All posts by Wintery Knight

https://winteryknight.com/
News

Why do people hate Tim Tebow? Why do people want Tim Tebow to fail?

6 Comments

The Denver Broncos, their amazing kicker and their amazing Christian quarterback, all won again in an exciting overtime win. That’s three games in a row (at least, I’m not following it closely) where Tim Tebow and the Broncos have managed to come from behind to win at the last possible second.

Here’s the scoop on the latest nail-biting victory by the Denver Broncos.

Tim Tebow has led the Broncos to five fourth-quarter comebacks since replacing Kyle Orton at starting quarterback eight games ago, when Denver was 1-4.

“I guess I’ve just got to get to the stadium and start practicing a little bit earlier,” Tebow said.

The win is Denver’s sixth in a row, and secures the Broncos (8-5) the AFC West lead, which they shared with Oakland entering Sunday’s games. Chicago dropped to 7-6, further clouding its playoff chances.

The Broncos could be playoff bound, but the only prediction coming out of Denver locker room Sunday was this: “I’m definitely going to be going bald by the end of the season,” said the 27-year-old Prater, who has made four game-winning field goals this season. “Bald or gray, one of the two.”

Denver could have made Sunday’s game much less of a heart-stopper but muffed two scoring chances earlier in the game. A 28-yard attempt by Prater was blocked in the second quarter. In the third quarter, Broncos receiver Demaryius Thomas broke away from coverage near the end zone but let a deep pass slip from Tebow through his hands.

Tebow said he told Thomas not to worry about it, that Thomas would score the game-winning touchdown.

The prediction was off, but not by much.

With 4:34 left in regulation, the Broncos were trailing 10-0. Tebow completed seven straight passes to lead Denver on a 63-yard scoring drive, capped by two receptions by Thomas. The 10-yard touchdown catch came with 2:08 remaining.

“It was just a big relief,” Thomas said.

Chicago, still leading by three points, lost the opportunity to run off time on the clock when running back Marion Barber, starting in place of the injured Matt Forte, ran out of bounds with less than two minutes left in regulation.

“I might have thanked the Lord when he did that,” Tebow said.

Tebow and the Broncos offense regained possession with 53 seconds left. Tebow completed three passes to put the Broncos in field-goal range, then Prater kicked a career record-tying 59-yarder with eight seconds left to send the game into overtime.

“You can’t say enough about Prater and how clutch he is,” Tebow said.

Man, can the Denver kicker kick field goals – he nailed a 59-yard field goal today. But the quarterback Tim Tebow is the one getting all the attention lately. And I think because this is a Christian blog, we need to take a look at why that is.

I read this article in the Wall Street Journal about Tim Tebow, and I asked myself the question “does God care whether Tim Tebow wins football games?”.

First, Tim doesn’t think that God cares about who wins football games:

In the waning moments against the New York Jets, Mr. Tebow manufactured a 95-yard game-winning drive, punctuated by his own 20-yard touchdown dash. He brought the Broncos back from imminent defeat, just as he had done in previous weeks against the Miami Dolphins, Oakland Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs.

And when the shouting was over, Mr. Tebow did what he always does—he pointed skyward and took a knee in prayer. In postgame interviews, the young quarterback often starts by saying, “First, I’d like to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” and ends with “God bless.” He stresses that football is just a game and that God doesn’t care who wins or loses.

He’s right about that. God doesn’t care about who wins and loses football games. He doesn’t care about making us feel happy or sad, either. He doesn’t care about giving us what we want. God has one reason and one reason alone for creating us. To give us time on Earth to respond to his drawing us toward him. It’s our job to puzzle about science and history and logic now and try to see if he is there and what he is like. Our job is to know God and to serve God. You’re not going to be able to tell whether God exists based on the Denver Broncos’ wins and losses. Football is not a premise in any argument for God’s existence or Jesus’ resurrection.

But that doesn’t mean that Tim Tebow can’t use football to serve God. Here are a couple of ways he helps to do that.

First, charity:

While at Florida, Mr. Tebow became well known for spending his summers helping the poor and needy in the Philippines. He also spoke in prisons and appeared to accept every opportunity to volunteer. He encouraged his teammates and classmates to follow his lead.

