• Follow us on Twitter @buckeyeplanet and @bp_recruiting, like us on Facebook! Enjoy a post or article, recommend it to others! BP is only as strong as its community, and we only promote by word of mouth, so share away!
  • Consider registering! Fewer and higher quality ads, no emails you don't want, access to all the forums, download game torrents, private messages, polls, Sportsbook, etc. Even if you just want to lurk, there are a lot of good reasons to register!

Tebow, religion, and eyeblack

As a Christian, I would take extreme issue with any player expressing a belief that their personal faith resulted in them being "favored" by God over other players on the field, and I don't see how any thinking and knowledgeable person could do so.

Thanking God and expressing gratitude for being blessed in your endeavors is not narcissism on the part of a believer; it is acknowledging that every day and every moment is a gift from God to each of us, regardless of what we believe. God doesn't love me any more than he loves BKB, or any person on here who claims to be agnostic, atheist, wiccan, muslim and so on. What a Christian is doing in that circumstance is expressing that love back...thank you for this moment, this feeling, thank you for the success to which I wasn't entitled and which I didn't earn on my own. Ironically, it is humility, not hubris. We are not claiming that God cares about an incomplete pass, or that he cares more about us than someone who doesn't own a stack of Christian music CDs -- we are claiming that whatever we have been given, blessed with or achieved comes from God and not from us.

What it is normally not is proselytizing, at least in the sense that the poster describing it as being marketing, like Proctor and Gamble. I don't believe that I can "convince" anyone to come to faith in God; I can simply express what my faith means to me, live it out as best as I can, and hope to be an example to other people, which is what many of these players do. I believe that coming to the same faith will be a blessing and a benefit to someone's life, but that it is also something that they must work out on their own, directly with God.

Many times, those open expressions of faith are meant for other Christians, helping to build, affirm and encourage them. When a young kid in school is being picked on for his faith, which does happen, and he sees a guy like Warner or Tebow or McCoy speaking out and expressing his, he no longer feels like he's taking on the world by himself.

No person can truly judge or see the state of another person's heart, but there are a lot of players who I've seen over the years who I believe are completely genuine Christians, whose faith is essential to who they are and not a show for the cameras. Colt McCoy strikes me that way, as does Tim Tebow. I've personally met Jim Lauranitis at church and found him to be a remarkably humble, decent and genuine person. Regardless of what one's beliefs are, I think that he's an excellent role model and example of how to life. It just so happens that for him, his faith guides and directs that.

So, rest assured, devout atheists, Tim Tebow is not trying to force his faith down your throat by using tiny adhesive patches on his face. :wink:

Also, ORD, keep in mind that a university being public does not require that all of the students at that university adhere to "secularism" any more than a Catholic university requires all of it's students to be Catholic. No student surrenders his first amendment rights at the university gates, and in fact, a robust discussion about faith, religion and philosophy is directly in keeping with the mission of a university, whether private or public. What the University of Florida cannot do is sanction one faith over another or over none at all. That certainly doesn't prohibit any individual student or employee from doing so themselves. Prohibiting the establishment of a state religion does NOT prohibit public expressions of religions or faiths. In fact, during one's time at a state university (and even many "religious" ones), a student will encounter many, many more arguments for atheism, secularism, agnosticism and humanism than they will for any creative deity or monotheistic religion. The existence of Tim Tebow hardly turns Florida or any other state run institution into a virtual seminary.

Since the question will be asked (and has been), "What if a player wore Koran verses?" He might not be popular with some fans, but I doubt that the media would criticize it, and I personally would not care or mind. Outside of posting on Buckeye Planet, I participate in amateur sports car racing, and one of our rival teams is run by a friend of mine who is a Pakistani muslim. His cars carry huge, and I mean HUGE Islamic crescents on them (representing the Pakistani flag) and to my knowledge, he has never received one negative comment about it. Those symbols don't represent my faith, but for him they represent his faith and cultural heritage and as far as I am concerned, he is completely free to use them as he wishes. The same would go for a player who wants to write NO and GOD on his eye blacks. If that's what you believe, express that. It may anger some people and that's the risk you take, but obviously guys like Tebow and Warner are angering some people. No one is going to like everything you believe, even if not everyone kills people (or dogs).
 
Upvote 0
jwinslow;1616382; said:
Clearly Tebow needs to stop wearing a sentence on his eye black and use his stage to tell other schools and individuals how they must behave.Probably, but considering I'd have to read the Koran to have any idea what message he was saying, I think that's on me.

I agree with the general distaste in America of another religion, which includes Christianity these days (though obviously nowhere near the vitriol towards the Koran and such).

