Mocking Religion on the Football Field

One needn't be religious to appreciate the importance of the religious imagination to history and to an individual's mental ecology. We have a capability and tendency to construct an internal mental world which is more congenial than the objective world. This also explains the importance of poetry, comedy, sentimentalism, romanticism, or art in general. Wishful thinking is a big part of what we are. It can be a constructive thing if managed carefully.

So regardless of your religious or atheistic views, how do you feel about Tebow and other athletes pointing towards heaven or publicly praying at sporting events? I find it distasteful. How could a so-called religious person trivialize his own Faith like that?

Imagine some parents praying and carrying on like fools before their son's pee-wee hockey team hits the ice. Did it ever occur to them that somebody on the opposite team has the same faith as they do? If so, whose team is the Deity, the Author of the Universe, the Architect of the Cosmos, supposed to wave his pom-poms for?

As degrading as this type of behavior is to people's professed Faith, it is easy to explain: God and Country. God is behind our Army. The Devil sticks for the Enemy. Despite building a political-economic structure based on Permanent War, some Americans still need the outlet of Mock War, sports, to give them an adequate chance to make idiots of themselves.