Update 2/17/12 - Here's a great interview with Lin's pastor, Stephen Cheng, who has known Lin since he was 13. The interview is titled, "Faith, Sin, and Jeremy Lin."
(Original post) - I don't much follow professional basketball, but after hearing about Jeremy Lin's incredible playing ability, I think the world (and I) will be watching more of the New York Knicks in the same way we began watching the Denver Broncos because of Tim Tebow. The two have a lot in common, including their Christian faith.
From NBC Bay Area TV:
The Palo Alto native whose success with the New York Knicks over the last week has catapulted him to international acclaim credits his Christian faith with carrying him to where he is today, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
A faith in God, kindled at Chinese Church in Christ in Mountain View, has carried Lin through the NBA's Development League, to three teams just this season alone, through his bench-warming days when he slept on couches because his contract wasn't guaranteed, to today, when his jersey is the NBA's best-seller and when folks in Taiwan and China stay up late to watch Knicks broadcasts.
"I've surrendered [needing to prove himself] to God," he told the newspaper. "I'm not in a battle with what everybody else thinks anymore."
Lin was known to study the Bible and hang out with his family following high school games on Friday nights. He confided in his pastor after being waived by the Warriors and then the Rockets, home in the Bay Area at Christmas this year instead of on an NBA roster.
He repeated a Bible verse to himself: And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to his purpose. — Romans 8:28.
Here's an example of Lin's prowess:
And watch this next brief video. Have you ever seen anyone more cool under pressure?
Lin is the first Asian-American in the NBA since 1947 and his success fuels pride not only in the Asian-American community, but also overseas in Taiwan and China as well. I find that news spectacular and wonderful.
Lin’s stunning success with the Knicks over the last week and a half has captured the imagination of the Chinese, from Communist Party bosses to the often-persecuted Christian minority. He has been particularly popular here in northern Zhejiang province, from which his maternal grandmother fled to Taiwan in the last days of China’s civil war in the late 1940s.
Lin is commonly described in the United States as Taiwanese-American because his parents grew up in Taiwan before moving to the United States, where Lin was born. But mainland China is already starting to claim him as its own, part of an incessant rivalry across the Taiwan Strait.
Cai Qi, the organization chief for the Communist Party in Zhejiang, posted a message on his Twitter-like microblog over the weekend claiming that Lin’s ancestral home is Jiaxing, a city on the northeastern outskirts of Hangzhou where Lin’s maternal grandmother grew up.
Since 1991, she and other family members have been giving several thousand dollars a year to Jiaxing High School, according to the school’s website. Her nephew, Yu Guohua, is Lin’s closest relative still living in northern Zhejiang.
Yu, a 56-year-old former plastics factory worker who retired early on disability after sustaining injuries in a car crash, said in a telephone interview Tuesday night that Lin had come to play basketball with the Jiaxing High School team last May and been mobbed by admirers.
Yu said he did not have a chance to meet Lin in the throng, but spoke with his family. “His father was very supportive of Lin’s playing basketball, but his grandmother was not, for fear he would be injured,” Yu said.
Lin may owe his height, 6 feet 3 inches, to his maternal grandmother’s family, Yu said. Chen Weiji, the father of Lin’s grandmother, was well over 6 feet and all of Chen’s children were tall as well, he said.
Chen was a senior municipal civil servant in Jiaxing in the early 1900s. American Protestant missionaries converted him to Christianity, and he imparted his strong spiritual interests to his children, who liked to discuss religious subjects in depth and read books on religion, Yu said.
Lin’s combination of success in the NBA and strong Christian faith — he has spoken in the past of becoming a pastor someday — has fired the imagination of many Asian-American Christians. There are some early signs that he may also be catching the attention of Christians in China, who continue to face varying levels of persecution.
Only 1,500 of the initial 1.4 million microblogging messages on mainland Chinese websites that mentioned Lin also mentioned Christianity. But these messages tend to be fervently enthusiastic.
“Your physical agility has shown me the glory and omnipotence of God,” one Internet user wrote.
“How should young Christians live the life of the Lord?” another blogger wrote. “We have a good example in Lin Shuhao’s miraculous performance and we should cheer him on.”
At the Zhejiang Theological Seminary here in Hangzhou, professor Yan Ronghui said that she was planning to use Lin’s religious faith and basketball successes as a model for students in her course in “theological English” this semester. Hu Shubang, a 25-year-old student at the seminary, said that Lin would become a natural symbol for Christians in China to use in seeking converts.
“Just by his being a Christian, it is a fantastic way to broadcast the ways of Christ,” he said.
But awareness of Lin’s faith is only starting to spread in China. State news media have covered Lin’s basketball exploits heavily but avoided mentioning his faith, part of a broader pattern of omitting or censoring religious subjects.
Hu guessed that maybe one in five of the men at the 180-student seminary knew about Lin’s faith, and almost none of the women.
Chinese authorities allow one Protestant seminary per province, as a way to limit the number of pastors and slow the spread of Christianity, which by some estimates may have more than 100 million adherents among China’s 1.3 billion people.
Mao ordered the merger of Protestant denominations in China in 1958; while different strands of Protestantism have informally re-emerged since Mao’s death in 1976, they must share a small supply of seminary graduates, and other pastors trained at bible schools operating informally.
The NBA has estimated 300 million people in China play basketball. The retirement last year of Yao Ming, a basketball star from mainland China, deprived the NBA of its main Asian draw. But Lin’s emergence has at least temporarily strengthened the league as a centerpiece of Chinese online chatter.
The highest-level fan may be Vice President Xi Jinping, the heir apparent to become China’s top leader for the next decade. He flew to Washington on Monday to meet President Barack Obama on Tuesday, and told The Washington Post in a written response to questions, “I do watch NBA games on television when I have time.”
IN ADDITION: Shortly after posting the above, I came across a good summary of Jeremy Lin's incredible rise which will be helpful to readers just learning of Lin. CBS, via Gateway Pundit:
For those living on another planet the last 10 days, Lin is the 6-3, 200 pound point guard for the New York Knicks – an Asian-American by way of Harvard.
Until late last week, he was parked at the end of the Knicks bench and lived on the couch at his brother’s apartment in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
But with his team struggling, the undrafted, largely unwanted Lin got a shot to play. He promptly went on a transcendent tear averaging 27 points and 9 assists over a six-game stretch and ended up on this week’s cover of Sports Illustrated.
That’s just the start. A Lin autograph on Ebay, once $29 now goes for $1,500 plus. According to Forbes, Lin is now the fastest growing athletic brand – $14 million and climbing.
Lin replied, “No,” when asked if he could believe this was happening to him at a recent press conference.
Lin grew up in Northern California, the son of engineers born in Taiwan. Despite leading his team to a state championship in high school was shunned by top college programs. So he enrolled at Harvard, and led the Crimson in scoring his senior year, only to be ignored again come NBA draft day.
Cut by two NBA teams he was on the verge of being released in New York when head coach Mike D’Antoni made a desperate move – one that’s since turned Madison Square Garden into the theatre of the absurd.
“You just watch him,” D’Antoni said, “you’re in awe.”
The 23-year-old has arrived at the perfect time: into a post Super Bowl void and a social media world captivated by his unlikely rise. His last name, Lin, has become an open invitation to incredible, joyful, plays on words: Thril-lin, Lin-sanity, Lin-sational, and Lin-credible.
Reacting to the play on words, Friday Lin said, “I didn’t know that you could turn Lin into so many things.”
There’s no telling how long this show will last, how long a poster boy for underdogs of every age and race will shine. But for now…quite frankly…it is a beautiful “Lin” to see.