Today is one such day.
I just can't wrap my head around the idea of a church/fight club. Let's go to church and kick some ass!
Hmmm. It makes about as much sense as me slicing myself up with razor blades to wake up in the morning as opposed to making coffee.
Recruitment efforts at the churches, which are predominantly white, involve fight night television viewing parties and lecture series that use ultimate fighting to explain how Christ fought for what he believed in. Other ministers go further, hosting or participating in live events.
The goal, these pastors say, is to inject some machismo into their ministries — and into the image of Jesus — in the hope of making Christianity more appealing. “Compassion and love — we agree with all that stuff, too,” said Brandon Beals, 37, the lead pastor at Canyon Creek Church outside of Seattle. “But what led me to find Christ was that Jesus was a fighter.”
It sounds to me as if they simply cannot deal with the fact that the lessons of Jesus were not full of machismo, so in order to accept it, they have to modify it.
Roughly 100 young men, many sporting shaved heads and tattoos, attend fight parties at Canyon Creek near Seattle, watching bouts on the church’s four big-screen televisions. Vendors hustle hot dogs and “Predestined to Fight” T-shirts. About half are not church members but heard about the parties through friends, said Mr. Beals, who is known as the Fight Pastor.
Jesus would be so proud.
Now if you will excuse me, I need to go back to my mancave and hide out until my nausea subsides.
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