Many Christian fundamentalists impose a literal interpretation on Biblical myth, thus missing the larger moral messages and rejecting later scientific discoveries, a mistake most apparent in their reading of the Genesis creation story, as the Rev. Boward Hess explains.I cannot tell that there is any reason, independently of what we want to be true, to prefer one interpretation over the other. (To paraphrase Raymond Smullyan) Doesn’t this suggest that there is something a little bit wrong with interpreting religions metaphorically?
By the Rev. Boward Hess
The important message of the Genesis 1 creation story has been lost in debates about how all things began. In some religious teachings, people have been led to believe that Genesis 1 is about God’s creation of all things out of nothing, an interpretation that transforms this marvelous myth into an inaccurate history report.
Myths address questions of values and morals – why, not when or how. They are not history and are not to be read to satisfy scientific inquiry. Myths are commentaries about life and are found in every civilization. They are simple to remember, and their roots predate written language.
The roots of the Genesis 1 creation story can be traced to Babylonian mythology. In Babylonian mythology, Tiamat is the creative force of the universe, the female spirit who gives birth to the gods and, ultimately, to all living things. Marduk, the male king of the gods, betrays Tiamat’s trust and kills her. This represents the recognition of the need for femininity in creation that gives way to male control of that which was created.
In the sixth century BCE, a small group of Israelites was forcibly taken to Babylon and enslaved. In that context, they were confronted by Marduk, Tiamat and Babylonian mythology. What we read in Genesis 1 is a thoughtful theological response to that myth.
By the time of this Babylonian captivity, Israelites had become monotheistic, meaning their God was the one and only God, a male God who reflected a patriarchal political system. However, it is obvious that a male alone lacks creative power; females are the source of life, and it is a profound limitation of a male god’s power.
The Genesis 1 creation myth recognizes the inherent limitation, so it interprets God’s work not as creative but as dominating and controlling nature and the feminine creative force. God operates by commanding the feminine source to bring forth certain things. The source is no longer personified, but God is not the source of creation. Genesis 1 confronts the problems not by having separate male and female powers with different spheres of influence (female: creation; male: control) but, rather, a male God who commands a depersonified creative force. God says, “Let there be light,” “Let there be a vault in the heavens,” “Let there be sun and moon,” “Let the waters teem,” “Let there be vegetation.” Only rarely is he described as creating or making, and this description only occurs after God commands the creation. In other words, God creates something only by demanding that the waters—adapted from Tiamat—bring it forth. God dominates and commands the creative force, but God is not himself the source of creation. God does not create order to hold chaos at bay; God commands chaos to bring forth everything that exists. This is a crucial difference since, on this view, chaos is not something to oppose but something to manipulate and control.
Further, God controls by creating separation. The formless chaos serves no useful purpose for God or his creation, and so God divides the whole into controllable units. Just as God cedes control of creation to Adam by having Adam name all the animals, God controls by separating, distinguishing, naming, and knowing creations. This division and control is represented by separation: On the first day God “separated the light from the darkness;” On the second day he “separate[d] the water [in the heavens] from the water [on the earth].” God separates the dry land from the waters, and later separates the night from the day. God's purpose is to make things useful to himself and humanity.
God’s power is command, control, and domination. God commands, and the result of each command is described as “good” or “very good”. God does not do good in order to achieve an end (say bringing order into chaos), but God commands in order to do things he considers useful. Good is utility to God and to God's human creation. This indicates that humans should control and dominate the creative forces around us, to bend them to our will for our own purposes. In particular, the life-giving power of women must be subjugated to the control of men in order to bring about the particular order and items that God views as good.
The Babylonian myth sees the feminine as the creative force and shows the male, at least temporarily, destroy that force of creation. The Israelite God takes control of the creative force, but not by its destruction or death but by harnessing its creative power in service of the masculine. In short, God enslaves the earth, turns it to his own ends, and tells humanity—males in particular—to do the same, to “rule over” the earth, the sea (metaphorically, the creative force of femininity), and all the plants and animals that survive on the land and sea. Humanity is to “fill the earth and subdue it” in the way God has done already. Mankind is made in God’s image as dominator and subjugator who should use the world for his own ends.