As Mr. Tebow recounts in his book “Through My Eyes” (written with Nathan Whitaker), after he won the Heisman Trophy in 2007, he had the idea to use his fame to raise money for the orphanage that his family runs and for other organizations. Since National Collegiate Athletic Association rules prevented him from raising money for his own causes, he worked with the university to found a student society that could be used for charity.

According to the former Florida coach Urban Meyer, Mr. Tebow’s philanthropic efforts reshaped campus culture, and for a time, volunteering became fashionable. In his senior year, the powder-puff football tournament that he launched, with the help of the university’s sororities and fraternities, raised $340,000 for charity.

Mr. Tebow’s acts of goodwill have often been more intimate. In December 2009, he attended a college-football awards ceremony in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The night before, at another gala at Walt Disney World Resort, he met a 20-year-old college-football fan named Kelly Faughnan, a brain-tumor victim who suffers from hearing loss and visible, continual tremors. She was wearing a button that said “I love Timmy.” Someone noticed and made sure that the young woman had a chance to meet the player.

Mr. Tebow spent a long while with Ms. Faughnan and her family, and asked her if she’d like to be his date for the award ceremony the following night. She agreed, and the scene of Mr. Tebow escorting the trembling young woman down the red carpet led much of the reporting about the event.

You can read more about their date here. (H/T Tim McGrew) Tim Tebow considers his presence something to be given away to others who would benefit from it. It’s not something he uses to gratify his own needs. He gives himself as a gift to people and he leaves them better than he found them.

Second, Tim Tebow gets people curious and/or angry about Christianity, because he acts on his beliefs:

In 2010, while still at the University of Florida (where he won the Heisman Trophy and helped the Gators to win two national championships), Mr. Tebow filmed a Super Bowl commercial for Focus on the Family, the mega-ministry known for its conservative political advocacy. The ad is about how Mr. Tebow’s mother was advised to abort her son following a placental abruption, but she refused and, well, now we have Tim Tebow.

The ad takes the softest possible approach to the subject and never uses the terms “abortion” or “pro-life,” but its intent was clear, and it generated controversy. Since then, feelings about Mr. Tebow have been a litmus test of political and social identity. If you think he’s destined to be a winner, you must be a naive evangelical. If you question his long-term chances as an NFL quarterback, you must hate people who love Jesus.

In another article, Tim Tebow is quite honest about his refusal to engage in sex before marriage.

Excerpt:

Tebow’s successful college football career and current position as Denver Bronco’s quarterback make him a manly-man in an everyday sense, but evangelical Christians say it’s his unashamed willingness to adhere to the moral teachings of his faith that make him a man in a religious sense.

Tebow, who told reporters that yes, he was a virgin and yes, he was waiting until marriage to have sex, has become an example of contemporary “biblical manhood,” a good guy, willing to speak out for Christianity and actually practice what he preaches.

The notion of biblical masculinity is based on a complementation view of gender roles, as described in Scripture, which positions men as head of the household. The leaders of the movement to restore biblical manhood say today’s men aren’t living according to that Christian call, and social and spiritual downfalls have caused them to be lazy and passive or overly authoritative. There’s a man crisis in society, they say, and the church needs to educate men on how to fulfill their responsibilities.

Consistent Christians have to be different like that. People think that none of us actually take these things seriously. But there are people out there like Tim, who understand what sex and love and marriage and parenting are really about, and have the self-control to try to do things as correctly as they can. And we need people to see that there is something different about evangelical Christians – we are the ones who take this stuff seriously. We are the ones who care about children’s need for a mother and a father and a stable marriage, and we advocate for chastity and traditional marriage so that vulnerable children get the stability and love they need as they develop.

But not everyone is going to respond to Tebow’s chastity, charity and pro-life activism with admiration and curiosity. Some will hate Tim and will want him to fail. The reason why people hate him is because people who are sinning, especially sexually, feel better when they think that “everyone is doing it”. In fact, that’s exactly why the left tries so hard to sexualize children, to give them condoms, and to have Christians pay for their abortions and recognize gay marriages. The anti-Christians don’t want to believe that anyone is out there trying to be good. They feel that if they could just bring everyone like Tebow down to their level, then all the evil that they are doing will be OK. What would be great, they think, is if people like Tebow could celebrate their sinful choices so that they would feel better about them.

