COMMENTARY | the New England Patriots steamrolled Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos in a crushing 45-10 game according to NFL.com. NESN called the game a “rout.” The Broncos put up only marginally more resistance than if the Patriots had driven actual steamrollers onto the field and flattened them into the turf. All of Tebow’s prayer didn’t help him one bit, and I’ve figured out why: He’s doing it wrong.
According to Bible.com Matthew 6:1 tells us the rules for prayer. It reads, “Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.” In other words, don’t make a spectacle of yourself when praying.
It likewise says in Matthew 6:6, “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” Even if you do not take it literally to mean you must pray in a closet the meaning is clear: we are to keep our prayers private.
Yet there is Tim Tebow, time after time, dropping into his bent-knee, closed-eyed, fist-to-forehead pose in front of millions of television viewers. It’s hard to imagine a less public way to pray.
And God is just, as we know, so what did he do? He set Tebow up to win big and then kicked him through the uprights to score a field goal for scriptural adherence. Remember, Proverbs 16:18 tells us, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” We often paraphrase this by saying simply, “pride goeth before a fall.” Tebow led the Broncos to the playoffs and fell right off his winning pedestal.
Of course, there’s another possible explanation much more likely in the mind of atheists like me. Tebow’s been essentially talking to himself every time he dropped to one knee (other than to stop the clock), praying to a God who isn’t there. The loss against the Patriots was nothing more than what happens to all teams eventually: they have a bad game.
If there is a God it seems He’d be concerned with much more important things than the outcome of a football game. If there’s no God Tebow wasted a lot of valuable practice time praying.