Thus, Genesis 1 carries an essential truth for Judaism, Christianity and Islam – that man must command and dominate the universe and that this domination is good. The universe is created for humanity's use, and it is good to use the universe solely for our own ends. Centuries later, Jesus clearly said, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (Matthew 10: 34-37) Both the Old and New Testaments emphasize control and domination of the creative force of chaos. Chaos itself is neither good nor bad, but conflict, controlled by God, Jesus or Man, can be good when it serves Man's ends. When Jesus brings chaos, it is a good creative force; when God controls the watery chaos, that force is a force for a good creation. Man should not necessarily oppose chaos but be willing to cause conflict and chaos for his own ends.
Some Christian believers attempt somehow to find a tradition of peace and love for others in their sacred text, but they face a great dilemma: How can one ignore the command of Jesus to make war on our enemies and disrupt our own households, to divide brother against brother? Chaos is the creative force of the universe, the feminine, the loving, the giving. God’s treatment of chaos is to control it, and by controlling it and turning it to our own ends, we are doing God’s work, the greatest good. None of this places particular value on peace, and, indeed, control of the environment could easily undermine the possibility of peace.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Dueling Interpretations of Genesis 1
In my internet perambulations, I came across this article and, by fortunate happenstance, the one I reproduce below.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Consternation at the Romney Estate
Inside the Romney households, the mood was not joyful.
“What the heck do these people want? I’ve said every crazy gosh-darn thing they want me to say. Corporations are people! Fertilized eggs are people! The only things that aren’t people are people, the Muslims, undocumented foreigners, and gays anyway!” Mitt’s color had turned slightly pink as he, uncharacteristically, felt emotions.
Tagg, teleconferencing in from the $10 million lakefront summer estate in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, sighed, “Dad, you have to show them that you feel that hatred. They hate imaginary liberals telling them what to do. It’s doesn’t matter that there isn’t any liberal nanny-state that’s taking away their right to own guns, shoot foreigners, or whatever, they hate the idea of such a state.”
“Are you saying they want me to hate some imaginary enemies for them? Didn’t they outgrow that whole idea of imaginary beings when they were little?”
“Look, there’s a legislator in Oklahoma who wants to ban the practice of using aborted fetuses in research or preparation of foodstuffs. Seriously. He’s afraid we’re cannibalizing fetuses. Do you think that guy, and the people who think like him, are worried about whether there really are aborted fetuses in food? No. He’s outraged by the very possibility of such a thing whether it’s real or not. Take Saul Alinsky.”
“Who’s Saul Alinsky?”
“That’s exactly my point. As it turns out, Grandpa knew him. He was just a guy who tried to help ordinary people make changes in society by working together against the entrenched interests of the bureaucracy. You know, democracy in action. In fact, he’s exactly the kind of person that the base of your party should approve of because he was working outside government to help ordinary people make changes when that government was not responding to their needs.”
“What does he have to do with this?”
Matt, from the relatively modest near-million dollar townhome in Boston, jumped in, “You see, Glenn Beck and now Newt Gingrich have inflated him into some invisible puppet-master, pulling the strings of Obama, the government, and everything they hate about the world. He’s Jewish, that never hurts, and his name sounds sort of Old-World to them. So, they equate him with communism too. The only problem with him, really, from their perspective is that he actually exists. People could deflate their bubble a little by pointing out facts about him that conflict with their narrative. That’s not really important at this point, though, since the Gingrich-faction of the party is well beyond facts and subsists entirely on bile. Facts are irrelevant.”
“So, should I just start demonizing this Alinsky fellow too? Would that make them happy?”
