I saw a couple of articles recently about the witness of Christian athletes that I thought were encouraging.
The first article comes on the heels of UNC’s loss this weekend (Yes, pun intended. What can I say? I used to be a youth pastor). Tyler Zeller, a senior basketball player at UNC—and one of our Summit guys, by the way—was interviewed shortly after UNC was defeated by Kansas in the NCAA tournament.
Battling back the tears, Zeller commented, “It all comes back to my faith. My faith has got me through a lot of things . . . my faith is the reason I am who I am today.”
Zeller went on to say, “Everything happens for a reason. I don’t know why it is. I don’t. I may question why God put us in this situation, but at the same time, he has a reason for everything.” It’s pretty common these days to hear athletes giving lip service to God after a victory. But it’s unique to hear someone like Zeller, on the other side, insisting that God is in charge of the tough times, too. This weekend I talked about how God used Stephen to bring the Apostle Paul to faith not by delivering him from his pain, but by giving him the grace to testify to the goodness of Jesus in his pain. I think we see Tyler doing that here. We’re proud of you!
The other article I ran across is, I’m sure, the first of hundreds analyzing quarterback Tim Tebow’s recent move to the New York Jets. Tebow is an outspoken Christian, which has led to a lot of attention in the media. But what Ross Douthat looks at in this New York Times article is the reason behind Tebow-mania.
According to Douthat, Tebow is a magnet for the press because he actually lives the way a Christian should. As he sees it, this is a rarity: “Nothing discredits religion quite like the gap that often yawns between what believers profess and how they live.”
But Tebow, in his short NFL career, has managed to buck this trend. “Why is Tim Tebow such a fascinating and polarizing figure?” Douthat asks. “Not just because he claims to be religious; that claim is commonplace among football stars and ordinary Americans alike. Rather, it’s because his conduct—kind, charitable, chaste, guileless—seems actually to vindicate his claim to be in possession of a life-altering truth.”
You don’t have to be a professional athlete to feel the punch of Douthat’s words. As Christians, we do possess a life-altering truth—the gospel. Do people notice a difference in our lives because of the grace of Christ?
