Why I don’t Tebow: A Problem with Prayer

Why do we pray?

Those of us who do pray do so for several reasons. We pray to contemplate, to give thanks, to release stress, to focus our minds, to come closer to God, and to ask for things. We pray publicly and we pray privately. There is nothing wrong with any of this.

Now enter Tim Tebow.

For those who may not know. Tim Tebow is the quarterback of the Denver Broncos. As far as NFL quarterbacks goal his skills as a passer are, so far as I can tell, average at best (although he is a good “running” QB). Yet, somehow, this average-at-best quarterback is the talk of the nation. For better or worse as much of the talk about Tebow is about his religious beliefs and behavior as it is his prowess (or lack of it) on the football field.

Tebow’s faith is a standard fundamentalist/evangelical one. He is pro-life, anti same-sex marriage, registered and votes Republican, believes in an infallible Bible and that only Christians go to heaven. Full disclosure: I reject, emphatically, each of these beliefs (though I have much sympathy with pro-life positions), so I’m not exactly prone to view Tebow’s beliefs in a positive light. That said, my problem with Tebow is not his fundamentalist religious beliefs or his public admittance of them.

My problem with Tebow, rather, is his ostentatious public prayer, which have come to be known as “Tebowing.” For those who don’t know, Tebowing looks like this:

I have several problems with this behavior.

To begin with I find petitionary prayer problematic. If God really answered our requests then there would not be so much pain, sorrow, and loss in this world. Also, would God refuse to say, heal Grandma Joe, unless the right person asks? Do our requests determine the actions of an all-knowing and all-powerful being? I find that impossible. But I won’t quibble over this factor. I’m not bothered by people in need asking God for things. When your loved ones are hurting or our pain is deep you tend to call out for a higher power to aid you. This is understandable. And if Tim Tebow were offering up these kinds of prayers, there could be no objection to his doing so. I might dispute the efficacy of such prayers, but I’m not bothered by people offering them.

My real problem with Tebow is what he prayers for: Tebow prays to win football games. He asks God to let him win. In one notorious example, in overtime against the San Diego Chargers, Tebow actually knelt down and asked God to make sure that the Chargers’ kicker missed his field goal attempt!

This is sheer tribalism!

To ask God to favor your team or to in anyway intervene in football games is not merely silly, but evokes the notion of a petty deity who plays favorites and rewards those who grovel before Him sufficiently.

Does Tebow actually believe that God will ignore prayers to heal people from cancer, but make sure that Tim Tebow wins a football game? Does God care most of all about how often we praise Him and grovel before Him?

The god of such prayers is no different from a narcissistic despot!

In short, my problem with Tebowing is that it insults those who pray for more serious matters and presents an insulting picture of divinity.

Finally, however, my biggest problem with Tebow is that he is deliberately “showy” about his prayers. He presents himself in such a way that everyone sees him on one knee and every sees how “holy” he is. The whole thing comes off as rather self-righteous.

I know, of course, that many will tell me that Tebow has a right to show his faith. Others will argue that he is a “good guy” and therefore it is wrong to “hate” him. But this is all irrelevant. Tebow may be a loyal friend, devoted son, and great neighbor. He may be a nice as Mr. Rogers. And surely he does have a right to express himself in the way he does.

But Tim Tebow is being held up as a model of what a good clean American should be. There are those who call him a “great American” and a “force for good” simply because he asks Jesus to help him win football games and score touchdowns. His ostentatious and tribal prayer and piety is held up as a heroic model to imitate.

But this is no model for people of real faith.

What would be such a model?

Imagine a quarterback who prays as often as Tebow. But there is nothing showy about his faith. He quietly and unassumingly makes his requests of God. Imagine further that he does not pray for his team’s victory or the other team’s kicker to miss a field goal. Suppose, rather, that he prays that each and every player do his best, that all on the field be safe from injury and humiliation, and that the best team wins.

Would not this be a model of faith that we should imitate? Rather than a showy kneeler who asks God to win one for him on account of his righteousness?

That is why I don’t Tebow.

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Crossan’s Revolutionary Prayer Book

The Greatest Prayer: Jesus’s Revolutionary Manifesto by John Dominic Crossan

John Dominic Crossan’s newest book – besides offering tremendous literally criticism and poetic insight – provides much needed depth into a subject matter that those who ascribe to liberal theology sometimes struggle with.

Accustomed as we are to a Christian tradition that all too often reduces prayer to “asking God for things,” but at the same time philosophically unable to think of God as a person-like being, we simply don’t know what do to with prayer; or as Paul of Tarsus (quoted approvingly and used at length by Crossan) puts it “We do not know how to pray as we ought” (Rom. 8:26).

Crossan shares a rejection of any crude anthropomorphic understanding of prayer, “it is an immature view of prayer that addresses a Supreme Being radically apart from us who thinks, and wills, knows and hears, grants and refuses more or less as we do, but with infinite broadband” (28).

Noting that the Prophets of ancient Israel seem to reject prayer and insist that God requires distributive justice (care for widows, aliens, and orphans) instead of prayer and ceremony, Crossan nonetheless does not think we are faced with some either/or. For him, prayer and justice are distinguishable but inseparable. Like two sides of a coin, we cannot have prayer without justice or justice without prayer (20-21).

From this starting point, Crossan turns to the most well known prayer in the Christian tradition, variously called the “Our Father,” or the “The Lord’s Prayer.” This prayer, Crossan argues, expresses the heart of the message of Jesus. The prayer asks us to come together as equals, to become heirs of God, and to work together to establish the divine reign here on earth. We do this by sharing with each other fairly and equally.

Crossan spends much of the book describing the vision of an egalitarian justice found throughout the pages of the Bible. Most striking is his thouhtful examination of the use of the Sabbath tradition. Crosssan argues, persuasively, that the Sabbath is the crown of creation in Genesis Chapter one, and that the later traditions of the weekly Sabbath, Sabbath year (every Seventh year), and year of Jubilee (a kind of super Sabbath every fiftieth year), is designed to recall and enact a world of unity, non-violence, equality, and peace. His discussion of the Sabbath is among the finest I have read.

Prayer, Crossan argues, is meditation on the divine vision of a just, fair, peaceful, and non-violent world. The message of Jesus is a message that we can and must work together with God to bring about such a world. When we pray, then, “The Lord’s Prayer,” we remind ourselves that God and God’s kingdom are present only when share our resources, forgive others their debts, and work together for peace, and that God’s kingdom will only be fully present when ALL have enough, when ALL debts are forgiven and when ALL people are free to live together and live peacefully.

The book builds on Crossan’s earlier work, especially God and Empire, and most of the themes are found throughout his writings. Yet there is a freshness to the presentation here, an application that warrants attention. Although most of the themes are not new for Crossan, how those ideas effect our prayers, and particularly how we say “The Lord’s Prayer” is a novel application of them.

If you are open to non-traditional Christian theology and a faith informed by reason and historical method, this is the prayer book for you.

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