Josh, from the $12 million soon-to-be-expanded home in La Jolla, California, shook his head. “It’s too late. You don’t want to look like you’re following Newt. What you need to do is show them that you are part of their group. You need to create an enemy, like their enemies, and scream at it with the same fervor they have. Then they’ll see you as part of their in-group by you evincing contempt and hatred for the out-group. Try not to scream literally, though, you don’t want to end up in the asylum with Michele.”
“Why can’t I show that my membership in their group just by telling them that I’m a member? They obviously don’t care about what we do, only what we say. These are ‘values voters’ who vote for the guy who cheated on two wives when they were sick; banged his staffer who’s 20 years younger than he is before making her his third wife; got kicked out of the house leadership for multiple ethics violations –and by his own party; took huge amounts of money from the companies he demonizes on a daily basis as the cause of the country’s financial woes; worked for at least a decade as a lobbyist – I mean, historian – in Washington, and was a general failure as a leader—leading his party to massive electoral defeat. I mean, it’s not like they value honesty, integrity, or even competence.”
It was Craig’s turn to break some bad news. “It used to be enough that you just talk their language. W got elected by speaking a careful code that the fundies recognized but others did not. Then, when the power went to their heads a little, they started to demand more forthright obeisance to their crazy ideas. That’s how we got Mike Huckabee.”
“Oh, yeah, the Huckster.”
“So, now you have to go beyond coded messages and a wink-and-nod, say things outright. You may still want to be a little vague since no one really wants you to follow their ideas to their logical conclusion. Don’t advocate trying mothers who’ve miscarried on murder charges. No one wants the death penalty for people who’ve miscarried. The base isn’t really big on logic anyway. Still, fealty to a set of ideas is not enough, and has never been enough, really. The idea is to make them see you as part of their group, and the defining feature of their group now is just anger at, and hatred and fear of other groups. So, what you have to do is create some paranoid conspiracy about shadowy figures and organizations that work for their own ends at the expense of ordinary people.”
“You mean, like Bain Capital?”
Now Ben sighed. “No, and don’t let any feelings of guilt for taking away people’s jobs bother you. If you feel anything, project those inner demons onto the imaginary out-group. They’ll like that; they do a lot of projection. Here’s what I suggest. Make up some fake person. Maybe we can plant a few fake papers in an archive somewhere. Can you get access to the Library of Congress? Claim this person is behind a shadowy network of government officials and institutions that want to take their hard-earned benefits away and transfer them to unworthy, darker-skinned individuals. Then pick out something they hate, like taxes or schools or science, and tell them that it’s a plot to take their money and give it to black people.”
“And they’ll believe that? I mean, that’s crazy.”
“Dad, have you been paying attention?”
“OK. So, I say, ‘Barack Obama and Goldstein are working to undermine our great nation by subverting the faith of our fathers and mothers and creating an industry of so-called climate science which spends huge amounts of money in equatorial nations but the real purpose is the transfer of our wealth into the hands of equatorial peoples who will then use that money to do worship Allah, plan terrorist attacks, buy drugs and alcohol, and breed uncontrollably—with our women—and they won’t even let us have any of the fun.’”
“Not a bad start. Just a few things to fix. First, it’s the faith of our fathers, not our mothers. I think you know what that’s all about. Second, remember, they don’t want fun, they just want to make sure no one else has any, so skip the last bit. Make sure they fear these equatorial people. Can we say some of them are Muslim pigmies who disguise themselves as children, fake citizenship and get free education, health care and Cadillacs at taxpayer expense?”
“Brilliant!”
My apologies if this reconstruction has made Mitt Romney seem vaguely human, but I’ve almost begun to feel some sympathy for him lately.
“What the heck do these people want? I’ve said every crazy gosh-darn thing they want me to say. Corporations are people! Fertilized eggs are people! The only things that aren’t people are people, the Muslims, undocumented foreigners, and gays anyway!” Mitt’s color had turned slightly pink as he, uncharacteristically, felt emotions.
