below, but I will just let the transcript speak for itself. One thing is for sure, Tebow has a huge platform, and he is showing the world what it looks like to follow Christ as best as a sinful man can do. But, he is still just a man. We are not to put our faith or trust in his abilities, but see Christ who is shinning through him.
Transcript of Bob Costas Essay on Tebow
Back at halftime. The Denver Broncos now lead the AFC West at eight and five, seven and one with Tim Tebow as their starting quarterback. Here is the list of quarterbacks with higher winning percentages this year than Tebow. Aaron Rogers, and nobody else. And truth is, there’s nobody else quite like Tebow. No fewer than five of the seven victories have featured late fourth-quarter comebacks, approaching, okay we’ll say it, the miraculous.
Again today, Tebow did next to nothing until the waning moments, and then, down ten nothing with two minutes left, he throws a touchdown pass, and the Broncos then tie it at the gun on a 59 yard field goal, and win again in overtime on a 51 yarder. The combination of Denver’s continuing late heroics and today, the Bear’s otherwise unexplainable errors is enough to have some at least suspect divine intervention, except that Tebow who’s sincere faith cannot be questioned and should be respected, also has the good sense and good grace to make it clear he does not believe God takes a hand in the outcome of games. Most of us are good with that, otherwise how to explain what happens when there’re equal numbers of Believers on either side, or why so many of those same believers came up empty facing Sandy Koufax, or hit deck against Mohamed Ali, or why the Almighty wouldn’t have better things to do.
Still there’s no doubt that Tim Tebow and his team benefit from his honest belief. How? Frank Bruni put it well in today’s New York Times. Whatever Tebow may lack in classic NFL quarterbacking traits he possesses other qualities in abundance, and in his case those qualities; confidence, equanimity, optimism, and a presence that can’t be explained, but can certainly be felt, the whole Tebow persona derives from how he sees the world and his place in it. Those qualities, no matter how one comes by them, are an asset. Perhaps especially in specially in sports. Good for Tebow, and those who share his beliefs, and those who don’t can still acknowledge and appreciate that who Tim Tebow is is not only genuine, but for the moment at least, it makes him and the Broncos the most fascinating, and whatever sent you interpreted it, uplifting stories and sports.
~Bob Costas, Sunday Night Football in America Halftime Monologue
If you would rather watch the essay as it was presented to the world, you can see that here on video. Note on the transcript. One was not made available by NBC so the transcript below is one that I personally put together. Update, I was finally able to find a transcript put out by NBC and you can see the transcript here.
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I took this photo above from a painting that one of the kids in Uganda painted at Bethany Village Orphanage, and it just reminded me of this poem written by the Puritans around the time of World War I (1918). I found this poem from a collection of files I put together several years ago. I just love how the poem, the painting, and it’s painter go together so well.
The Valley of Vision
Lord, High and Holy, Meek and Lowly,
You have brought me to the valley of vision,
where I live in the depths but see you in the heights;
hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold your glory.Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
that to have nothing is to possess all,
that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,
that to give is to receive,
that the valley is the place of vision.Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells,
and the deeper the wells the brighter your stars shine;Let me find your light in my darkness,
your life in my death,
your joy in my sorrow,
your grace in my sin,
your riches in my poverty,
your glory in my valley.Amen
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Matthew 7 is the classical section that all non-Christians pull out every time they feel they are being “judged” by others, especially other people who claim to be living as a Christian. But of course Matthew 7 was not written to say that judgements should never be made, only that as Christians, we shouldn’t be “habitually critical or condemnatory of a speck of sawdust in a brother’s eye” (BKC, Matthew 7:1-6), and of course it does specifically say “brothers”, so this is flip flopping beliefs and faith in judgement. Not only does it say we should be restraint in our judgement but it is speaking about other believers, not other people in general.
Anyway, I came across this passage from “The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks“, which came from the book “25 Books Every Christian Should Read” by Renovare. I just loved how this Desert Father put it to his fellow believers.
A brother at Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which Abba Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to say to him, ‘Come, for everyone is waiting for you.’ So he got up and went. He took a leaking jug, filled it with water and carried it with him.
The others came out to meet him and said to him, ‘What is this, Father?’ The old man said to them, ‘My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another.’ When they heard that they said no more to the brother but forgave him. [1]
I just love that. Such a great reminder of what Matthew 7 is really talking about, with great context into viewing our own sin and need for the forgiving grace that God provides.
[1] Renovare (2011). 25 Books Every Christian Should Read (Kindle Locations 839-843). HarperOne. Kindle Edition.
