The following contains religious content. Baseball only fans be warned.
After the Jays game in which Omar Vizquel ran headlong into Molina and got squashed like road kill, Ben Zobrist and I went on friendly reunion tour of Toronto. We rented Bixie Bikes and road the streets of the city’s yelling updates about friends and life to one another over the noise of cars and buses and the occasional fan that shouted at one of us for one reason or another.
We supped at Barberians’ steak house, where, unfortunately, we were both disappointed for the price, then crashed at my apartment, chatting about all that come to pass since w made fast friends in spring training 2011.
We’re both Christian men. Ben being much more devote than I. In fact, he makes me feel guilty—convicted, he would say—that I’ve fallen off the wagon so much. I expected him to chastise me when he heard of how lazy and backslidden I’ve become in his absence, but he didn’t. He just encouraged me, and, much to my surprise, continued to engage me with the big rhetorical questions and comments common to a life lived on faith, in a world that hungers for concrete meaning.
He told me he was going to be speaking at a convention where the topic of conversation was Idols. He was going to speak against idols and how we ought not put things in God’s place. It was a fairly simple message as far as the dos and donts, one any church goes has undoubtedly heard before. But he found something Ironical about it all, being that the reason he got to do the speaking event was that he was famous enough to land it and because of said fame, people would listen to him talk. In a sense, he felt like he was speaking on idols being that he, himself, was an idol to many. A ‘straight from the Idol’s mouth’ talk, if you would.
I understood. And I mocked it all by saying, “The Tim Tebow Phenomen. You know, wherein you say, ‘It’s not about my sports success, it’s about God, but the only reason you’re listening to me talk about God is because of my sports success.” Then I told Ben that after he tells this to the crowd he should drop to one knee and make the patented Tebow Prayer fist. Ben Laughed, but then frowned because he really, genuinely does want people to see God and not him.
It’s an interesting thing to be a famous Christian. God is, of course, the God of the famous and the god of the insignificant. But in many ways, it’s counter productive to be a famous Christian, especially since so many people correlate success at sports to favor from God. In a capitalist society fame, money, and power are seamlessly intertwined with faith, and not in a good way. You can’t measure faith, which is why those folks honestly seeking God wrestle with Him and His role in their life so much. However, man does a great job of setting up benchmarks in hopes of measuring that which cannot be measured. Thus, the possession of fame, success, and dream life styles— things that are often based on man made criteria— become the stand in.
So, we found ourselves wondering: If the Gospel is more than just words, if it is action, and If the favor of God is not measured in physical possessions or social clout, is being famous in a society that mistakes the reasons through which fame is generated as godly favor, is being a famous Christian more harmful to the truth than helpful?