And after the win last week against the Steelers, it’s been impossible to miss all the coverage. There’s a new/old song about him, the inevitable Hitler/Downfall parody, and an incredible number of articles debating whether he’s as awesome as his fans think he is, or just “fool’s gold.” But this article by Rick Reilly is the best one I’ve seen:

I’ve come to believe in Tim Tebow, but not for what he does on a football field, which is still three parts Dr. Jekyll and two parts Mr. Hyde.

No, I’ve come to believe in Tim Tebow for what he does off a football field, which is represent the best parts of us, the parts I want to be and so rarely am.

Read the whole thing.

(And if you’re curious, the Atlantic has a good article by Owen Strachan that addresses the really important question: Does God Care Whether Tim Tebow Wins on Saturday?)

The idea that Christians are poor tippers apparently has been whispered in service circles for a long time. Many waiters try not work Sunday brunch, so as to avoid notoriously stingy churchgoers, claims Justin Wise, the director of a Lutheran ministry in Des Moines, Iowa.

By the time I got to seminary, however, I was really pretty bored with apologetics. It’s not that I had decided they were unimportant–far from it: as my faith became more important in my life, I realized how important those apologetics had been. But I’d moved on, and they weren’t very helpful to me any more. (Although I do still pick up my copy of Mere Christianity every couple of months and re-read a chapter or two.)

It turns out I’m not alone. In this article, Max Lucado, a best-selling Christian writer, says that the best apologetic is compassion.

Though Christians do need to respond intellectually to explain their faith, the long-time pastor recognized, “When the church argues back with society, I don’t know if we get very far.”

“But if we can say our passion is to help the poor and the forgotten, you cannot argue with that,” he noted. “Nothing convinces people of our Lord better than to live like he lived. We cannot live like he lived without being compassionate.”

That rings true for me. Jim Noble, the pastor who led me to Christ, told me, “Maybe you could believe in God if you saw him at work, and [his church] is a great place to watch.”

He was right. I had some baggage I needed to deal with, and my apologetic reading helped me do that. But it was seeing God at work in and through the community of faith engaged in works of compassion, that enabled me, finally, to put my trust in Christ.

There’s a great point in there, too: “The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you’ve probably made a hiring mistake.” (Watch Stanley’s face when Collins says that.) That’s an excellent clue and we ignore it at peril to our mission.

Another excellent point: instead of giving people titles and rules, give them responsibilities. People should be able to say, “I am the one person in this organization who is ultimately responsible for [whatever it is].”

(I found this video on Catalyst’s Youtube channel which has a ton of other content that ranges from Dallas Willard and John Ortberg all the way to Trip and Tyler.)

If, as I can’t help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of their purgatorial sufferings), then for both lovers, and for all pairs of lovers without exception, bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love.

(From A Grief Observed, pp. 49-50. Emphasis added.)

I’d known that Lewis was comfortable with the whole idea of purgatory, but I was fascinated by his idea that purgatory might entail grief. On the one hand, we want our loved ones to be happy — to be, as we say at such times, “in a better place.” But there is a slight, selfish appeal to the idea that they grieve for us, just as we grieve for them. How much sharper it would make our grief if we thought our loved one had simply shrugged us off.

We Presbyterians, however, aren’t keen on the concept of purgatory. Our Presbyterian Book of Common Worship, in the Service of Witness to the Resurrection we have at funerals, says, by contrast:

We thank you [God],
that for him/her death is past
and pain is ended,
and that he/she has now entered
the joy that you have prepared.

It’s an intriguing notion, nevertheless. I don’t have time right now to do a serious study, but I’ll have to keep this in the back of my mind, in case I run across Scriptural arguments for or against the idea.

Have you ever wondered what they meant by that?

An article in the BBC News today describes the excavation of a mass burial of 97 infants in the Thames Valley of England. Archaeologists believe might have been a brothel. Key quote:

And infanticide may not have been as shocking in Roman times as it is today.

Archaeological records suggest infants were not considered to be “full” human beings until about the age of two, said Dr Eyers.

Let’s hear it for turning the world upside down.

During the celebration of Bishop Padovese’s funeral Mass, the Turkish TV station NTV announced that the 26 year-old driver, Murat Altun, had confessed to killing the bishop. He died after being stabbed 25 times, eight of them in his heart, and was almost completely decapitated by Altun, who said he murdered Bishop Padovese because he had received a “divine inspiration.”

NTV added that Altun shouted “Allahu Akbar” a number of times after the murder, despite having presented himself as a Catholic.

Please remember the friends and family of Bishop Padovese in your prayers, and everyone who faces the possibility of martyrdom for their faith. Please also pray for everyone who feels called to murder others by “divine inspiration.”