The Bible actually talks about this in Romans 1, where the Bible explains that sinful people know about the moral law but “they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” They want Tim Tebow to approve of their sinfulness and selfishness, and by choosing to go a different way, he is disapproving of their choices, and they don’t like that. They oppose the idea that there is any purpose to sexuality other than feeling good. They don’t want anyone to impose rules on their pursuit of pleasure. And they don’t want anyone to tell them that what they are doing is wrong. I am not advocating coercing anyone to be moral, but I do think that people like Tim Tebow should be free to be chaste, and free to express his views on what he thinks is moral when it comes to sex and abortion.

Commentary

The top 5 myths about Christmas

4 Comments

From Take Two Apologetics.  It’s an interview with Krista Bontrager. I removed the links from the excerpt below, so you can click through to their site if you want the links.

Excerpt:

Krista, many of us were taught that Jesus was born in a stable because “there was no room in the inn.” Was He born in a stable?

Probably not. Nowhere in the Bible does it state that Joseph went from home to home looking for a place to stay. That story stems from many translations’ use of the word “inn” in Luke 2:7. From that, we extrapolate a whole slew of events—the innkeeper, innkeeper’s wife, a No Vacancy sign flashing. The problem is that the word used in Luke 2 (kataluma) is not the word for inn—that’s a bad English translation. The word is better translated as “upper room” or “guest room.” In fact, the 2011 translation of NIV makes that correction. Luke 22:11 also uses kataluma to describe the guest room where the last supper took place. In contrast, pandocheion (correctly translated as “inn”) appears inthe parable of the Good Samaritan.

Where was Jesus born, then, if not in a stable?

It’s much more likely He was born in a home. Mary and Joseph were going to their ancestral home, which means they had extended family there. It’s almost inconceivable that their family would not have taken them in considering the cultural practices of that time.

So if Jesus was born in a home, why does the Bible say He was placed in a manger?

That’s an important detail because it tells us what part of the house they were in. In those days, homes had an upper level where the family would sleep and a lower level where animals were kept at night for the animals’ protection and to provide heat. It seems that Jesus was born in that lower level where the animals were kept. And he was placed in a manger (feed trough) because they make for a great little cradle. In fact it reminds me of the makeshift bed my husband and I once made for our daughter when we stayed overnight at a hotel.

What about some of the characters often suggested as being present at Christ’s birth?

The shepherds were present, but the three wise men were not. Matthew’s account apparently takes place during a different time frame than Luke’s. One clue is that the Greek word Matthew used to describe Jesus is a paidion, which can mean anything from an infant to a toddler. This range of definitions would be consistent with King Herod killing all the Jewish  boys ages two and under (Matthew 2). This would mean that Jesus was probably two or younger when He was visited by the wise men.

Okay, so we’ve eliminated the stable and the wise men from the Nativity. What about the date? Was Jesus born on December 25?

Maybe. The standard story is that December 25 was adopted after Constantine’s conversion to Christianity because it was on a pagan holiday and the winter solstice. Christians then co-opted the holiday and Christianized it. What’s interesting is that the early church put almost no emphasis on celebrating the birth of Christ. They were much more concerned with the resurrection. It’s not until AD 200 where possible dates are mentioned for the celebrating of Christ’s birth. By about AD 300 there were two dates: December 25 (for the west) and January 6 (for the east). There does seem to be a tradition of December 25 long before Constantine’s conversion, so that’s why I say maybe. This article from the Biblical Archaeology Review gives a good summary of “How December 25 Became Christmas.”

I found this post over on Apologetics 315. Brian puts up a post with apologetics stories every Friday. There’s more in there – I am listening to the 5 part lecture series on church history right now. (It’s Calvinist, but polite)

News

Only one Democrat senator voted to limit future IMF bailouts for Europe

1 Comment
Sen. Jim Demint
Sen. Jim Demint

First, a quick re-cap on Jim Demint’s Amendment 501, which would have prevented the IMF from using $108 billion of American money to bail out foreign nations.

Excerpt:

The Senate on Wednesday defeated an amendment in a 44-55 vote that would have prevented the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from using $108 billion in U.S. monies to bail out foreign nations.