Tagg, teleconferencing in from the $10 million lakefront summer estate in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, sighed, “Dad, you have to show them that you feel that hatred. They hate imaginary liberals telling them what to do. It’s doesn’t matter that there isn’t any liberal nanny-state that’s taking away their right to own guns, shoot foreigners, or whatever, they hate the idea of such a state.”
“Are you saying they want me to hate some imaginary enemies for them? Didn’t they outgrow that whole idea of imaginary beings when they were little?”
“Look, there’s a legislator in Oklahoma who wants to ban the practice of using aborted fetuses in research or preparation of foodstuffs. Seriously. He’s afraid we’re cannibalizing fetuses. Do you think that guy, and the people who think like him, are worried about whether there really are aborted fetuses in food? No. He’s outraged by the very possibility of such a thing whether it’s real or not. Take Saul Alinsky.”
“Who’s Saul Alinsky?”
“That’s exactly my point. As it turns out, Grandpa knew him. He was just a guy who tried to help ordinary people make changes in society by working together against the entrenched interests of the bureaucracy. You know, democracy in action. In fact, he’s exactly the kind of person that the base of your party should approve of because he was working outside government to help ordinary people make changes when that government was not responding to their needs.”
“What does he have to do with this?”
Matt, from the relatively modest near-million dollar townhome in Boston, jumped in, “You see, Glenn Beck and now Newt Gingrich have inflated him into some invisible puppet-master, pulling the strings of Obama, the government, and everything they hate about the world. He’s Jewish, that never hurts, and his name sounds sort of Old-World to them. So, they equate him with communism too. The only problem with him, really, from their perspective is that he actually exists. People could deflate their bubble a little by pointing out facts about him that conflict with their narrative. That’s not really important at this point, though, since the Gingrich-faction of the party is well beyond facts and subsists entirely on bile. Facts are irrelevant.”
“So, should I just start demonizing this Alinsky fellow too? Would that make them happy?”
Josh, from the $12 million soon-to-be-expanded home in La Jolla, California, shook his head. “It’s too late. You don’t want to look like you’re following Newt. What you need to do is show them that you are part of their group. You need to create an enemy, like their enemies, and scream at it with the same fervor they have. Then they’ll see you as part of their in-group by you evincing contempt and hatred for the out-group. Try not to scream literally, though, you don’t want to end up in the asylum with Michele.”
“Why can’t I show that my membership in their group just by telling them that I’m a member? They obviously don’t care about what we do, only what we say. These are ‘values voters’ who vote for the guy who cheated on two wives when they were sick; banged his staffer who’s 20 years younger than he is before making her his third wife; got kicked out of the house leadership for multiple ethics violations –and by his own party; took huge amounts of money from the companies he demonizes on a daily basis as the cause of the country’s financial woes; worked for at least a decade as a lobbyist – I mean, historian – in Washington, and was a general failure as a leader—leading his party to massive electoral defeat. I mean, it’s not like they value honesty, integrity, or even competence.”
It was Craig’s turn to break some bad news. “It used to be enough that you just talk their language. W got elected by speaking a careful code that the fundies recognized but others did not. Then, when the power went to their heads a little, they started to demand more forthright obeisance to their crazy ideas. That’s how we got Mike Huckabee.”
“Oh, yeah, the Huckster.”
“So, now you have to go beyond coded messages and a wink-and-nod, say things outright. You may still want to be a little vague since no one really wants you to follow their ideas to their logical conclusion. Don’t advocate trying mothers who’ve miscarried on murder charges. No one wants the death penalty for people who’ve miscarried. The base isn’t really big on logic anyway. Still, fealty to a set of ideas is not enough, and has never been enough, really. The idea is to make them see you as part of their group, and the defining feature of their group now is just anger at, and hatred and fear of other groups. So, what you have to do is create some paranoid conspiracy about shadowy figures and organizations that work for their own ends at the expense of ordinary people.”
“You mean, like Bain Capital?”
