Her.meneutics: Steve Johnson's Genie-in-a-Bottle God

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December 1, 2010

Steve Johnson's Genie-in-a-Bottle God

The Buffalo Bills' wide receiver blamed the Lord via Twitter after he dropped the winning touchdown pass in a 19-16 loss to the Steelers.

Karen Spears Zacharias, guest blogger

Steve Johnson was having a very bad, horrible, terrible day. The 24-year-old wide receiver had the opportunity to give the Buffalo Bills one of their sweetest victories: an unexpected win against the Steelers in overtime.

But he dropped the ball, in the end zone of all places.

My husband, whose passion for sports knows no boundaries, could be heard screaming in Trenton, New Jersey. We live in Oregon. I know one of these days I’m going to be kneeling over his body as paramedics arrive to treat him for an ESPN-induced stroke. You know that fellow in Wisconsin who shot his TV because he didn’t like Bristol Palin’s dancing? If we had guns in the house, I’m pretty sure my husband would have shot somebody on ESPN by now.

Johnson said he will never get over dropping that pass. No matter how long he lives, no matter how many winning touchdown passes he caught before this one, or how many he’ll catch after this one, his obit is going to mention that dadgum dropped ball.

In his frustration, Johnson sent out a tweet not long after the losing game:

I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!!“AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO…”

Johnson sent that message to God.

God has an iPhone?

God tweets?

The dangerous thing about Twitter is that it's too often used a recording tool for stream-of-conscious thinking. If God had intended for us to vocalize our every conscious thought, wouldn’t he have given us bubbles over our heads the comic strip folks do? That way we could just go around reading each other’s bubble. We wouldn’t need an iPhone.

Bloggers and columnists and talking heads across the country are on a full-blown rant, chastising Johnson for blaming God for his dropping the winning touchdown. One commentator noted that God has “unfollowed” Johnson. CNN ran a spoof about Johnson by highlighting that appalling moment when Kathy Griffin raised her Emmy heavenward and yelled, “Suck it Jesus, this is award is my god now.”

That takes some kind of arrogance to blame God when we fail, or in Kathy’s case wins. But win or lose, wrongheaded thinking is behind it all. It’s the result of exalting ourselves above God. We treat God as if he’s the Genie in the Bottle we found. He owes us.

Griffin’s remarks are so offensive a God-fearing person ought to think twice before standing within a football field of that woman. That girl is going to get her comeuppance one day. People laugh at Griffin because they assume it takes one ballsy woman to call God out like that. Frankly, such arrogance isn't courageous at all. It's just gussied-up idolatry.

While Johnson wasn’t as crass toward God as Griffin was, the deception that compelled him to blame God is the flip-side of the same coin. It’s an arrogance ingrained in Americans, nurtured by a corrupt theology, and taught by Sunday school teachers, camp leaders, Bible school professors, misguided preachers, and self-serving politicians.

That theology says that as long as we work hard, live rightly, and remember to thank God for the wins, we will keep winning. So sure are we that this theology works, we’ve built a nation upon it. And many have built a mega-fortune on dispensing a message that says God’s sole intent is to reward us.

You ought to wake up every morning expecting the favor of God on your life, they tell us. Work hard and you’ll reap the fruits of your labor. God wants to bless you. We have to open our hearts (and usually pocketbooks) to receive all the abundance God has for us. The blessings of the Lord brings wealth. Lazy hands make a man poor but diligent hands bring about wealth. It is noble to seek after wealth. Only a foolish man remains poor.

It’s a wonderful theology for the haves who are encouraged to believe that everything they have is the result of their own hard work and effort. It makes it easier for such people to look down on those without and to say, “Well, they don’t work as hard as me. I deserve all the good and goods that I get.”

When we catch the ball and win the game and are lauded like kings, it’s easy enough to raise the trophy high and tell the world, “God has blessed me. Thank you God. I owe it all to you.”

But for the have-nots, such a theology is a coal heap of condemnation. When we fumble the ball and fanatics the world over mock our failure, this kind of theology leaves us feeling both guilty and angry. That’s why Johnson said, “I will never get over this. Ever.”

He can’t forgive himself because Johnson’s theology, shared by so many of us, teaches him that failure is a result of two things — some sin on his behalf, and/or the withdrawal of God’s favor on his life.

This theology of the Genie in the Bottle God works great as long as everything is going our way, but in that moment when we lose our home, our job, our spouse, our kid, or the winning touchdown, we often find that the God we once worshipped is nothing more than an image crafted from smoke.

Is it any wonder that we rail against such a God?