The author of the amendment, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), said he is concerned that the IMF is using U.S. funds to rescue irresponsible nations and banks. He said the U.S. can no longer afford to offer such aid.

“There is no excuse for us giving away money around the world when we cannot even keep our promises here in America today, promises we have made to our seniors, promises we have made to our veterans,” said DeMint.

Now, Jim explains in the Wall Street Journal why 55 Democrat senators shouldn’t have voted against it.

Excerpt:

If the United States wants to help Europe find a way out of its current debt crisis, we must be a strong, world economic leader, not merely the lender of last resort.

American taxpayers sent $40 billion to Greece last year, through the International Monetary Fund, to stave off an economic collapse. But the bailout did not prevent Greece’s day of fiscal reckoning. It only delayed it. Austerity measures are still needed throughout Europe’s socialized economy and the debt contagion has not been stopped. Financial chaos has spread from Greece to Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Spain, and it now threatens the very future of the 17-member euro zone.

Undeterred, President Obama last month told the press after breaking from a closed-door meeting with European leaders, “the United States stands ready to do our part to help them resolve this issue.” He would do better to focus his attention stateside. The most dangerous threat to the U.S. economy is not across the pond. It’s in the swampland of Washington, D.C.

[…]Greece’s economy reached its tipping point and was bailed out when government debt topped 137% of its gross domestic product. Despite all the measures that have been taken to aid it, Greece’s debt-to-GDP-ratio is even higher now, at 160%. Ireland was bailed out at 74% of GDP and is now at 80%. Portugal was bailed out at 94% of GDP and is now expected to top 100%. The bailouts have arguably made the European debt crisis worse, not better.

Total U.S. debt, including entitlement liabilities, reached 100% of GDP when Congress increased the debt ceiling in August. Our $15 trillion debt now rivals the size of the entire U.S. economy.

When he first took office, President Obama promised to cut the federal deficit in half by 2013. But instead he’s increased it by more than $4 trillion. Indeed, under his direction, the U.S. government spent about $1 trillion on a Keynesian-style stimulus that failed to create the jobs promised, will spend trillions more creating a European-style health-care entitlement with ObamaCare, and has more Americans on welfare than ever before.

[…]This year the U.S. sent about $67 billion to the IMF, which represents 17.7% of the IMF’s yearly budget—nearly three times more than any other nation. On top of that, taxpayers provided an additional $108 billion credit line to the IMF in 2009.

In 2010, the IMF sent nearly $40 billion in assistance to Greece, which did nothing to prevent the country’s economic collapse in 2011. On Monday, the IMF approved another $2.95 billion worth of bailout funds for the struggling country.

[…]Earlier this year, I offered an amendment to repeal the IMF’s authority to use the additional $108 billion credit line to provide any more bailouts. It was overwhelmingly rejected by the Democrat-controlled Senate. Forty-four senators voted for it; only one was a Democrat.

This has to stop. We have to stop electing people who don’t believe that people are responsible to create their own wealth, instead of stealing it from others – and impoverishing generations yet unborn. The right way to solve economic problems is to create the conditions that incentivize people to create wealth, not to discourage them by confiscating what they earn. There is a problem in Europe right now – huge numbers of benefits are being taken from those who produce (the private sector) and given to those who don’t (the public sector). The first step is to stop the bailouts.

Donald Sensing posted some thoughts from Abraham Lincoln on his blog that seem appropriate for this post.

Excerpt:

If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

Any society that takes away from those most capable and gives to the least will perish.

Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity. Posterity has done nothing for us.

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other man’s consent.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence.

Let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of his own and his children’s liberty. Let reverence for the laws … become the political religion of the nation.

If ever this free people, if this Government itself is ever utterly demoralized, it will come from this incessant human wriggle and struggle for office, which is but a way to live without work.

We have to distrust each other. It’s our only defense against betrayal.

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich and, hence, is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus, by example, assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

It has ever been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

I understand that stealing money from working people and their employers and giving it to lazy people is an important goal for Democrat politicians, because it builds up their self-esteem and it makes them feel admired and popular. But it’s not their money. They need to stop. Obama’s desire to “spread the wealth around” is not a moral policy, it’s an immoral policy – because it’s not his wealth. He didn’t produce it.