Now Ben sighed. “No, and don’t let any feelings of guilt for taking away people’s jobs bother you. If you feel anything, project those inner demons onto the imaginary out-group. They’ll like that; they do a lot of projection. Here’s what I suggest. Make up some fake person. Maybe we can plant a few fake papers in an archive somewhere. Can you get access to the Library of Congress? Claim this person is behind a shadowy network of government officials and institutions that want to take their hard-earned benefits away and transfer them to unworthy, darker-skinned individuals. Then pick out something they hate, like taxes or schools or science, and tell them that it’s a plot to take their money and give it to black people.”
“And they’ll believe that? I mean, that’s crazy.”
“Dad, have you been paying attention?”
“OK. So, I say, ‘Barack Obama and Goldstein are working to undermine our great nation by subverting the faith of our fathers and mothers and creating an industry of so-called climate science which spends huge amounts of money in equatorial nations but the real purpose is the transfer of our wealth into the hands of equatorial peoples who will then use that money to do worship Allah, plan terrorist attacks, buy drugs and alcohol, and breed uncontrollably—with our women—and they won’t even let us have any of the fun.’”
“Not a bad start. Just a few things to fix. First, it’s the faith of our fathers, not our mothers. I think you know what that’s all about. Second, remember, they don’t want fun, they just want to make sure no one else has any, so skip the last bit. Make sure they fear these equatorial people. Can we say some of them are Muslim pigmies who disguise themselves as children, fake citizenship and get free education, health care and Cadillacs at taxpayer expense?”
“Brilliant!”
My apologies if this reconstruction has made Mitt Romney seem vaguely human, but I’ve almost begun to feel some sympathy for him lately.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
The Temptation of Tim Tebow
After Tim Tebow's night at Gethsemane on the Lord's Holy Day, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth and the Patriots, no doubt, will be cast into the outer darkness. The Tebow did not fail (given his 92 yards rushing, many of them picked up in garbage time) but was only failed by his teammates who were weakened by sin, dropped passes, fumbles and missed blocks. Like God himself, Tebow is to be praised for all the good that he brings but is not to be cursed when he brings only evil.
Tebowmania, however briefly, has gripped our great nation in its sweaty paws. Anyone who watches sports or even Saturday Night Live (who watches that again?) is familiar with the vaguely disquieting man-love sports commentators have for beefy Denver Broncos quarterback/fullback Tim Tebow. The Tim Tebow Experience. The Beefy T-Bone. The Big Tebowski.
Tim Tebow has largely benefited from a good running attack, a good choice of inept opponents, the famed prevent defense (famous for preventing the team that practices it from winning), and, most importantly, the bizarre tendency for sports commentators to lay all praise or blame for a 54-player team's success or failure at the feet of that team's quarterback. Besides its vaguely homoerotic aspects, praise for Tebow has centered on his personal virtue which is attributed to or defined by his religious faith. I don't much care what sports figure generates this kind of feeling from day to day, but Tebow idol-worship perpetuates the notion that religious faith is an indicator and cause of good moral character. This view about Tebow and the relation between his faith and moral character has spread beyond the sports pages into Frank Bruni's column in the opinion pages of what is ostensibly the nation's most reputable newspaper. (After Bruni's coverage of G.W. Bush in the 2000 election, his opinion of Tebow is unsurprising.)
One assumes Bruni is joking since, obviously, even if Tebow's faith in God is key to his success, this would indicate nothing about the entity God itself. We could wish that the buff Mr. Tebow had literally transfixed Mr. Bruni (if you know what I mean, and I think you do). Perhaps then we would not be subjected to these love-notes. Nonetheless, we have a thesis for the article: Tebow and his team benefit from his optimism and confidence. This view is a variant on William James's argument for the benefits of belief. Let's see how badly Bruni's argument goes awry.
Bruni leaves out the irony of Tebow's genuflecting in the pose of Rodin's The Thinker. He also fails to mention Tebow's appearance in a pro-life commercial that aired during Superbowl XLIV (in 2010). Tebow is unusual in his public religiosity in a field (no pun intended) that already is dominated by displays of piety, and he is unusual in advancing a political agenda motivated by his religion. It is Tebow's apparent self-righteousness, his proselytizing for both his faith and his political views and, above all, the misplaced ardor of our media that fuels the popular derision for Tebow, a derision that Bruni feels is misguided.
