Bryce Harper will see your John 3:16, Tim Tebow, and he’ll raise you a Luke 1:37 — but Harper’s choice to approach his faith in a different way than the highly public football player doesn’t necessarily mean he looks down on Tebow’s style.
Harper told the Washington Times this week that while he’s a devout Mormon, he plans to approach his faith a little differently than the extremely visible Tebow, who is a Christian.
“If somebody asks me about it, I’ll tell them about it, but I’m not going to be Mr. Tim Tebow,” Harper said, adding that he doesn’t mean that in a negative way.
Harper also shared why, unlike other young Mormons, he did not go on a Mormon mission but instead went straight into baseball as a teenager.
“My mom always told me, ‘You can touch a lot more lives playing baseball and doing good things than you would on a mission,” Harper said. “It’s very true. Shoot, I’ll tweet about God and get 1,500 retweets and it’s like, that just went to 1,500 people or more. I’m going to try to be the best person I can off the field [and promote my faith that way]. What I say is, ‘I try to be the best walking Book of Mormon as I can.'”
Harper and Tebow do have a similarity in their approaches to their faith, though, in that they both share Bible verses. Tebow’s was on his eye black, while Harper writes Luke 1:37 (“For with God, nothing shall be impossible”) with his autographs.
