Does anyone remember that awesome old Disney movie with Christopher Lloyd and Danny Glover called Angels in the Outfield?  The premise is basically a little boy asks God to have the Angels win the pennant so he could be reunited with his estranged father.  Suddenly a band of heavenly helpers are dispatched to help the Angels along their way until they made into the playoffs.  Championships had to be won on their own according to head Angel Christopher Lloyd.  The movie was funny, warm, and family friendly.  I was only 12 when I saw  that movie.  I liked it and even if I thought that its premise was ridiculous.  I had had a few years of sports under my belt at this point in life and at no time did I feel the divine’s hand in any sporting event.

Which brings me to Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos.  I admit I enjoyed their story lines this season.  I have to admit that I admire Tim Tebow for being firm in what he believes and I think he’s caught a little to much flack for it.  My good friend and confident Adam and I had a conversation last week about the possibility if God really did help the Broncos defeat the Steelers.  He seemed to think so while I was a little more skeptical. Adam’s reasoning is that our talents are from God (I would agree on this point) so yes in some way God played a part in that football game.  To add onto to the fire the fact the Tebow threw for 316 yards of offense and John told him to pull the trigger on that last play of the game.  It was a heck of an ending to a great game of football.  I mean here we had Tim Tebow, the golden boy, going against Ben Roethlisberger, the touted bad boy.  A battle between good and evil.  Classic stuff.  The only conclusions you could surely draw at the end of the game was that clearly God is a miracle worker and good will always defeat evil.  Sure enough that is how the internet blew up the following day.  With people screaming we should “believe” and “316 surely this is a not a coincidence!”

Get.  A.  Grip.

I’m all for miracles, the unexplained, and the supernatural.   I like a good mystery, but their is no mystery here.  Anyone can be beaten on any given day.  Come on didn’t anyone see Little Giants (Rick Moranis and Ed O Neill anyone?).  I’ll go ahead and let the cat out of the bag for those of you who do not know me I’m a Christian.  I believe that Jesus was the Son of God and died for humanities sins.  Surely if I could believe this, I could make the connection to Tebow and his stats.  Yet I have to say I was disgusted by it.  I like to think that God has better things to do in the world then consider the outcome of a football game.  Does that mean  I think God wasn’t there.  No.  But if he was I would hope he had more important things to do like watch out for the safety of the players and fans.  Now am I denying that it could be within the scope of his power to have Broncos win either. No.  Simply rather I don’t think He is into that sort of thing.  I think the world has bigger issues at hand.  But in any case now what?  Many people made a big deal out of these “events” and now Tom Brady and the Patriots are up next.

My fears realized.

Denver was crushed and embarrassed.  Totally and utterly destroyed by the New England Patriots.  So what now?  Did God abandon Tim Tebow?  Perhaps we can just say God works in mysterious ways?  Does God love Tom Brady more than Tim Tebow?  Or even worse are Tom Brady and the New England Patriots more powerful than the Almighty?  I think not.  Rather this is what happens when we choose to assign such meaningless nonsense to God.  We diminish his power and his glory.   Not to mention I think we make ourselves look like fools.  I know the good people over at r/atheism are having a blast with this whole thing.  Why shouldn’t they?  I’m Christian and I find the whole thing just silly and in some ways plain insulting to the God who can raise the dead, split the sea, and visit plagues up the Egyptians, etc etc.

Where do we go from here?

We put it behind us.  Each of us will come to a different conclusion on the matter.  Yet I would say from here on out lets not be so quick to assign mediocre happenings to God All Mighty.  Maybe we wait until another plane lands in the water with zero causalities?  Something along the those lines perhaps?  Also maybe from here on out if we do ask God in on our sporting events we ask him to look after everyone, thank him for our good fortune, and ask him he might pay it forward to those less fortunate than us?