Oh, the humanity! How can people ridicule Tebow when there are real criminals in the NFL, terrorists and murderous dictators bent on destruction, ethnic cleansing in the Sudan, and, on the streets of America, adulterers, bigamists, philatelists! Bruni is simply misdirecting; the presence or absence of criminals in the NFL or anywhere else has no bearing on criticism of Tebow.
This is idiotic. Denver's success is not solely attributable to Tim Tebow, and it does not defy logic. The Baltimore Ravens won the Super Bowl with Trent Dilfer as quarterback. In the 2006 season the Chicago Bears made it to the Superbowl with Rex Grossman as their signal-caller. Trent Dilfer! Rex Grossman! Were they, perhaps, such fonts of personal virtue and confidence that their self-esteem spilled over and strengthened the will of Ray Lewis and Brian Urlacher? Moreover, if Tebow is to be praised for his teammates good performances, mustn't he also be blamed for their poor performance (as in Sunday's game against the superior Patriots team)?
Denver is successful because of an easy schedule, poor performance of the opponents (could Denver have beaten the Bears if they had faced Jay Cutler rather than unknown backup Caleb Hanie and his 115 yards passing?), excellent defense, and a good field-goal kicker. Statistics cannot perfectly measure the possibility of success of a team, and no doubt mental factors play an enormous role in success. Look at the success of the 10-3 San Francisco 49ers with mostly the same players who went 6-10 last year. However, we cannot attribute the success of a team solely to the triumph of the will of their quarterback. Statistics matter, and we should not overlook them.
Stop it. Just stop it. This is pure cult of personality stuff. It's the sort of thing one says to justify a conclusion when there is no evidence. It's practically tautology: "Good teams find a way to win." Of course the Broncos (and the Florida Gators before them) have won a lot of games, and in that sense, by definition, they (and Tebow) have a 'gift for winning', but that does not justify anyone in attributing their success to some intangible force of personality or will on Tim Tebow's part. Matt Prater, the field goal kicker, did not become a greater kicker because of Tim Tebow's magic religious-confidence-juice.
It is cold comfort for the religious to say that faith in God is nothing more than a form of positive thinking. Perhaps faith is only, or provides, an unfounded confidence in one's abilities, but this is not generally something to brag about. In Tebow's case, it might have made some difference in the team's performance, but there are many other factors that have nothing much to do with him. Confidence without the means to back it up can have catastrophic consequences. For example, just today I had to explain to a student who was sure, absent any evidence, that he deserved an A on his final examination. If, indeed, Tebow has this kind of reckless self-regard, then he might learn what pride goeth before.
The real reason to object to the Tim Tebow media frenzy is that it plays into the equation of morality and religiosity. We should all realize by now that morality and religion are completely independent, yet our media still succumbs to this temptation to paint the religious as morally better than the non-religious and to attribute people's success to their religion. At bottom, it's primitive thinking. In order to be morally good or successful, we must worship a capricious stone age deity. That's not a reason to wish Tim Tebow personal ill, but it is reason to oppose him as a public figure, hope that our media would cease their love affairs with such sports figures, and root against him. Opposition to Tebow's religious agenda and the media's treatment of him is a better reason to root for a team than most reasons people have.
Tebowmania, however briefly, has gripped our great nation in its sweaty paws. Anyone who watches sports or even Saturday Night Live (who watches that again?) is familiar with the vaguely disquieting man-love sports commentators have for beefy Denver Broncos quarterback/fullback Tim Tebow. The Tim Tebow Experience. The Beefy T-Bone. The Big Tebowski.
