The following column contains both opinions about wrestling, as well as content concerning religion, and specifically, Christianity. If you are offend by religious content in ANY WAY, you are advised NOT to read this week’s column. Thank You.
James 1:5 (New King James Version)
Hello once and again and welcome to my decent into insanity. Or, in more positive terms, the ongoing book that I am sharing with you I’m currently titling “Wrestling With God”. As it turns out, there already is a book by that title, but since I don’t have a publishing deal anyway, it really doesn’t matter right now. For the three people who care, this is a series of columns dealing with things I’ve been told to write down. This is by no means a “Holy Revelation” in the sense of God telling me how the world is going to end or anything like that… I’m not the apostle John, after all. I’m just a guy who recently found Jesus, and feels compelled to write about things that have been on my mind over the past several weeks. If that makes me crazy… well, I already knew that. Last week, I talked about a bunch of random stuff, and this week, I’ll do the same. Hopefully this time, whatever I write will make more coherent sense to those who are wondering what I’m on at the moment. I’m not on anything, if you’re wondering. If I were, I’d not be in this state of mind now. Drug Abuse brings about confusion, while Spiritual Seeking brings about clarity. I’d quote a Bible verse if I could think of one, but unfortunately, I can’t think of the one that would best work here at the moment.
First of all, I’d like to thank all the wonderful people who wrote me last week in support of what I said and did in my previous column. Your support and prayers are appreciated. And for all the people who are confused or turned off by this, I’m sorry you are offended and/or confused, and hopefully, if you’re willing to stick around, I’ll be able to at least clarify some questions you may have, or, at the very least, be willing enough to at least ask those questions yourself.
A question that was asked of me by several readers after I posted last week’s column was, “Now that you have Jesus in your life, are you now offended by things you see in WWE?” Well, no. Not really. I don’t know why I’m supposed to be upset or offended by things that, mere months ago, I had perfectly accepted as human nature. Just because I have changed doesn’t mean that sex or excessive violence now offends me. That would be hypocritical. If anything, some of the stuff I see in WWE concerns me, because, after all, it IS human nature being reflected in WWE, although rather poorly. As I said last week, and many times before, I feel that the Creative Staff, and Stephanie McMahon in particular, really don’t seem to know what they’re doing at all sometimes…
I should make it clear that I don’t have a beef against Harry Potter or Tinky Winky or the lesbian Simpsons character (was it Patty or Selma?) or anything like that. Having heat with fiction and fictional characters seems to be a pointless waste of time and energy. We, as people, need to remember that not everyone thinks like we do, no matter what we believe in. Fiction is a reflection on one person’s (or sometimes, a group of people’s) view of the world. This is why you see guys like Muhammad Hassan in WWE. Hassan is a reflection of a racial and cultural bias against Arabs, which seems to be widely held, not only among the staff in WWE, but among the American Audience of WWE as well. Not everyone thinks like I do that such a portrayal is morally and ethically unacceptable. Some people, who have written me in the past, actually believe that exploiting racial and cultural biases is somehow a good thing. I don’t. I am more offended by Muhammad Hassan’s role in WWE than I am about any of the Divas in skimpy outfits or about the occasional excessive violence that tends to take place outside of the WWE. At the same time, being mad at Muhammad Hassan is a waste of energy, because he’s not real. He’s a character, played by a professional wrestler who is employed by people who don’t share the same views about race and culture as I do.
Instead of being upset about what we see on WWE TV, shouldn’t we be upset with the ideas that are fueling the offending material? Seriously… why should I be upset with Muhammad Hassan when I’m actually more upset at the idea which allows that character to exist (the idea being that Arabs are somehow all evil)? Should I also be upset with all the SmackDown Divas are almost always being paraded around like sex objects when I’m actually upset about the idea that people believe that the objectification of women is an acceptable practice? The King James Version of Ephesians 6:12 reads, For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. So why are we so focused on wrestling what we see on WWE TV when we ought to be wrestling the ideas that inspire what they put on TV? Shouldn’t we stop wasting our time persecution fictional characters and the people who play them and spend more time trying to fight the IDEAS behind those characters? Fighting the fiction makes us look fanatical and stupid, but fighting the ideas behind the fiction will make us more effective. If you ever need an example of how that works, I’d encourage you to read up on the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and see how effective one can be when one chooses to fight the ideas of this world, rather than the people in it.
If you want to hear a different perspective on the point I have been trying to make here, you may want to check out “Christians and Art, Part 3: Jesus versus Harry Potter” by Nathan Boutwell at http://www.fireandiceministry.org/devo/devojan4.htm. Nathan and his wife, Trish, run a Christian Ministry that focuses on reaching Goths and Punks, so be warned… they’re not your average Christians. Anyway, Nathan makes his point pretty well. Basically, what he says in the piece is that, rather than protesting about Harry Potter or whatever else we would find offensive in Pop Culture, Christians ought to put more time and effort into the creative ventures that we pursue and offer an alternative to the material we find offensive. Next week, I’ll talk more about providing such an alternative in the wrestling world. But for now, I’m going to go ahead and wrap up this week’s column.
If you have any other questions about this, or anything else I’ve mentioned in this column, feel free to write me at TheMaverickMJ@yahoo.com. Thanks for reading, and feel free to come back again for another installment of The Trademark Rants!
