Tebow’s Christianity Is Bad for Children

Recently, I listened to Pierce Morgan ask his guest about Tim Tebow. He asked, in effect, what could possibly be wrong with a sports celebrity spreading God’s message, especially when other sports figures are such poor models for our kids?

Many of our sports figures do model poorly for our kids. They all too often get into trouble with the law, abuse drugs, and generally act like overpaid arrogant asses. But that they act so poorly is weak justification for holding Tebow up as some kind of hero for his Christianity.

I won’t argue that Tebow is not a nice guy, that he does not do good things. I’m sure that he is, and that he he does. Nor will I argue that he is not talented; he clearly is. These are good enough reasons to hold the guy up as a sports hero.

But there is an insidious logic in celebrating him as a man of God. It sends the message to kids that God takes an interest in sporting events, and that He takes sides with the righteous, which implies, in turn, that the other side is either less righteous or not righteous at all. It follows that the believers are rewarded, and that the non-believers do not convert to first downs. At a level deeper, it follows that people get what they deserve, be it the Haitian Earth Quake or the Japanese Tsunami.

Yet there is an even more subtle danger in extolling this example of a poor reasoner. It will tend to attract kids to Evangelical Christianity, which is a black hole for young minds. Evangelical Christianity has the bad habit of promoting a kind of faith which would deny what modern science has provided our society. That is, it calls it a virtue to believe in certain accounts of the world, though these accounts would fly in the face of reason and science; and it calls it a virtue to believe in these accounts, though these accounts provide no real means of improving the world.

Evangelical Christianity is not the only Abrahamic theism which promotes this kind of anti-critical attitude. Evangelical Christianity is not the only guilty of the ultraconservative mind set which would demand that we express every new discovery in old and outmoded language. But Evangelical Christianity is a particularly shallow and stagnate cesspool for this kind of ignorance.

The language which these Christians insist to be the eternal and unchanging Word of God is shamefully weak, impotent, and unable to account for anything we have come to learn in the last few thousand years; and to promote to children that they should glorify this kind of language as excellent and suited for all times risks damaging their ability to master the language which we have developed to deal with our world.

The language of modern science in particular has empowered us to predict and control our environment such that we are able to diminish suffering a thousand fold. To name but one area, by the vocabulary and language of what makes up the Theory of Evolution, we are able to create vaccines, prevent disease, and heal the sick. To teach our children that it is good to value a particular way of talking—the Biblical way—as it were eternally the true way to talk about the world, and to dismiss ways of talking which negate the beloved sentences, is to promote illiteracy—the kind of illiteracy that we see in Afghanistan, where women cannot become gynecologists, yet it is forbidden that a man should view their reproductive organs.

The language of Christianity does little to explain anything which we need to know: those things which would help us to really help those who suffer. There is no predictive power in any of the language of Christianity. And there is nothing useful in language which does not help us predict.

Yet children want to help, and esteem heroes who would help. Tebow should be esteemed for wanting to do good in this world. Yet his Christianity unwittingly harms. Would that all the good people of Christianity would learn that words change, precisely because environments change, no matter what John insisted was in The Beginning.

We need to teach children to esteem people for what they do well. Tebow can throw a ball. Yet, outside of the keen logic required to execute a pass well, he does not show himself to be skilled with language that really can score a touchdown off the field.