Tim Tebow has largely benefited from a good running attack, a good choice of inept opponents, the famed prevent defense (famous for preventing the team that practices it from winning), and, most importantly, the bizarre tendency for sports commentators to lay all praise or blame for a 54-player team's success or failure at the feet of that team's quarterback. Besides its vaguely homoerotic aspects, praise for Tebow has centered on his personal virtue which is attributed to or defined by his religious faith. I don't much care what sports figure generates this kind of feeling from day to day, but Tebow idol-worship perpetuates the notion that religious faith is an indicator and cause of good moral character. This view about Tebow and the relation between his faith and moral character has spread beyond the sports pages into Frank Bruni's column in the opinion pages of what is ostensibly the nation's most reputable newspaper. (After Bruni's coverage of G.W. Bush in the 2000 election, his opinion of Tebow is unsurprising.)
CAN God take credit for the victories of a thick-set N.F.L. quarterback who scrambles in a weirdly jittery fashion, throws one of the ugliest balls in the game, completes fewer than half of his passes and has somehow won six of his team’s last seven games?
That’s a question that actually hovers over the miraculous success of the Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, and at this blessed juncture it’s a silly one, because the answer is unequivocal: Yes. Tebow is powered by conviction and operating on faith, and so are the teammates he’s leading. And you needn’t be an evangelical Christian (as he is), a seriously religious person or even a football fan to be transfixed and enlightened by his example. I speak as a football fan only when I say the following, which I never expected to: The mile-high messiah has a gospel for us all.
One assumes Bruni is joking since, obviously, even if Tebow's faith in God is key to his success, this would indicate nothing about the entity God itself. We could wish that the buff Mr. Tebow had literally transfixed Mr. Bruni (if you know what I mean, and I think you do). Perhaps then we would not be subjected to these love-notes. Nonetheless, we have a thesis for the article: Tebow and his team benefit from his optimism and confidence. This view is a variant on William James's argument for the benefits of belief. Let's see how badly Bruni's argument goes awry.
Which brings us back to religion. With Tebow there’s no getting away from it. He uses the microphones thrust in front of him to mention his personal savior, Jesus Christ, and has said that heaven is reserved for devout Christians. He genuflects so publicly and frequently that to drop to one knee in the precise way he does has been given its own word, along with its own Web site, where you can see photographs of people Tebowing inside St. Peter’s, in front of the Taj Mahal, on sand, on ice and even underwater.
Bruni leaves out the irony of Tebow's genuflecting in the pose of Rodin's The Thinker. He also fails to mention Tebow's appearance in a pro-life commercial that aired during Superbowl XLIV (in 2010). Tebow is unusual in his public religiosity in a field (no pun intended) that already is dominated by displays of piety, and he is unusual in advancing a political agenda motivated by his religion. It is Tebow's apparent self-righteousness, his proselytizing for both his faith and his political views and, above all, the misplaced ardor of our media that fuels the popular derision for Tebow, a derision that Bruni feels is misguided.
But the intensity of the derision strikes me as unwarranted, in that it outdoes anything directed at, say, the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, accused repeatedly of sexual assault, or other players actually convicted of burglary, gun possession and other crimes. In a league full of blithe felons, Tebow and his oppressive piety don’t seem like such horrendous affronts at all.
Oh, the humanity! How can people ridicule Tebow when there are real criminals in the NFL, terrorists and murderous dictators bent on destruction, ethnic cleansing in the Sudan, and, on the streets of America, adulterers, bigamists, philatelists! Bruni is simply misdirecting; the presence or absence of criminals in the NFL or anywhere else has no bearing on criticism of Tebow.
Besides which, to get lost in the nature of his Christianity is to miss the ecumenical, secular epiphanies in his — and the Broncos’ — extraordinary season. Their sudden turnaround isn’t just thrilling. It illustrates the limits of logic and the shortcomings of the most quickly made measurements and widely cited metrics.
In sports as in politics, business and so much else, we like to think that we’ve broken down the components of achievement and that, looking at those components, we can predict who (and what) will prevail. But if any football analyst at the start of this season had said that a quarterback averaging under 140 yards of passing a game — that’s Tebow’s sorry statistic — would have a 6-1 record as a starter and be considered the linchpin of his team, few people would have bought it.
