"I know, I know—everyone has a right to believe what they want … faith is admirable … you’ve gotta r...
"I know, I know—everyone has a right to believe what they want … faith is admirable … you’ve gotta respect his feelings. Well, bulls***. I do not have to respect this sort of damaging craziness, where a group of people go to foreign, oft-Third World nations and convert the so-thought-of "savages" (ie: those who don’t know Christ).
Screechy screech screech screech screech. Jeff Pearlman is a fine writer in books, but online he's like the guy on his fifteenth post on a 1999 message board in full lather. He is afraid to type the word bullshit on his own site, which is nutless and for lack of a better word total bullshit. We're completely irreverent in all directions and thus equally disrespectful of all religions, and would like to point out two salient things clearly missed. a.) That's the way most evangelistic religions work. You're out, we're in, and if you don't buy in you stay out. It's only offensive to someone who suspects they really might end up in hell or purgatory, and otherwise you just laugh, agree to differ on an unprovable point, and go on doing something really important like watching football together. We grew up with tons of evangelicals who told us we were going to hell. We also went to lunch with them and still call them friends. (They still think we're going to hell, and we still enjoy sleeping in on Sundays. Vive la difference.) b.) Pearlman completely misses what the Tebows' ministry site says about their plan in the Philippines: "Of the 86 million Filipinos, we estimate that over 65 million have never once heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ." 80 percent of the Philippines are not "savage," but Catholic. 80 percent of 86 million is 68 million or so, meaning they're targeting the conversion of Catholics. The Tebows, Tim included, are not the cluelessly malicious missionaries of the 19th century. They are very much 21st century religious entrepreneurs, and competition, not imperialism, is the game afoot here. To assume a Filipino can't see this coming after five hundred years of foreigners peddling various ideas and religions is insane. They've dealt with it before, sometimes by buying said product (in this case, a church) and sometimes buy rejecting it quite forcefully (in Magellan's case, VERY forcefully.) And no, I'm not even going to think about linking Jemele Hill's slightly less stupid piece on Tebow, because we like to shotgun one three-legged piece of beef at a time, and Pearlman's needed it more.