Tim Tebow's football year is over now, thanks to an overwhelming 45-10 loss today to the New England Patriots. The loss, and the size of it (at least to me), wasn't surprising. Denver's defense was mediocre at best, Tom Brady is one of the best--and hungry--and in this age when the passing game dominates in the NFL, the outcome was almost a foregone conclusion. Tim Tebow is not a good NFL quarterback, and he may never be. Quarterbacks whose main asset coming out of college is an ability to run either have to evolve into a pocket-type passer, or they won't last long in the league. Even Michael Vick has learned that lesson. Vince Young never did. Tebow will have to, or he will go to way of...Vince Young...and other "running" quarterbacks.
But, for the past three months, Tebow was in the limelight and he did do some remarkable things. His success caught the nation's eye, but his decency elevated him above the normal. And the latter, more than anything, will be missed if he doesn't develop into a true NFL-type quarterback.
The mainstream media, with its searing, blinding, raging hatred of Christianity, gritted its teeth everytime Tebow pulled off a remarkable win. Finally, they had to get on board, at least partly--"there go the people. We are their leaders. We must follow them." For many Americans, it was just nice to see a decent, respectful, God-fearing young man succeed, a man who wasn't ashamed or slow to proclaim his faith and trust in God and Jesus. In a sports age that has given us NFL, MLB and NBA rosters that look like police rap sheets and post office walls, a Tim Tebow is something a country that retains a lot of decent people is looking for. How is it that human trash like Madonna and Lady Gaga can become so popular, adored, and worshipped by so many? This is good? This is an improvement on public moral virtue and character? These are the kinds of people we want our children to become? Barney Frank, Edward Kennedy, Bill Clinton? Every chance a "mainstream" media reporter gets, he/she will take a swipe at Tim Tebow and his religious beliefs. And yet the rot and vomit that is spewed out of Hollywood today is viewed upon with starry-eyed wonder and amazement, and pushed before American youth every chance possible. No, I say fill Hollywood, the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB--and especially Washington, D.C.--with people like Tim Tebow, and America would become a country to be proud of again.
Of course, an NFL full of Tim Tebows (I'm talking character, not talent) would be a ho-hum place, wouldn't it. Righteousness is boring. Sin is fun. And therein lies the major problem in the United States.
"Righteousness exalts a nation; sin is a reproach to any people" (Proverbs 14:34). It's not hard to explain America's downward spiral of the last 50 years. You can start, continue, and conclude with the pseudo-"intellectual" class's rejection of Christianity. To have progress, to go forward, America must go back to the Bible. It's the only hope.
But every precedent of history teaches that, once a nation starts down the path of degeneracy, immorality, and hedonism, it does not return before catastrophe strikes, if ever. Don't expect it to happen any time soon in America. A country that defines deviancy, dependency, and degeneration as "progress" has got a long way to go. That would be funny, if it wasn't so sad.
The tragedy for Denver--and the nation--today was not that Tim Tebow and the Broncos lost. The real tragedy is that a religious person like Tim Tebow is so unique, so exceptional in American pop culture. That speaks volumes--to those with eyes to see--of what the United States has become.