本帖最后由 haowh 于 2011-12-12 14:18 编辑
这是一篇谈论Tebow现象和Tebow的宗教信仰的文章，和我之前摘录的文章一样同样来自于WSJ
On a brisk Thursday evening in mid-November, I sat highin the stands at a Denver Broncos home game, covering the ears of my 4-year-oldson as the fans around us launched f-bombs at Tim Tebow, the Broncos'struggling second-year quarterback. Mr. Tebow was ineffective and off-targetfor most of the game, and one of his more voluble and obnoxious critics wasstanding right in front of us.
But the heckler's friend wasn't joining in."Just wait until the end of the fourth quarter," he said."That's Tebow time."
And so it was. In the waning moments againstthe 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 fromimminent defeat, just as he had done in previous weeks against the MiamiDolphins, Oakland Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs.
And when the shouting was over, Mr. Tebow didwhat he always does—he pointed skyward and took a knee in prayer. In postgameinterviews, the young quarterback often starts by saying, "First, I'd liketo thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" and ends with "Godbless." He stresses that football is just a game and that God doesn't carewho wins or loses.
This combination of candid piety andimprobable success on the field has made Mr. Tebow the most-discussedphenomenon of the National Football League season. Most expert analysts stillconsider him poor material for a pro quarterback. An inexperienced passer withawkward throwing mechanics and the build of a fullback, he likes to run overdefensive players, which is a no-no in the NFL, whose starting quarterbacks areexpensive and hard to come by.
But onward he and the Broncos have marched,winning six of their last seven games and now tied for the lead in theirdivision as they face the Chicago Bears this Sunday. Mr. Tebow continues todefy his critics—and to embody the anxieties over religion that are dividingtoday's sports world and embroiling players and fans alike.
Sports culture is among the most ferventlyreligious sectors of American life. If you turn on ESPN's"SportsCenter" almost any night, you will see baseball players whopoint to heaven after a clutch hit and basketball players like the OrlandoMagic's Dwight Howard, who once intimated that a playoff series victory againstthe Boston Celtics was proof of God's presence with his team.
These claims by athletes—"God helped medo that" or "I thank God that I was able to do that"—are so commonplacethat they usually draw little notice. Most sports fans seem to think that suchreligious talk doesn't really affect how the games are played or credit it witha powerful placebo effect. So what if Adrian Gonzalez of the Boston Red Sox hasa Bible verse inscribed on his bat? Fine—whatever helps him to hit the longball.
Tebow has never been content to leave his evangelicalfaith on the field. Well before he became the starting quarterback for Denver, he was a lightning rod in America'sintermittent culture war of believers vs. secularists.
In 2010, while still at the University ofFlorida (where he won the Heisman Trophy and helped the Gators to win two nationalchampionships), Mr. Tebow filmed a Super Bowl commercial for Focus on theFamily, the mega-ministry known for its conservative political advocacy. The adis about how Mr. Tebow's mother was advised to abort her son following aplacental abruption, but she refused and, well, now we have Tim Tebow.
The ad takes the softest possible approach tothe 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 andsocial identity. If you think he's destined to be a winner, you must be a naiveevangelical. If you question his long-term chances as an NFL quarterback, youmust hate people who love Jesus.
The intertwining of religion and sports isnothing new in American culture. Both basketball and volleyball were inventedby men involved with chapters of the Young Men's Christian Association in Massachusetts. Orconsider the pioneering college coach Amos Alonzo Stagg (1862-1965), who createdthe batting cage in baseball, five-man teams for basketball and several of thestandard aspects of football, from the man in motion, lateral pass and Statueof Liberty play to helmets, tackling dummies and names on uniforms.
The historian Clifford Putney has writtenthat Stagg and his contemporaries combined faith with sports and competitionbecause they believed that God wanted people to live healthy, vigorous lives.They believed that sports could help to make people good and thereby bring themcloser to what God intended for them.
As Michael Lewis reports in his 2006 book"The Blind Side," one of the standard problems of today's topathletes—one of the main threats to long careers—is defective character. Heoffers a depressing list of high-school football standouts who came to ignobleends because of selfishness and stupidity, including Eric Jefferson, afirst-team all-American defensive end who was arrested for armed robbery, andMichael Burden, an NFL-bound defensive back who was charged with rape and then"vanished without a trace."
More recently, we have seen the disruptedcareers of star athletes like Michael Vick, Plaxico Burress and Tiger Woods—menwhose lives in professional sports have been undermined by character faults.Such stories are more common than we realize. For every Michael Oher (Mr.Lewis's subject in "The Blind Side") who overcomes harsh beginningsand makes it, there are many other promising athletes who are overcome by theirown worst impulses. They lose, the game loses and fans lose.
Alternatively, keeping the faith can meankeeping one's best possible life. Josh Hamilton, the All-Star outfielder forthe Texas Rangers, lost part of his career to drug and alcohol addiction beforefinding the support of a religious community. Tony Dungy, the former coach ofthe Indianapolis Colts, says that his reputation for "quiet strength"(also the title of his best-selling book) developed only after God changed himfrom an angry, testy man into a model of "Christian maturity."
In the case of Mr. Tebow, what seems to fuelmany of his fans—and to drive many of his critics crazy—is not so much hisevangelical faith itself but the equanimity and generosity that his faithinspires in him. Can he really mean it when he says that football isn't thatimportant to him, that he cares more about transcendent things?
