The Reconstructed

I’ve wanted to write something like this for a decade and maybe I have. It’s hard to keep track of 323 blog entries. But I’ve wanted to write about how the world of professional wrestling internal and external operate as an at times ideal version on the Church. Now I know what you might be thinking. “Hell no!” or “Heaven’s yes!” or if you are familiar with pro-wrestling jargon “Hell Yeah!”

I acknowledge two things out the gate, for those who like pro-wrestling that might read this with no religious affiliation and even a proclivity to avoid church I’m sorry for the church’s failure. For those in the church appalled that I could compare the Bride of Christ to the world of hedonistic professional wrestling, I would merely say that many aspects of the church have lended itself to this comparison.

I should also say the timing in which this is converging is at an interesting cross section of my own life experience with both the church and pro wrestling itself. At the end of January a news story broke about Vince McMahon and another set of sexual abuse allegations including sex trafficking coming out as a result of a failure on Vince’s part to follow through on hush money payments. The allegations in the 60 or so page document are abhorrent. I got through half and said to myself this might be the grossest saddest thing I’ve read. This happened a few days before the Royal Rumble which I was attending in Florida. It gave me pause about going. I still went.

Truth be told I have dove full force back into watching wrestling, more as a coping mechanism for life feeling so displaced and uncertain that it somehow felt like it gave me a grounding place that church and relationships have not been able to provide.

Back in October, I was deliberating where to take an extended time alone to seek the Lord about life and the next season and steps and was highly considering a time in the desert in Arizona at a monastery followed by a time at the International Prayer in Kansas City (IHOP-KC). Instead I went to Scranton, PA and a few days into my stay a story broke that Mike Bickle the founder of IHOP-KC was accused of clergy sexual abuse. Those allegations have only grown and expanded because of systemic ineptitude at best or drastic attempts to cover up and protect the organization rather than the people in it at worst.

This is a lot of preface but now I will get into how pro wrestling and Church intersect. I promise it will be worth it.

The first thing is a matter of faith.

Faith

Both church and pro-wrestling are asking us to believe something. Faith from a Christian Scriptural perspective is “the substance of things hoped for, evidence of things unseen, without which it is impossible to please God.” In other words faith is the gift of an unseen substance that gives you a joyful expectation in order to access God in the most pleasant way. One could access God in His wrath but God would prefer mercy. In professional wrestling, the fan unless totally unaware, is asked to suspend disbelief or believe in the story’s spun and the characters portrayed in order to enjoy the entertainment value of the story we invest in.

On the most basic level, these stories may be told in long form on grand stages like mega churches or stadiums or on small stages, high school gyms, bingo halls, your small residential church. They can be told in backyards and basements (snake handling backwoods churches) But also internationally each with their own flavor. Think of pro wrestling promotions as church denominations.

WWE are the Catholics, AEW are the Reformed, NJPW are Anglicans, TNA are the Pentecostals, NWA are the Orthodox, MLW are the Methodists, you get the point. Don’t get hung up here.

Some of them can work together some of them incessantly fracture apart. Some of them disappear, although a little less likely with church denominations.

The more faith you can muster up in all likelihood the greater your enjoyment. The more you invest in the mystery, the greater the joy, the more you invest in what goes on behind the scenes the greater the critique. The more you focus on God and the made up characters of the WWE and the less you focus on the people and mechanisms behind these things you probably will be able to participate and enjoy both without much more added.

There is room for nuance

Truth

But not too much nuance.

They will tell you in pro-wrestling training, the best way to craft your character is to be an accentuated version of yourself. You tune your personality or an aspect of it up to 10 and you become believable because you are not diverging too far from what you already know. So you stay true to yourself. Perhaps this is also because pro wrestling in theory is something different from acting. Yes it’s performance art but the spontaneity required and crowd reaction does change the performance. At least if you are doing it right in my opinion. Pro wrestling is allowing the room to read you and reacting while simultaneously anticipating and drawing out the reaction you intend.

Thus if the Boy Scouts are in attendance and you are a heel (bad guy) you insult the Boy Scouts, then when you lose the Boy Scouts are even happier you lost.

This is true of God and the Church. We can allow for mystery mostly because of our human limitation. We believe what can be known, and the more we know of God and His character the greater we can enjoy. Virgin Birth, Crucifixion, Perfection, Resurrection, Transfiguration, Ascension all of these narratives that explain aspects of God displayed in Christ allow greater opportunity for faith to flourish if they are believed. The more we try to poke holes in things meant to be believed the further we move from faith as the evidence we are looking for isn’t particularly tangible. You can’t scientifically prove a Virgin Birth, a Perfect life, a Transfiguration, a Resurrection or an Ascension. You can’t disprove it either so what do you do with that?

Undertaker having a brother named Kane (reference to Cain and Abel), Undertaker’s parents dying in a fire set to their funeral home, burning his brother, Paul Bearer being Kane’s father after having an affair with Undertaker’s mother. The more convoluted it gets the harder it becomes to believe and the less enjoyable it becomes. So we believe in order to get the most mileage.

But what if the wrestling sucks? What if church is killing your faith?

Until next time.