This is idiotic. Denver's success is not solely attributable to Tim Tebow, and it does not defy logic. The Baltimore Ravens won the Super Bowl with Trent Dilfer as quarterback. In the 2006 season the Chicago Bears made it to the Superbowl with Rex Grossman as their signal-caller. Trent Dilfer! Rex Grossman! Were they, perhaps, such fonts of personal virtue and confidence that their self-esteem spilled over and strengthened the will of Ray Lewis and Brian Urlacher? Moreover, if Tebow is to be praised for his teammates good performances, mustn't he also be blamed for their poor performance (as in Sunday's game against the superior Patriots team)?
Denver is successful because of an easy schedule, poor performance of the opponents (could Denver have beaten the Bears if they had faced Jay Cutler rather than unknown backup Caleb Hanie and his 115 yards passing?), excellent defense, and a good field-goal kicker. Statistics cannot perfectly measure the possibility of success of a team, and no doubt mental factors play an enormous role in success. Look at the success of the 10-3 San Francisco 49ers with mostly the same players who went 6-10 last year. However, we cannot attribute the success of a team solely to the triumph of the will of their quarterback. Statistics matter, and we should not overlook them.
BUT Tebow tends to have his worst 45 minutes of play when it matters least and his best 15 when it matters most. And while he makes many mistakes, their cost is seldom exorbitant. These aren’t so much skills as tendencies — inclinations — that prove to be every bit as consequential as the stuff of rankings and record books. He reminds us that strength comes in many forms and some people have what can be described only as a gift for winning, which isn’t synonymous with any spreadsheet inventory of what it supposedly takes to win.
Stop it. Just stop it. This is pure cult of personality stuff. It's the sort of thing one says to justify a conclusion when there is no evidence. It's practically tautology: "Good teams find a way to win." Of course the Broncos (and the Florida Gators before them) have won a lot of games, and in that sense, by definition, they (and Tebow) have a 'gift for winning', but that does not justify anyone in attributing their success to some intangible force of personality or will on Tim Tebow's part. Matt Prater, the field goal kicker, did not become a greater kicker because of Tim Tebow's magic religious-confidence-juice.
This gift usually involves hope, confidence and a special composure, all of which keep a person in the game long enough, with enough energy and stability, so that a fickle entity known as luck might break his or her way. For Tebow that state of mind comes from his particular relationship with his chosen God and is a matter of religion. For someone else it might be understood and experienced as the power of positive thinking, and is a matter of psychology. Either way it boils down to stubborn optimism and bequeaths a spark. A swagger. An edge.
. . .
The Broncos are the talk of the league. More and more people are watching. And you could indeed say they’re tuning in to find out how far God can take a team. Because that’s just another way of saying how far grit can.
It is cold comfort for the religious to say that faith in God is nothing more than a form of positive thinking. Perhaps faith is only, or provides, an unfounded confidence in one's abilities, but this is not generally something to brag about. In Tebow's case, it might have made some difference in the team's performance, but there are many other factors that have nothing much to do with him. Confidence without the means to back it up can have catastrophic consequences. For example, just today I had to explain to a student who was sure, absent any evidence, that he deserved an A on his final examination. If, indeed, Tebow has this kind of reckless self-regard, then he might learn what pride goeth before.
The real reason to object to the Tim Tebow media frenzy is that it plays into the equation of morality and religiosity. We should all realize by now that morality and religion are completely independent, yet our media still succumbs to this temptation to paint the religious as morally better than the non-religious and to attribute people's success to their religion. At bottom, it's primitive thinking. In order to be morally good or successful, we must worship a capricious stone age deity. That's not a reason to wish Tim Tebow personal ill, but it is reason to oppose him as a public figure, hope that our media would cease their love affairs with such sports figures, and root against him. Opposition to Tebow's religious agenda and the media's treatment of him is a better reason to root for a team than most reasons people have.
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