Sunday, January 8, 2012

Tebow, Religion, and Radio Stations


Well anyone who considers himself fairly knowledgeable about sports will know that the Denver Broncos won earlier tonight and will advance to the playoffs. He will also know that Tim Tebow, the Broncos quarterback has taken the football world by storm. Now Tebow is (from what I hear) an average quarterback, but he gets a lot of attention because he leads the team well and is also a man of very strong faith. Unfortunately he also gets a lot of negative attention for having faith as well. Recently I was listening to the radio in the car and the speaker was talking about religion and politics and saying that the happiest countries are also the least religious. Now what do these two events have in common? Well nothing, other than that they both caused me to question why it seems the world has such a problem with religion. It seems to me that religion is seen in a negative light nowadays, that people like Tim Tebow are being cast more as villains and the punch lines of jokes than the decent men that they are. I would ask those that have a problem with Tebow (or any other religious men in general) what is the alternative? Yes, many terrible things have been done in the name of religion (we all learned these in our 7th grade history class: the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, Religious wars…). But look at the other end of the spectrum; what about atheist societies? While terrible things have been done in the name of religion, possibly even worse have been done in the absence of religion. It is the absence of God that brought Hitler’s Nazi’s, Stalin, Castro, the catastrophe in Rwanda, and the Albanian Genocide. What is my point? Without a belief in God, human life means nothing. Is it harsh? Yes, but it is not false at all. If I am a mere combination of atoms that was thrown together by chance then what reason do I have to live? What right do I have? I am no different than any other animal that dies in the wild and my death should be treated as such. But we have a completely different reaction, and that is because we view human life as sacred and that projection can only come from a belief in the divine. It seems that religious men are cast as the problem, that they are preventing our own happiness. Well what if we lived in an atheist world, what if our laws meant nothing more than what men ought to do because… well, someone said so a while back. Yes terrible things have been done in the name of Christianity, but without the true followers of Christ who live out His message of love towards others no matter what, where would we be?

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