Tebow Mania

In ancient Rome, unscrupulous potters would fill cracks and chips in their wares with wax to hide the defects.  Cover over the imperfections and they could sell the piece at a higher price.  Pots that should have been shelved in back aisles at Big Lots were transformed into flawless earthenware vessels and displayed (in soft light) at Pottery Barn.  To combat this dishonest marketing, reputable merchants resorted to marking their workmanship with the label "sine cera," Latin for "without wax."  This became the basis of our English word sincere.  


The image is fitting.  Scripture describes us as "jars of clay" (2 Corinthains 4:7).  And these are jars with cracks and chips.  I know my own desire to hide those defects behind a layer of wax.  I want to sell you a better version of myself than is real.  I can fake it pretty well.  I can pull it off, at least in some settings.  It's easier to fool people when the pot is in the store window than when it's in the home.  Fill it with stew and hang it over a fire and all that wax begins to melt.  I can fool the casual acquaintance, but the intimate relations will see through the wax.  They can tell what is true and what is fake.


I am not a sports analyst.  Not by a long shot.  I am in the scandalous 1% - the tiny fraction American males who have no interest in the NFL.  I usually wait until the Super Bowl to watch my first full game of the season.  But I am a cultural observer and, as such, it has been hard to escape Tebow mania.  He is polarizing, both for his orthodox faith and his unorthodox football.   I feel inept to comment on his football. But allow me the liberty to comment, just briefly, on his faith.


By all accounts of those who know him best, his faith is sincere.  His display of devotion to God is without wax, a true expression of his genuine love for the Lord.  In victory and defeat he gives praise to his Lord and Savior.  This is not something he turns on in public.  He is the same on the field and off the field.   Urban Meyer, his coach at the University of Florida, said of Tebow, "Everything you see is true."


So when he bows his knee, or points skyward, or gives praise to God in his post game interviews, it is not a performance. With most athletes, expressions of faith often feel waxy.  But in Tebow's case, this is clay we are seeing.  This is the real Tebow, not a glossy coating he hides behind.  It comes across as sincere.


Ironically, what is pure clay for Tebow has been loaded with wax by the media and hijacked by pop culture.  The idea of Tebowing has been reduced to a move that is symbolic of Tebow, the football player, not reflective of Christianity, the faith.   It is a flimsy pointer to matters more substantial.  Headlines and sounds bites use religious language in a flippant manner.  It's all very gimmicky.


But this isn't Tebow's doing.  He is just allowing his faith to infiltrate his life.  If it weren't on the football field it would be in the board room, or on the sales floor, or in the shop, or whatever work environment he were in.  This is Tebow, pure clay.  To act otherwise would be to coat himself with wax.   


So don't get hung up on the wax that the media traffics in.  Instead, look for clay.  Sincere faith expressed by a man who loves God more than football. And allow that to serve as a motivation to live your life with the same sincerity.

Don't Shoot the Editor

Recently, I received a complimentary copy of a magazine with a piece I wrote.  It is a bi-monthly publication that has a daily Bible reading with a short reflection on that passage.  As a neophyte writer, it's still a novelty to see something I wrote in print, so I quickly browsed through the magazine looking for my contribution.  When I found it, I was disappointed.  The piece ends with a brief prayer, which they included as I had written, but then added the Lord's Prayer to fill the space remaining on the page.  I didn't like it.  It didn't fit the theme I was developing.  It felt cobbled, sloppily tacked to the end of what I had written.  It wasn't my voice.  I value the Lord's Prayer, but I don't use it rote in my own prayer life.  I would never have written that myself. It put me in a bit of a funk.

A few days later I received a copy of an edited article I wrote for a magazine coming out in February 2012. The editor asked me to look through her edits and reply with any feedback. As I read through the article, I found that none of the edits were substantive.  Small changes in word order, replacing vague pronouns with clear nouns, and rewording a couple sentences was the entirety of the editing.  Ninety-nine percent of the article was left untouched.  I felt validated as a writer, pleased that little was altered.  In this case, my voice would come through clearly, unaltered by a stodgy editor in a remote windowless cubicle.

Soon after, I read Psalm 131
    My heart is not proud, O Lord
       my eyes are not haughty;
    I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.
    But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
      like a weaned child with its mother,
      like a weaned child is my soul within me.

The weaned child as a picture of a still and quiet soul.  It's compelling.  Only my soul is decidedly not like a weaned child, stilled and quieted.  My soul is restless.  More like a suckling child, rooting for its mother's breast, frantic for nourishment, unsettled and impatient.  That's why I react so viscerally to any tampering with my writing.  It is an expression of the proud heart and haughty eyes that are resisted by the Psalmist.  Mine is an arrogant pen.

I write to teach.  If you've read many of my posts, you probably recognize that.  Writing for me begins with having something worth saying, a nugget of truth that is worth communicating.  Hopefully it is something insightful and rich.  Trite is trite, no matter how it is packaged.  Let me not be guilty of serving up junk food on a platter.  What I write must have substance.

But I also don't want to be guilty of serving up bland or half-baked entrees.  Once the nugget of truth is settled on, the challenge in writing is figuring out how to communicate that well.  It's this challenge that causes me to labor over words, write and re-write, and even allow for editors to modify what I have written.  It can be an agonizing process with more time spent staring at a computer screen, reading and re-reading, than spent actually writing.  Energy spent makes me feel invested in what I have written.

This effort is always in service to that nugget of truth I am trying to communicate.  It's a truth that is not mine.  I merely convey what is laid out in the Word of God.  I am the messenger. If that is true, then I need not be so possessive of the things I write, nor fret over whether my voice shines through.  Self-promotion can eclipse that fundamental purpose of communicating that nugget of truth. But ultimately, God can be trusted with that.  It's his truth, after all.

It's mine to rest my soul.  Still.  Quiet.  Weaned.  Lord make it so.
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