For many football fans, one of the greatest “what ifs” in history is how collegiate legend Tim Tebow’s career would’ve turned out had he been given a fair shake in the NFL.
(It’s still surreal that Tebow’s sublime playoff performance against the Pittsburgh Steelers — 316 passing yards and two touchdowns — in 2012 was the last meaningful moment in the NFL for him.)
Alas, despite being a fascinating “what if,” it’s clear that Tebow’s lack of success in football (or baseball) was all part of God’s plan.
The work that the former Florida Gator quarterback is now doing is so much more important than slinging the pigskin.
In lieu of calling plays, Tebow has taken it upon himself to call on all of us to do better as a society when it comes to protecting children from the most evil and vile among us.
Tebow’s newfound passion for stopping child sexual predators and human sex trafficking has taken him into the world of politics, and frankly, the nation is a better place for it.
The latest headline from Tebow came Tuesday, when the former Heisman trophy winner spoke to lawmakers about the scourge of child sexual abuse material, also known as CSAM — and had a map to hammer home just how bad this problem is.
“The question is, will we actually accept the responsibility of caring for these boys and girls and truly protecting them, or are we just going to continue to talk about it?” an impassioned Tebow asked lawmakers.
“But the problem is,” Tebow also said, with a sigh, “that the number now is not 57,000 [unidentified boys and girls in a CSAM database]. With all of the work that all of these people and amazing law enforcement agents and nonprofit NGOs are doing all around the world, the number is not 57,000 like we said two years ago.”
“It’s over 89,000,” he said.
“We are losing the battle and we are losing the war, and boys and girls are suffering for it.”
It’s hard not to feel emotional watching those clips and hearing the genuine concern and frustration in Tebow’s voice. But whatever emotions you’re feeling will soon give way to unbridled rage when you look at the map Tebow brought along.
You can view a video of Tebow discussing the map — the same one he brought to Congress — more in-depth below:
That map should shake you to your core. That’s not a dot or two. That’s a veritable tidal wave of red dots scattered across the U.S. where CSAM is being exploited.
To put it bluntly, a society that can look at a map like that and still treat this issue as background noise is a society that has completely lost its moral bearings. Those red dots are not statistics — they represent real children, real abuse, and real trauma that will follow victims for the rest of their lives.
Any functioning culture should have a reflexive, almost primal instinct to protect its young from harm. When that instinct dulls — when people become numb to it or treat it as just another policy issue to debate and shelve — something has gone profoundly wrong.
And if the moral failure of society at large is troubling, the failure of those entrusted with power is even more damning. Lawmakers, tech companies, institutions — many have known for years, even decades, how vast the CSAM crisis has become. Yet meaningful action has too often crawled along at a glacial pace while the scale of the abuse grows.
When nearly 90,000 unidentified child victims sit in databases waiting to be rescued, the problem is no longer one of awareness. It’s one of will.
Which is why voices like Tim Tebow’s matter so much right now.
He isn’t speaking as a politician or a bureaucrat — he’s speaking as a father, a believer, and a human being who refuses to accept that this level of evil is simply the cost of modern life.
The map he held up isn’t just an indictment of where we are. It’s a challenge for where we go next.
And if Tebow’s message does anything, it should remind us that protecting children should never be a partisan cause. If anything, it’s the bare minimum requirement of a decent society.
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