Karen Spears Zacharias is author of Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide? (Zondervan, 2010), and blogs at Patheos, from which this post was adapted. She can be reached at karenzach.com or via Twitter @karenzach.

Comments

Could you do us a favor and post this when athlete thanks god as well after winning something. Isn't the same genie in the bottle type thing that Christians just love to see and have warm our hearts? Aside from this Johnson's rant sounds like some of the psalms (granted that was life and death this is football.) Perhaps it's time we stop using pop culture as impetus towards theologizing.

I agree with you about the weak theology that the football player's tweet suggests.
I think you misunderstand Kathy Griffin's statement. I actually read it as a sarcastic critique of the kind of thing you're decrying here -- she's making fun of the way people always give lip-service to God in these moments of triumph when the rest of their life doesn't reflect a fear of the Lord. It's certainly irreverent to tell Jesus to suck it, but I don't think it's any worse than the faux sincere way others take his name in vain.

While I would not make a big deal of any of this, I think it's important to acknowledge that biblical figures blamed God, or at least took strong issue with God's accountability, shall we say: Job, the psalmists, Jeremiah, to name three. While God of course has the last word, so to speak, in all this, as does the potter over the clay, I do think that God's job description is big enough to handle our fury from time to time.

On another note, I think one can make the argument that anyone playing, attending or even watching on TV a Sunday athletic event is profaning the Sabbath and thus flirting with idolatry. Other than Eric Liddell, the only other athlete of record I know of who has honored the Sabbath was Sandy Kofax.

I understand his tweet as a normal reaction to a personal failure. Without thinking, I express my frustration at my ineptitude and sometimes I will ask God why He did not intervene and protect me. Later, I will calm down and then God can tell me in my failure there is a lesson for me to grasp. Most of us have done what Steve Johnson did, but we did not have the tweet technology to express it. Maybe tweeters need to learn something about when and when not to tweet.

This would be an interesting article for a Christian in Haiti, dying of hunger, homeless, and now fearing a cholera outbreak to read. Our circumstances are NOT an indication of whether or not God is in charge. God is good - all the time. Circumstances, people, and our pride will let us down at some time or other. But God is even able to work through all of those things and turn our worst mistakes into something that can be used to His glory!

Thanks to Twitter we now have peoples unfiltered thoughts. For Steve Johnson its become loaded... I understand the article and appreciate the point but question what is primary theology or faith? I don't see faith & doubt as opposites, faith and certainly are opposites and.... theology tends to build certainty.

This article might want to applaud Johnson's honest doubt & struggle because his faith is leading him to actually end his " Genie in a bottle bad theology" if you will. Is it ok to admit that our faith is messy and theology even at its best, skewed. Is there room in evangelical thinking for process?

BTW.. did you read his follow up tweets? no as " Genie in the Bottle" as you might infer.

To me he sounds to me just like King David did from time to time in the Psalms . . .

I thought something similar in high school when the coaches and players prayed for a win before each game. Not to be examples of Jesus' love. Not to be a light in the world. To win. I just find it totally ridiculous to focus on such things to the exclusion of what is really important.

Good post.

I agree with Redbull. It seems that too often we praise God when something turns out good for us, so what do we do when it doesn't? We end up apologizing for God or blaming ourselves. It doesn't make sense.

i love philip yanceys book Disappointment With God if anyone hasnt read it i explores just that. I do agree it may have been a knee jerk response on his part, But we do tend in this continent to think as long as were doing right God will rewards us. If we do look at the book of Job we will deserve that this theolgy is wrong. Job did nothing wrong he lived righteous before God and he lost everything. I do wonder why we do treat God like a genie and not like our Father? Who like C.S. Lewis wrote "'Safe?' said Mr. Beaver. 'Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you"

Two things: One, you're right in criticizing Johnson for his response. I've used the analogy of a pop-machine. As long as you put in the right amount of money and press the right buttons, you get the drink you want. And that's how people treat God. He is easily manipulated, and can be made to do whatever we want him to do.
Second, perhaps the other team was praying just a little bit harder, so God had to help them out more!
Kidding aside, our attitudes often show us to be spoiled rotten, with the attitude that we deserve everything life has for us. May we reflect Job's attitude: "The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised." (Job 1:21)
http://revdavidporter.wordpress.com

God never promised us a walk in the park when we accepted him as our savior. He did promise that He would always be beside us every step of our journey. We fall down, He helps us up. We walk off the path, He brings us back around. Sometimes He even spanks us when we forget to follow or listen to Him. God disciplines his children, just like our Dad's do here. God also uses tactics that sometimes hurt us to get our attention. When I say He spanks us, He knocks you flat on your a##. Maybe Mr. Johnson got spanked. Who knows? It is between him and God.
People might say that God would never spank his children. Really? What about the Children of Israel... captivity, slavery, wondering around for 40 years. King David... adultery, losing his son, why do you think the Psalms are so heart felt even today. Jesus died on the cross for our sins, but God still gets our attention His way. I personally have been spanked by God, it was not fun!!! But just as he promised, he loved, forgave me and never left my side.