Mr. Tebow says that football is just agame—and that God doesn't care who wins or loses.While at Florida,Mr. Tebow became well known for spending his summers helping the poor and needyin 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 theHeisman Trophy in 2007, he had the idea to use his fame to raise money for theorphanage that his family runs and for other organizations. Since NationalCollegiate Athletic Association rules prevented him from raising money for hisown causes, he worked with the university to found a student society that couldbe used for charity.
According to the former Florida coach Urban Meyer, Mr. Tebow'sphilanthropic efforts reshaped campus culture, and for a time, volunteeringbecame fashionable. In his senior year, the powder-puff football tournamentthat he launched, with the help of the university's sororities andfraternities, raised $340,000 for charity.
Mr. Tebow's acts of goodwill have often beenmore intimate. In December 2009, he attended a college-football awards ceremonyin Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The night before, at another gala atWalt Disney World Resort, he met a 20-year-old college-football fan named KellyFaughnan, 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 theplayer.
Mr. Tebow spent a long while with Ms.Faughnan and her family, and asked her if she'd like to be his date for theaward ceremony the following night. She agreed, and the scene of Mr. Tebowescorting the trembling young woman down the red carpet led much of thereporting about the event.
As Mr. Tebow's acts of goodwill merged withhis achievements on the field for the Floridateam, Tebow fandom morphed into Tebow piety. Students launched websitesdedicated to the young man, and blogs and message boards lit up with tributes.The blogosphere and Twitterverse produced a flood of over-the-top jokesdeclaring Tebow's greatness: "Tim Tebow has counted toinfinity…twice." "When Tim Tebow walks on water, his feet don't getwet."
In recent weeks, as Tebow mania hasre-emerged alongside the unexpected success of the Broncos, it has become clearthat the fever is not confined to the quarterback's fellow evangelicalChristians. Mr. Tebow's habit of taking to one knee in prayer on the field hasgiven rise to an Internet meme called "Tebowing." Fans have postedpictures of themselves praying on one knee while doing everything from surfingand fighting fires to touring Chinaand going into battle.
"Tebowing" is the brainchild ofJared Kleinstein, 24, a real-estate marketer in New York City who was raised in Denver,where he grew into a devoted sports fan. Mr. Kleinstein, who is Jewish, justwanted to pay tribute to the inspirational quarterback of his favorite team. Helaunched Tebowing.com from Manhattanin October, on the night after Mr. Tebow led the Broncos to victory over theMiami Dolphins.
"We were at a bar watching thegame," he says, "and when he came back to win, everybody was cheeringlike we won the Super Bowl, even though we had just beat the last-place team inthe league." Mr. Kleinstein noticed that as the Bronco players werejumping up and down on the sidelines, Mr. Tebow took a knee in prayer. Hesnapped a picture of himself and his friends doing the same, called it "Tebowing,"then created the site and sent it to eight people.
Within 48 hours, Mr. Kleinstein had beeninterviewed by this paper, CBS, Fox, ABC and other media outlets. The site hasreceived millions of visits and page views in its short life. Mr. Kleinsteinreceives pictures of people Tebowing all day long, and often posts new picturesevery hour.
With his site, Mr. Kleinstein says,"people found hope through a gesture," noting a much-discussed photothat he posted of a young boy with an IV attached to his arm who wrote that hewas "Tebowing while chemoing." Mr. Kleinstein adds that a lot ofsupport for the trend has come from rabbis. "It has made prayer in publicsomething to not be ashamed of," he says. "I think that crosses allreligious boundaries."
In communities across America,whether religious or secular, fields of play are often seen as workshops ofcharacter. Parents and coaches get kids involved with sports because they careabout encouraging them to be better people.
At the national level, however, big-timesports is big business, with billions of dollars at stake, and Americans tendto be cynical about the whole show. In this world, Mr. Tebow's frequentprofessions of faith can come across as a discordant note, equal partsover-earnestness and naïveté. It's hard to resist the thought that, eventually,a darker reality will show through.
Mr. Tebow may indeed turn out to be ahypocrite, like other high-profile Christians in recent memory. Some of usmight even want that to happen, because moral failure is something weunderstand. We know how to deal with disappointed expectations, to turn oursongs of praise into condemnation.
What we are far less sure how to do is totake seriously a public figure's seemingly admirable character and professionsof higher purpose. We don't know how to trust goodness.
And who can blame us? We don't want to befooled again.
The one loss in Mr. Tebow's record as Denver's startingquarterback this season came in a 45-10 blowout against the Detroit Lions. Mr.Tebow completed just 46% of his passes. He suffered seven sacks, including oneby Stephen Tulloch, after which Mr. Tulloch took a knee, "Tebowing"as Mr. Tebow struggled to rise.
When asked how he felt about Mr. Tulloch'smockery, Mr. Tebow responded, "He was probably just having fun and wasexcited he made a good play and had a sack. And good for him."
Last week, after the Broncos' victory againstMinnesota,Mr. Tebow was asked by a reporter to name something memorable that had beensaid to him in the wake of the extraordinary win.
"I'll tell you one thing that happenedduring the week that I remember," he said. Mr. Tebow proceeded to talkabout spending time with a young leukemia patient from Florida who had just been transferred tohospice care and about how delighted Mr. Tebow was to say the kid's name ontelevision and to let him know that someone cared.
Mr. Tebow may or may not enjoy long-termsuccess as an NFL quarterback. His current streak will run its course, and theBroncos might well move on to another quarterback, one who is more obviouslysuited to the pro game.
But win or lose, Tim Tebow will competehard—and when he's done, he will thank God and remind all of us that it's justa game.
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发表于 2011-12-12 14:00
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