Verne made the viewers looking up Hebrews 12, 1-2 unnecessary (that's what Tebow had on the eyeblack for his last home game, Verne also read Hebrews 12, 12, by mistake), since he read them aloud in the Florida State game. I believe the text was also displayed on the screen, but that's on Verne and CBS. Just because Tebow had it on didn't mean the audience had to have the actual verses read to them.

I'm guessing they received a fair share of negative feedback about that, and toned things down somewhat for the SECCG.
 
Upvote 0
Buckeye doc;1616982; said:
So any more self professed atheists want to tell us how a deity (who doesn't exist) operates, thinks, or judges us? Sorry, couldn't resist, my irony meter just broke.
Well... I'm not a doctor, but I think I can diagnose the occasional illness and/or injury.

You weren't talking to me, I figure, since I'm not an atheist. But.. Sorry, couldn't resist, my flawed reasoning meter just broke.
 
Upvote 0
I'm a Christian and God wants us to share our faith with others. But this his how I look at it. It's the players expressing themselves through what is the best thing about this country. Freedom of Speech. I look at it this way. If you don't like it turn the other cheek. Tebow isn't forcing anything upon you. People make Tebow into something he's not. He's just a guy who is passionate about the game but who is just as passionate about his religion. Just my 2cents.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
It's not like he strangles dogs with piano wire. His faith is obviously very important to him. So what? It's his own way of trying to be a good person and others are trying to make a crime over it. I do not understand what he does that could fill so many people with so much indignation. I think it is a deeper psychological issue. Some people must see Tim Tebow and feel frustrated that they don't feel as contented or grateful about life as he does so they attack the source of his fulfillment. I am not a religious person, I am not a white Christian, I was not raised in that tradition, so maybe I am missing out on something here, but this all just seems to be a very petty and stupid thing to be complaining about. Perhaps the SEC should go back to playing Dixie at home games. Then people will have something to feel marginalized about...
 
Upvote 0
LOL at the Persecuted Christian Syndrome!

No one, atheist or theist, is going after Tebow for putting Bible verses on his face, or having a relationship with any supernatural beings.

The complaint is about the freakin' media and commentators who stop commenting on the game itself and go all TBN on us.

Our own great James Laurinaitis is also a believer and wore black eye with Bible verses and took part in campus crusade stuff, yet you never heard him or the commentators or Buckeye media blow it so much out of proportion that commentators forgot all about the game and started telling us how St Laurinaitis of Minnesota was preaching the Gospel and making people's lives better.

James Laurinaitis was a great college football player, who also happened to be religious, among other stuff. With Tebow, there's this whole barrage of sanctimonious media crap which comes off as really cheesy and cheap because it's so tacky and overdone.

None of the Christians, atheists, Jews, or Thorists on here are disputing that, are they?
 
Upvote 0
Six Train;1617010; said:
.....I am not a religious person, I am not a white Christian, I was not raised in that tradition, so maybe I am missing out on something here, but this all just seems to be a very petty and stupid thing to be complaining about. Perhaps the SEC should go back to playing Dixie at home games. Then people will have something to feel marginalized about...

You do realize that you are reading an internet message board, right?
 
Upvote 0
BrutusBobcat;1616762; said:
As a Christian, I would take extreme issue with any player expressing a belief that their personal faith resulted in them being "favored" by God over other players on the field, and I don't see how any thinking and knowledgeable person could do so.

Thanking God and expressing gratitude for being blessed in your endeavors is not narcissism on the part of a believer; it is acknowledging that every day and every moment is a gift from God to each of us, regardless of what we believe. God doesn't love me any more than he loves BKB, or any person on here who claims to be agnostic, atheist, wiccan, muslim and so on. What a Christian is doing in that circumstance is expressing that love back...thank you for this moment, this feeling, thank you for the success to which I wasn't entitled and which I didn't earn on my own. Ironically, it is humility, not hubris. We are not claiming that God cares about an incomplete pass, or that he cares more about us than someone who doesn't own a stack of Christian music CDs -- we are claiming that whatever we have been given, blessed with or achieved comes from God and not from us.

What it is normally not is proselytizing, at least in the sense that the poster describing it as being marketing, like Proctor and Gamble. ...

I guess this is where we differ: I can see no reason for the gesturing, parading around, pointing at the sky, wearing of Biblical verses and the host of public displays than proselytizing.

Want to thank God? Fine. Commendable, in my opinion. Walk to the sideline, get out of the public spotlight, and offer a silent prayer to God.

Want to be meritorious in the eyes of God, then pray frequently for others without them realizing it so that your prayer is not sullied by self-motivations.

These athletic displays are nothing short of marketing, which cheapen religion and have the opposite of their intended effect.

This guy

Tebow.jpg


and this guy

john_316_031.jpg


have the same objective in mind and are behaving in this manner for that reason.
 
Upvote 0
Back
Top