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I think it has literally taken me a few years to adjust to Sunday being a work day, and I have grown to absolutely love late Sunday afternoons after all the services and meetings are over. It’s one of those few times during the week I get (usually) a few quiet uninterrupted hours to spend with Deborah watching a game or to read. A while back on the recommendation from Piper on the Role of Poetry in the Christian Life I picked up the book A Sacrifice of Praise, An Anthology of Christian Poetry in English from Caedmon to the Mid-Twentieth Century (yes, I seem to just find books with long titles). I came across this poem by Chesterton, with a short title, called The World State I thought I would share below.
The World State
Oh, how I love Humanity,
With love so pure and pringlish,
And how I hate the horrid French,
Who never will be English!The International Idea,
The largest and the clearest,
Is welding all the nations now,
Except the one that’s nearest.The compromise has long been known,
This scheme of partial pardons,
In ethical societies
And small suburban gardens—The villas and the chapels where
I learned with little labour
The way to love my fellow-man
And hate my next-door neighbour.
I love the subtle in your face presentation of the “second greatest commandment” here found in Matthew 22. There is just something about the Brits and the French that make me laugh and I can hear this poem being read aloud in a British pub somewhere like The Eagle and the Child in that awesome British accent. Chesterton was a poet, writer, and literary critic in the very early 1900′s and was friends with H.G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, and others. He also wrote, among many other things, Saint Francis of Assisi.
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Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent is tomorrow and I came across this poem by T.S. Eliot called “Ash-Wednesday”, which is the first long poem written by T. S. Eliot after his conversion to Anglicanism (or the Church of England) in 1927. The entire poem was a big long for one blog post so I have made it available here in a pdf: Ash-Wednesday by T.S. Eliot if you want to read the entire poem. The full text can also be found at this website. I love how it ends:
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separatedAnd let my cry come unto Thee.
This is an interesting poem by T.S. Eliot. It straddles the line between secular and Christian poetry but opens the door for his later “Christian” poems. He shows the need for God, his lack of hope for everything in the world, and how “unworthy” we are when we come to God in our natural sinful state. A background reading of the book of Ezekiel would be a good idea prior to reading “Ash-Wednesday” as some who have analysed the poem far more than I have said it helps in a more full understanding of the poem.
I would love to hear how you or your church is observing Ash Wednesday and Lent this year. I’m looking forward to this time of reflection myself.
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I have been slowly going through Dave Earley’s book called 21 Reasons Bad Things Happen to Good People, and today I re-read his original premise for the book that he states as “The Reason No One Wants to Hear”, which basically covers original sin in the human condition.
Ultimately God gave Adam and Eve a choice to follow evil or good, and they chose evil, resulting in a blood line of sin for all of humanity. Yet we still continually ask the same question, just phrased in a million different ways, “why does God ‘allow’ this or that bad thing to happen”? As Earley puts it, what we really should be asking if we are honest with ourselves is “why do so many good things happen to bad people”. Even Jesus made the statement in Luke 18:19 (and Mark 10:18), “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone”. Clearly we are not God, but many of us still strive to better understand God’s will, and that includes questions about evil, suffering, and sin.
Earley quoted Knechtle’s Give Me an Answer, on the matter of evil and human nature, who stated:
How can you blame God for starving babies in Ethiopia when the best-selling books in the United States are on dieting, on how to take the extra fat off? It is not God’s fault people are starving today. The earth produces enough right now to give every person 3,000 calories a day. The problem is that some of us hoard so others go to bed hungry. It is a cop-out to blame God for human irresponsibility. If a person gets drunk, drives his car across the median, and sends your friend to an early grave, will you blame God? Do you blame God for Hitler’s seven million murders? That would be escapism. The vast majority of human and evil suffering is the direct result of human irresponsibility.
I haven’t made it all the way through yet but I’m working on it, and I’m grateful to a fellow brother who mailed it to me a month or so ago, thanks Hershel.
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This has been one of these craziest few weeks in our house in years, and for the first time in what feels like forever, some routine and normalcy is slowly returning. I finally had a chance to just read again for a short while this morning, and I came across this explanation that Mstislav Rostropovich gave in how to listen to music. Although he was talking about music, I think he can use God and music interchangeably in this explanation.
There is a philosophy which says that in order to feel God, you must begin to believe in Him, just as in order to feel the warmth of a stove, you must come close to it. This is also true with music. In order to feel its warmth, you must come close to it, and open your heart to it. Sometimes that can be awfully hard work. I know many people who come to concerts buttoned up to the last button, so to speak, and who leave buttoned as well.
But music is not so aggressive that it will come through to you without your help. In order to feel its warmth and beauty, you have to shed your emotional insulation, just as if it were a coat, and prepare to listen with your heart.
-Mstislav Rostropovich
