Anti-Climacus

As I mentioned on twitter a few days ago, I do not understand the hate directed at Tim Tebow. He's a white dude who is a walking definition of 'gritty' in a way not captured by statistics. In the normal run of the sports world, this means he should be a David Eckstein-like universally beloved player. I do get the impression he talks about Jesus a lot, but since I don't follow professional football (and I mostly ignored him at Florida), I don't know. But Klosterman seems to get the Tim Tebow hate just right:

Tebow is a faithful person. He's full of faith — filled to the top and oozing over the side. It's central to every part of him. When someone suggested that he mentions God too frequently (and that this repetition is what annoys his critics), Tebow said, "If you're married, and you have a wife, and you really love your wife, is it good enough to only tell your wife that you love her on the day you get married? Or should you tell her every single day when you wake up and have the opportunity? That's how I feel about my relationship with Jesus Christ." This is probably the smartest retort I've ever heard an athlete give to a theological question. What possible follow-up could the reporter have asked that would not have seemed anti-wife?

And this, I think, is what makes Tebow so maddening to those who hate him: He refuses to say anything that would validate the suspicion that he's fake (or naïve or self-righteous or dumb). My guess is that Ryan Fitzpatrick or Aaron Rodgers would blow him away on the GRE, but Tebow has profound social intelligence, at least when he speaks in public. It's not that he usually says the right things; he only says the right things, all the time. ...

I doubt many Christians believe that God is unfairly helping Tebow win games in the AFC West. I'm sure a few hardcores might, but not many. However, I get the impression that especially antagonistic secularists assume this assumption infiltrates every aspect of Tebow's celebrity, and that explains why he's so beloved by strangers they cannot relate to. Their negative belief is that penitent, conservative Americans look at Tebow and see a man being "rewarded" for his faith, which validates the idea that believing in something abstract is more important than understanding something real. And this makes them worried about the future, because they see that thinking everywhere. It seems like the thinking that ran this country into the ground.

There's nothing guaranteed to drive some people so crazy as a person they believe to be stupid not actually doing anything that qualifies as stupid.