How do you solve a problem like Tebow?

Like many I have been watching the Tebow parade with interest. Not only is it interesting from a football perspective, but it is also intriguing from a religious one. Tebow never fails to remind us of why he thinks he is a success. Jesus saved him, got him to the NFL, makes him a success, etc. He is not the first to do this of course. Everyone is a zealot it seems when the light is on them. What is curious to me though is the fact that this one is a Mormon. I do not personally care about this, but mainstream Christians have been oddly silent on the issue.

You could fill a book with reasons that Mormonism is weird and many have, including the fact that Joseph Smith taught that the moon was inhabited by Quakers, proven wrong in the 1960s. It is just a bizarre religion. The kicker though is that it has a base in the Christian religion. On its face is the same “saved by the Son of God, Jesus” foundation.

So the reason this all is strange is because essentially Tebow promotes the same ideas in public as evangelicals and similar followers. He is not promoting polygamy, marrying into eternity, magic underwear or any of the odd ball ideas. He is promoting Jesus being his savior, just like Kurt Warner used to do. Kurt Warner was praised for this endlessly. They are silent on Tebow.

Either they are scared to talk about it, or they do not know what to say. Is he a false prophet? Should they denounce him outright? Should they support his public display of Jesus love? It is a tough question. How do you solve a problem like Tebow? What do you think?

Tags: athletes, christian, cult, jesus, mormon, tebow

Bizarre Superstition

I am not superstitious. Since giving up Christianity altogether I would say that little about what I live daily is superstitious. Every now and then I feel a twinge of something like a brief belief in ghosts, or something like that, but nothing definitive.

I have had some bizarre experiences here lately though. I hit a huge bird with my car the other day. I mean huge. I have not see a bird this big. It was like a turkey or something. It felt like I hit a dog. Then, on Friday, I found a dead human. It was the most surreal thing I have seen before. It was sad how inhuman he looked. Crumpled. Simple. Peaceful. Empty. He looked like a shell of a person, not a real person. I had a hard time sleeping that night. The next day I found ten vultures on my roof and fence. I chased them away and realized they must be there for a reason. Then I found a dead opossum outside my fence. I knew there had to be something they were after.

That was all fine and passing me by when I came out of my office today. Literally outside the door lay a raven. It was dead. It was just a raven. Still, it freaked me out. I started to cry and became panicky. I know it is just a raven and these are all unconnected events, but I think the overwhelming experience from finding someone dead on Friday and how basically hollow an event it was. It was just like another animal was gone. It is just another life that passed. It was overwhelming to experience it all in the past week.

Live Life to the Fullest

A twelve year old is suffering from a terminal disease and may not see the end of the year. It is a truly sad situation. She will most likely suffer through this physically and her last weeks with us will be painful. As a parent and a responsible human being I can not fathom what she and her family are facing. No one wants to deal with a tragedy like this, much less live it. No one.

At the same time an elderly woman is at her own end times and is suffering from decreased function. She refuses most treatment, even though that treatment will give her some comfort as her body shuts down. Her answer to this is that "God will heal her." In all honesty she has been miserable for years and yet still clings to this maxim.

The end of life is sad at any stage, but the earlier it comes the sadder we are. We all feel that we "deserve" some sort of guarantee to a long, productive life or we proclaim that it is "not fair." It doesn’t seem fair, especially in the case of a beautiful twelve year old or a baby or a healthy person whose life ends tragically.

The reality of course is much different. We all have a finite time line. We all have an end. We all have no guarantees. From day one we begin dying. We have no promise of life beyond this one, no matter how loud someone screams it or how hard they pray. The reality is that we have no idea what happens when we die other than the practical physiological explanation we observe.

So if this reality is true and we do not have that confirmation, why do so many, including myself, not take on life with the vigor, strength and passion that we should? Why don’t we live life to the fullest every day and pursue our dreams each moment, not sure if it is our last? None of us understand it, but I think we all know this is true.

As sad as it is to lose those we love at any stage, we should use it as our motivation to get more out of every step of our own lives. I think that is an honor to who they are to us and their memory.

Tags: : honor, afterlife, death, life, memory

Exploring Your Doubts

A Christian pastor quoted E. Stanley Jones to me the other day. He was a Methodist missionary.:

"Believe your beliefs and doubt your doubts, and don’t speak unless you are voicing belief."

This really got me to thinking. Why would we not want to voice our doubts? They are either issues we need to work through or they are valid concerns that should be worth discussing. When I asked about this, the response was weak:

"There are certainly times where voicing doubts and the brutal facts are necessary, but shouldn’t be the norm."

So having doubts and speaking them is not a respectable attitude. We are not to accept our mental struggles with issues. We are to accept what we do not understand or question in the end without contradiction. This reminds me a lot of times when I was a kid and was told not to allow reason to cloud my thinking. Reason is the enemy of faith. Thinking is the enemy of God. That is how it plays out. In the end, if you think too much, you will touch on issues or subjects that have no answer, and there you must turn to God. This is frightening.

If God gave us the mind to question, think and reason, why would it be an enemy? Why can’t we discuss our doubts? Why not discuss them all the time? In the end, if the truth is truth it will always stand in the end. Either we are lazy or we are scared to take that path.

In my own mind I have resolved to always voice my doubts. Once I overcame the hurdle of whether Christianity was an absolute truth (in which I resolved it is not) after over a decade of self reflection, I see no virtue in hiding questions or doubts about my own journey. Doubts can not be resolved without a voice. Voice them, and wait for an answer.

Tags: christian, doubt, reason

The Sadness of Death. The Cruelty of Life.

An extremely sad even this week got me to thinking. A ten year old girl was found dead in a house fire along with her mother and another woman. This horrible tragedy is sad enough, but we then learn that it appears they were all killed prior to the fire by someone. Such a waste and sad ending to a young life, indeed. My heart is extremely torn by this event and the prospect of who could have done such a thing to them. It is impossible to know what they went through in their final hours.

We have since learned though that this poor child may have had it harder in life, than even in this tragic death. Facts have surfaced of abuse both physical and sexual, battles of custody, and other gut wrenching horrors have been an issue in this home. Now it is becoming clear that no one knew what this poor child went through in life, much less her mysterious death.

This snapshot of pain is sadly not the first, nor will it be the last. For every child that has a chance to make it, be loved, be successful in life, there are hundreds who are abused, unwanted, suffer unnameable problems or neglect. How does this happen? Why would it? We are in the most "advanced" stage of our species development yet the simple concept of happiness or at least sustainable living conditions eludes us.

These questions are some that I have never overcome in my quest to determine what is truly the truth in life. All my life I have been told that "God is good" and that his mercy, justice and truth will prevail. Yet in those remarks I find no solice in wrestling with issues like this poor little girl. Issues of starving children, children with no home, no one to love them, and no chance. What is the purpose of allowing them to experience these issues? If there is a greater good, how can it be contributed to with such despicable bricks and the mortar of social disorder?

It leans more to the explanation that we are merely ants in an ant farm than being key pieces to a large puzzle. What piece does this poor child become? What piece am I? It is dishonest and cruel to proclaim that a thing like this is "God’s will" and that God took her because he needed her. That is just as cruel to me as saying that she was not spared this sorrow because we did not pray to protect her. Do we really have to beg to save a child’s life with God? If there are not enough prayers are we truly doomed? Why is one child spared over another in these cases?

There are no answers for these issues, no matter how many claim there are. It is not a knowable truth. That is why we always seek but never find, and why the journey is what matters, not the prize.

Tags: children, death, evolution, gods will, prayer