Is God Owens' orthopedist, too? Receiver's invoking deity is insulting to many
COMMENTARY By Mike Celizic NBCSports.com contributor
Updated: 9:01 a.m. ET Feb. 2, 2005
If you take Archbishop James Ussher’s word for it, God finished creating the world on Oct. 29, 4004 B.C. The Anglican cleric published this conclusion, based on a careful counting of “begats” in the Old Testament, in 1650. But, like the Bible itself, he was silent on what the Almighty did on his day off.
But now we know. It turns out God was sitting in His La-Z-Boy watching football, which also explains why He created the world in October – He didn’t want to miss the season.
No matter what Terrell Owens does Sunday or in his subsequent life, nothing will be as important as the theological ground he broke on Media Day. For millennia, men and women have twisted their neurons in knots trying to comprehend the mystery of creation.
Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? What does God want of us?
It’s no mystery to T.O., who knows exactly what God wants him to do: play football.
“God has already cleared me,” Owens told the assembled hordes that had come to find out if he would be able to play on his surgically repaired ankle. “It doesn’t matter what the doctor said. I have the best doctor in God.”
I’ve heard of God is my co-pilot, but God is my orthopedist?
This is, mind you, the same God who just a few weeks ago watched silently as a quarter million people – some of them far better Christians and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus than Owens - were washed off the face of the earth by a tsunami. It is the same God that countless people are imploring to save terminally ill mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives. The same God that destitute others are begging to somehow allow them to find enough money to pay the mortgage and feed the children.
He doesn’t get around to helping all of them, which is, as the keepers of the faiths like to say, a mystery. Instead, He heals the ankle of a millionaire with an ego that Donald Trump probably envies, not so Owens can go forth and perform works of charity, not so he can help those not able to help themselves, but so he can play a game of football.
Is it possible to trivialize God and religion and faith more? Is it possible to have a more absurdly engorged concept of one’s own importance?
Owens, of course, didn’t even notice how presumptuous he was. He made his pronouncement in all seriousness, the television lights glinting off the diamond studs as big as peas that decorate his earlobes. He talked about the miracle of his healing, told people to read the 11th chapter of the Gospel of John. That’s the part where Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead.
So there you have it, Owens is Lazarus and his ankle was dead and everyone had given up hope that it would ever live – at least in time for the Super Bowl – but God stepped in and made everything better. And there was much rejoicing. Do I hear, “Amen?”
Religion and faith are enormously important to vast numbers of people. They give comfort in times of sorrow, and many athletes find strength in prayer. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
But there’s something wrong when you start telling us that God cares about who plays in a football game and who wins the game. Because when you do that, you are saying that God wants you to be wildly happy and he wants the other guy, who might be every bit as swell as you, to be crushed.
I wonder how Ty Law feels about the subject. The Patriots cornerback broke his foot this season, but thought he would be ready for the playoffs. He didn’t make it. Does that mean God didn’t want Law to play in the game? Did He want to force the Patriots to put an inferior corner in so T.O. would have a better opportunity to score touchdowns and dance and pose in the end zone.
God, apparently, has the Eagles and the points.
He has to. Otherwise, why would he do anything for someone so lacking in humility as Owens? For that matter, why would He have allowed Joe Namath, a man who worshipped scotch and blondes and never once suggested God was in his huddle, to win a Super Bowl?
Oh, yeah, God had the Jets to win outright – no points.
T.O. would have you believe he’s a terrific Christian. But there he is quoting the Gospel of John with those enormous diamonds glowing like headlights in his ears. Guess he hasn’t gotten to Chapter 19 of Matthew yet, starting with Verse 21: “Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.”
And a bit further along: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”
You’d think that if Owens were as good a Christian as he wants us to believe, he’d at least have the decency to sell the diamonds and feed Haiti for a couple of weeks.
Unless, while He was clearing Owens to play, He said He was cool with the bling.
In the Church of T.O., He probably did.
Mike Celizic writes regularly for NBCSports.com and is a freelance writer based in New York.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6895597/
===== "I'm not too worried by hegemony / I know the cadre will look after me" - Magazine, "Model Worker," 1978