Tebow Time: Is God Answering Tim Tebow’s Prayers?

Check out this great article from the WSJ by Fr. James Martin S.J. about Tim Tebow in the wake of the Denver Bronco's upset win in Sunday's AFC Wildcard game against the Pittsburg Steelers.

Is God Answering Tim Tebow’s Prayers? Will He answer mine?

Wow.  Tim Tebow, the famously religious quarterback who kneels in prayer before, during and after games, led the Denver Broncos to another apparently miraculous win yesterday.  And, as if the win itself weren’t dramatic enough, the football phenom passed for an astonishing 316 yards in ten throws.  That would be 31.6 yards a throw.  Does that number sound familiar?  It should.  It’s the verse from the Gospel of John (3:16) that Mr. Tebow had written on his “eye black,” the patch of paint under his eyes to cut glare.  For those without your Bible handy that would be: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

All this raises the inevitable question, and one that I’ve been asked numerous times over the last few months: Is God answering Tim Tebow’s prayers?

Well, in good Jesuitical fashion the answer is: Yes, no, and I don’t know. First, the yes.  Well, before I tackle the yes, let me say something else.  Mr. Tebow is obviously a prayerful man and a faithful Christian.  I admire him for his ebullient belief and his deep trust in God.  So nothing I say in this piece is meant to disparage him or his faith.  I genuinely like the guy, and I’m not even much of a Broncos fan.  (Go Eagles?)

Okay.  Back to the yes.  Yes, God is hearing Mr. Tebow’s prayers. God hears everyone’s prayers, no matter who you are; just as Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, God causes to the rain to fall on the just and the unjust, and sends the sun to shine on the evil and the good.  That part is easy to answer.  And God is certainly helping Mr. Tebow in his life, as God helps anyone who asks for help.  God is supporting Mr. Tebow with grace, that hard-to-define inner gift that was defined by one theologian as God’s “self-communication.”

But does believing in God mean that you’ll get what you want?

That answer is no.

At first blush, however, that seems to be what the Bible promises.  Jesus, again in the Gospel of Matthew says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”  That seems clear enough.  Later on (that is, later on in the Christian history and later on in the Bible) St. Paul writes in his Letter to the Ephesians: “The Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.”  Or in Romans:  “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” I could go on.  There are several passages that promise good things for those who believe in God, and call on God’s name.  And I believe that God does bless those who believe in God. The question is this: How does God bless them?  What about all people who call on God and seemingly fail to receive good things in return?  To bring our theological question down to earth, surely there are players on other teams, just as devout as Mr. Tebow—even if they don’t sport Johannine eye black—who aren’t being blessed with victory.  Why not?  Doesn’t believing in God bring you good things?

This gets us into what is often called the “Prosperity Gospel,” which tells people that if they believe in Jesus Christ, their lives will be one of constant success.

This is demonstrably false. The twelve apostles believed in Christ, to take one obvious example, and many of them met with difficult, painful, even tragic ends. Does anyone think that St. Peter, who was crucified, had insufficient faith?  The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the great religious figures of our time, suffered greatly, was jailed and was assassinated. Did he not have sufficient faith?  Mother Teresa, toward the end of her life, was often in terrible physical pain. She even suffered from a great interior darkness, a “dark night of the soul.”  Was she unfaithful?  Of course not.  Suffering—interior and exterior–is the lot of all people, including believers, including devout believers, and including those who strive to lead joyful lives.

While the Prosperity Gospel has a number of important highlights—its focus on joy is a needed corrective in many Christian circles; its emphasis rock-ribbed faith in God is essential; its encouragement to believe in a God who desires your ultimate joy is an antidote to so many terrifying images of God—its denial of suffering means that it doesn’t fully embrace the human condition.  (This may be one reason why so many of its adherents shy away from Good Friday services.)

Nor, as an aside, do I believe that people encounter suffering or illnesses have somehow failed to “think positively.” Barbara Ehrenreich (author of Dancing in the Streets) takes aim at that idea in her piquant book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. While it is often helpful to look on the bright side of life, and salutary to strive to be cheerful, the belief that the sick have failed to “think positively,” is monstrous.  Such a belief finds its ultimate end in the notion that cancer patients, to take but one example, are somehow “responsible” for their illness, because of their faulty thinking patterns.   That approach can compound the misery of the sick.  Ehrenreich, a cancer survivor herself, writes, “Clearly the failure to think positively can weigh on a cancer patient like a second disease.”

The problem with thinking that God is answering Mr. Tebow’s prayers–directly and individually and exactly as he asks–is that it raises the question of what you say to a believer who feels that their prayers are not being answered.  And if you’ve spent any time with people who are suffering, this is not an insignificant question.

Let me put it this way.  I believe that God hears our prayers.  I even believe in the possibility of miracles, that is, divine intervention in individual cases.  But why are some people’s most fervent prayers answered, and others not?  Over the past few years, I’ve visited and prayed at the Catholic shrine of Lourdes, in southern France, where the Virgin Mary is believed to have appeared to a young shepherdess, St. Bernadette Soubirous, in 1858.  (She’s the protagonist of “The Song of Bernadette,” which airs frequently on TCM.)  Some 67 healing miracles have been authenticated over the years—dramatic, immediate, irreversible.  Those cures have been documented by often non-Catholic, non-Christian and non-believing physicians.  (To be clear: while the cures are documented by the doctors, the doctors do not say how the cure happens.  That’s up to the church.)

I believe in these miracles.  But what about the other millions of pilgrims who have come for over 150 years to Lourdes and leave still sick or suffering?  I don’t know the answer to that question.

And that may be the best answer to the questions we are asking: I don’t know.  God answers prayers, but sometimes it seems the answer is “no.” Why is that?  If it is frustrating when your team loses, what about when the stakes are higher—much, much higher?  Why are the prayers of the parent of the child struggling with cancer not answered as she would wish?  What do you tell the poor person whose village and family have been swept away by a tsunami?

This is what is known as “the mystery of suffering.”  These are questions that have no conclusive answer.  The Bible and the Jewish and Christian traditions offer us perspectives, but no answer that has satisfied all believers.  And easy bromides do no good by the bed of a sick patient.  Yet I do not need to believe in a God who I understand completely.   As the Book of Isaiah says, “’For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.”  Amen to that.

So I wish Mr. Tebow well, and I hope that he is able to continue to speak about his Christian faith and bring new people to God, and (since I’m speaking as a Christian) to Jesus Christ.  But we need to set aside the notion that if we pray, all will go well.  For that is a false idea of religion.  False religion is the idea that if you believe, all will go well, and there is nothing to worry about.  Real religion is the idea that if you believe, all may not go well, but, in the end, there is nothing to worry about.

Because finally, the answer to our prayers is not a touchdown, or a series of passes, or a Super Bowl victory, or a new car, or a raise, or even good health.

The answer to our prayers is much deeper than that.  And much more lasting. The answer to our prayers is God.

James Martin, SJ, is a Jesuit priest, culture editor of America magazine, and the author of “The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything” and “Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor and Laughter are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life.”