Archive for the ‘Pastor Essays’ Category

Welcome to The First Church of Tiger Woods. If you are already a member of our church we are glad to have you, if you have yet to officially join our ranks I urge you to do so.

Many of you are probably wondering what this website is really all about. Is this just a joke? Does it have any true meaning? Is The First Church just a strange tribute to a great golfer, or is there something greater at work here? Is it intended to mock organized religion? Doesn’t the person who thought this thing up have anything better to do with their time or are they confined to some sort of institution?

As the self-proclaimed pastor of the largely fictitious “First Church of Tiger Woods,” I would like to try to help you answer those questions for yourselves by telling you a little of my story.

I grew up as a Roman Catholic who went to an all boys’ Catholic high school (Holy Ghost Prep in Bensalem, PA) and an allegedly Catholic college (Georgetown University). I wanted very badly to believe that the religion I had been taught was in fact “true.” After all, who wouldn’t WANT to believe that there is a God who loves us and will take care of us and who has created another dimension where good people will be rewarded in heaven and bad people will be punished in hell? That is a very intoxicating concept and, for the most part, I bought into it. That is until I actually read the Bible.

Once I had read the Bible and found out just how implausible the Old Testament is and how incompatible its God is with the God of the New Testament I began to question whether the foundation of my religion was made of Swiss cheese. At first, I still thought that maybe Jesus was real and that the Church had just been forced to accept the Old Testament for political reasons. But then I began to realize that the more I learned about the story of Jesus (especially the birth story) that the less it added up from a historical perspective.

My religious beliefs were altered not just because I found the Bible to be grossly lacking, but also because my life experiences had left very little doubt in my mind that there is little or no evidence of a God-like force guiding what happens here on earth (at least not a God-like force worthy of worship). In short, nothing on this planet seemed as if it had been created or was being guided by an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful force, and there was certainly no indication that there is any sort of logic or consistency in whatever IS dictating the course of human events. Based on this line of thinking I became convinced that, if he (probably a SHE) exists, God has nothing to do with what goes on here today and probably never has.

Still I held out hope that somehow, even without God’s influence, it was possible to find some meaning in this often-pitiful existence of ours. I longed for some small sign that would help me make sense of it all. About the only place I would occasionally find it was on the golf course.

I had always loved that game that requires no one else to be played, where there is no one else to rely on, where there is no one else to blame, where success or failure is determined completely by objective measures, where the battle is fought deep inside one’s “soul” and where victory requires triumphing over personal demons. I found no feeling that gave me a sense of order in the universe like that of the crisply struck golf shot (later in life I would learn that seeing certain women naked comes quite close. VERY close).

Still, even the great game of golf wasn’t enough for me to believe in a higher power that had any influence over our hapless, corrupt, selfish, underachieving species of Homo sapiens. That is until Tiger Woods.

Like most avid golf fans, I had heard of Tiger Woods well before he burst on the national scene in April of 1997 with his 12-shot victory at The Masters. I had great hopes for this young phenom who was well-known as early as 1991 as a multiethnic golfer with amazing potential, but I realized that the sports world had seen many wonder-kids burn out and never live up to the hype. I also believed that the nature of golf (where the mind is more dominant than the body) would make his challenge of meeting expectations exponentially MORE difficult than in other sports where teen stars regularly became adult disappointments.

But, as the world knows by now, Tiger Woods has turned out to be VERY different from the norm. Incredibly, EVERY step of the way Tiger Woods has done the seemingly impossible; be burdened with unfair and unrealistic expectations and then EXCEED them.

As a former TV sportscaster who became jaded by professional athletics I am not one to glorify sports figures. While I respect their physical gifts, the vast majority of superstars excel because they are genetic freaks who deserve little more praise for being what they are than what super models or actors unfairly receive. Even as incredible as Michael Jordan was, he would have been a no-body without being 6’6” with remarkable leaping ability, and he could not have won a single championship (I think) without his teammates. The nature of golf requires that Tiger Woods can do nothing to stop his opponents, can get no help from the officials (though his gallery can move a boulder out of his way every once in a while), cannot rely on teammates to get him through a bad day, and must be stronger mentally and SPIRITUALLY than physically.

To me, if Tiger Woods is NOT God, he is at least a human lab experiment to determine the potential of our species. It is impossible for me to imagine a scenario where a human being would be forced (nearly from birth) to face a greater challenge than that which Tiger Woods has embraced and (so far) conquered. In a world where inherently flawed human beings fail every day at the most simple of tasks, it seems to me that Tiger Woods may represent the potential in all of us (some of us?) to transcend our nature, providing us all at least some glimmer of hope that we may not be completely lost as a race. It is not just that Tiger Woods may be the BEST golfer of all time, but rather that he is pursuing PERFECTION in an endeavor in which perfection has never been considered attainable. If an intrinsically flawed human being (if that is all he really is) can defy our profound limitations and achieve true physical, mental and spiritual perfection, then maybe it is possible to find some meaning in this existence.

While I must admit that the concept of Tiger Woods being God may seem a bit far fetched (to anyone other than his father), his existence also seems difficult (at least for me) to chalk up to mere coincidence. While there are 6 BILLION people on the planet it stills seems to me a long shot that ALL of the remarkable characteristics of Tiger’s life would come together in one person.

I am as critical a person as they come and yet as much as I have thought about it I have yet to come up with ANYTHING that I would change about the Tiger Woods story. From his emergence as a child prodigy, to his unique multiethnic background, to his perfect name, to his physical build, to his remarkable swing (watching it is BETTER than seeing MOST women naked), to his incredible amateur career, to his exploding on the national scene by routing the field at the Masters where race has always been an issue, to his courage to alter his game in 1998, to his ability to seize the dramatic moment, to his mental toughness, to his desire to win despite having made hundreds of millions of dollars, to his relationship with his “estranged” parents, to his unwillingness to be used politically (though he WAS a little slow in forgiving Fuzzy Zoeller for the “collared greens” comment), to his respect for the traditions of the game, Tiger Woods is the complete package. Quite frankly, if I were going to put together a “Messiah” he would look an awful lot like Tiger Woods. If he isn’t the true Messiah the real one is certainly going to have a tough act to follow.

Whether he really is God or not, I am excited to see which side will win the Titanic struggle of Tiger’s life. Will the “ultimate” human being be able to overcome the “ultimate” challenge? I still don’t know which force will prove to be most powerful, but I sure am looking forward to watching the battle. Won’t you join me?

May Tiger be with you,

Pastor John Ziegler

talktozig@aol.com