What do you think?

Timothy of Florida
by Anthony Esolen

Well, I was sorry last night to learn that Tim Tebow, unquestionably the most beloved young man in the state of Florida, will not be leading his Gators to a third national championship game. I am breaking with long family tradition in feeling sorry; we are Penn State fans, and adhere to a certain hierarchy of hate, according to which Florida has long been pretty low down on the list -- or near the top, depending on how you want to look at it.

Nevertheless, I am fascinated by the Tim Tebow phenomenon. It is true that he is a talented quarterback, and anybody who brings two national championships home is going to be treated like a prince. But sports allegiances do not come within a hundred miles of explaining why people love him so much. No doubt there are visitors to this site who can fill in the details, but from what I gather (and sports reporters these days are notoriously unwilling to write about such things, as any number of people like Kurt Warner and Albert Pujols will testify), Tebow is the homeschooled son of Christian missionaries. He won't ever be President of the United States, because he was born in the Philippines, where his father still works, and where he himself has gone many times to assist as a missionary. His mother apparently was advised by Filipino doctors to abort him, because the placenta had gotten detached; they told her that the child would certainly die, and that her own life would be in grave danger. I am not sure of the specifics of the medical situation. Suffice it to say that she turned the doctors down and put her life, and her baby's life, in the hands of God. Timothy Tebow was born, rather long of limb and skinny, but healthy. His body shows no signs of ever having been undernourished: he is six feet five inches, upwards of 250 pounds.

It seems that Tim Tebow heard the call of the missionary early on in life; also heard the call to play football. The two callings were united in his childhood hero, Florida quarterback Danny Wuerffel, who went on to play a while in the NFL, and then who established something called Desire Street Ministries, for the destitute (and the often criminal) in New Orleans. Wuerffel, not coincidentally, is a devout Christian. Tebow possesses that drive to excel that characterizes all great athletes, but what distinguishes him is a strange hunger to love others; as if he could not get enough of making people happy. He leads his teammates, or as many of them as are willing to go, on a run roundabout the stadium before a home game, to greet people, shake their hands, wish God's blessings upon them, or just thank them for being there. Men slap him on the back, boys shout, girls cry, "We love you, Timmy!" -- and for all of that, there seems not to be the trace of arrogance in him; he is a big kid, in love with God, and therefore in love with life and people. The fans apparently have taken to imitating his eyeblack: he always wears a patch under his eyes, with a different scripture verse noted upon it each game (Hebrews 12:12 against arch-rival Florida State). There's a great picture of him in what looks like a leather imitation of ancient armor -- he's got a beaming smile, because he's Goliath in a little church production, and a six-year-old boy is about to bring him down.

He says that his four priorities are God, family, academics, and football, in that order. And because they are in that order, while he may not be the greatest football player graduating from college this year, he has certainly touched more lives than any other player has, by far; and not only touched the lives, but brought perhaps something infinitely more valuable than a national championship in football. He has -- I don't think this is an exaggeration -- been the means whereby they have been reminded of the holy; he has therefore brought them hope.

Now this is exactly what the secular world cannot do. It can, with some considerable inefficiency, bring people food and medicine. It can run families into the ground and destroy communities, replacing them with the wraiths called mass education and mass entertainment. It is very good at that. It cannot bring hope; in fact it is almost the definition of secularism, that there is no hope to bring, other than a modest amelioration in one's physical conditions, before death. It does not plunge into the worst of all slums, the dilapidated heart of a man or woman steeped in evil, to say, "You are of incomparable worth; I love you; we are brothers, because we have one Father." That is what Danny Wuerffel does. It is what Tim Tebow will likely go on to do. And note the power of one good young Christian -- who is the light whereby a stadium filled with strangers becomes, for a few fleeting moments, a society.

Why should it not be so? "I praise you, Father in heaven, and give you glory," said Jesus, "for you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned of the world, and have revealed them unto babes." God reveals Himself to the innocent and the humble, not because He is playing a kind of ironical trick upon the learned -- as I used to think. It is because God by His very nature is, though glorious, also innocent and humble. Abraham Joshua Heschel, in Man Is Not Alone, makes the point again and again. The deities of the Greeks were passionate about their status on Olympus, and which nymph to ravish. The Lord is passionate about widows and orphans. The Lord appears to Moses in a thorn bush -- as if to say, "I am in the smallest things." So he appears to Elijah, in the still small voice. That is the Lord's glory. He is everywhere to be found, says Heschel, except in arrogance. Mainly he is to be found in love, for ubi amor est, ibi est oculus, says the mystic Richard of Saint Victor. Mr. Tebow may or may not read such things; it hardly matters. He knows Jesus.

One last point. Thomas Merton wrote once that the history of the world is led by great saints and great sinners. Let all the young people glancing at this post take heed. I am not young anymore, and it has taken me many years just to acquire sufficient wisdom to appreciate, as from afar, the goodness and the saintly courage of that young quarterback. Imagine, just imagine, if there were a hundred such, or a thousand. Imagine young men and women, with the beauty and the ardor of Christian faith, touching a college, a school, a street, a home. Merton recalled World War II and wondered whether -- and he wasn't being arrogant; his point was that all Christians should have wondered the same thing -- it might have been averted if only he [Merton] had been holier. You Christians who are young, never understimate the power of the goodness that Jesus has planted in you, to bring hope to souls in despair, and light into a dark and silly world.