We are never taught in Scripture to forgive ourselves..such a concept is nowhere to be found. Why do we teach that as though it's a truth? Jesus forgives us..we in turn forgive others.

I suppose this really shouldn't matter, but wasn't the man who shot his TV over Bristol Palin from Wisconsin, not Alabama? I looked up the story from the Boston Globe and it states that he was from the town of Vermont, Wisconsin, which is 15 miles west of Madison, WI. Thanks for hearing me out. God bless you, from a lady in Alabama.

How much cognitive dissonance did it take for this author to complain about people blaming God for their bad luck while completely ignoring the flip side where people credit God for their good fortune? How much head-in-the-sand denial did it take for her to ignore the much-more-common spectacles of true believers thanking Jesus for their touchdowns and base hits and NASCAR wins?

Upshot: if your genie gets credit for the homerun then your genie should also get blame for the fumble. You can't have it both ways.

I think some are missing the point. When an athlete scores a TD and points to the sky, we dont know for sure what he is doing. He could be thanking God for blessing him with a talent that is able to score TDs. Thats not the same a thanking him for TDs. If anyone watched the game last night, Michael Vick (a nice redemptive story) in the tunnel before the game was heard saying "Time to show the world the talent God gave us." I believe some athletes say thanks for the talent and not the results.

Hi Meloney: Thank you for noting that the man who shot his TV is located in Wisconsin, not Alabama. I have changed this in the body text.

Katelyn Beaty
Her.meneutics editor

Good article! By all outward appearances, the apostle Paul often looked like a failure. He was beaten up, run out of town, thrown in prison, and eventually executed. Christ, too, appeared to the world to be an utter failure as He hung on the cross, despised and rejected. Yet we know that wasn't the end of the Story. I hope that Johnson will come to understand that God can redeem everything bad that happens to us, including our mistakes, sins, and failures.

"How much cognitive dissonance did it take for this author to complain about people blaming God for their bad luck while completely ignoring the flip side where people credit God for their good fortune?" Um, I kind of thought the author addressed that very thing.

""How much cognitive dissonance did it take for this author to complain about people blaming God for their bad luck while completely ignoring the flip side where people credit God for their good fortune?" Um, I kind of thought the author addressed that very thing."

She did:

"When we catch the ball and win the game and are lauded like kings, it’s easy enough to raise the trophy high and tell the world, “God has blessed me. Thank you God. I owe it all to you.” "

People need to learn to read carefully.

As I read this article my thoughts started to race towards some other aspects of sports and entertainment that I have not yet heard answered.

For example does God really decide which team wins the football game? And if so what happens when two "Christian teams" are playing each other?

Is this guy Steve Johnson really a Christian? Or put another way is he a "real" Christian? If so, is he aware that the Bible says "In all things give things" give thanks? Seems like he is only thankful for the ones he catches.

And what about setting a good example and being a "good sport? What about being gracious in defeat? Someone said "it is not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game that matters. Does Steve Johnson subscribe to that view? Do the spectator?

Another thought occurred to me. Could it be that we pay so much attention to everything these "stars" do or say because they are paid so much money to "drop the ball"?

Thank you SO much for pointing out how harmful our culture's Puritan work ethic is to those who are not conventionally successful! There's a really disturbing tendency to equate the blessings of God with the world's definition of success and success with hard work. On the other hand, if someone is NOT successful, there's an equally upsetting tendency to assume that they must not work hard and are therefore not blessed by God.

The reality is that many people work very hard for very little money, and God blesses many people in ways that aren't obvious to the human eye. Unfortunately, our peculiar obsession with the "holiness" of hard work results in just the situation you described--the poor believe it's their fault that they're poor, and the rich feel exempted from doing anything to help.

I'm so glad you're talking about this! I wish more people would open their eyes to it. It seems to be a particularly American problem.

Let's not jump all over an athlete for voicing (keying) something that we've all felt.

Who among us hasn't had that very discussion with God when something bad comes into our lives? Maybe I'm in the minority, but I've questioned God along the lines of, "how is this good for me?" and "why did you let this happen to me?"

Should he have tweeted it? NO, it was unwise to use such a public forum for that. But, as one comment already pointed out, David and the other Psalmists voiced similar thoughts. There are many "how long, oh LORD . . .?" moments in Scripture.

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