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Jesus of Nazareth: Lamb of God, or Cagefighter?

Posted Sep 18, 08:04 AM | 9 comments | by Editor | Link

On a weekend in last November Nadia Bolz-Weber (and 28 of her friends who signed up for an hour each) watched 24 consecutive hours of Trinity Broadcasting Network, the cable network which broadcasts the likes of Benny Hinn, Crefllo Dollar, Joyce Meyer and other prosperity preachers. The following is an excerpt from her upcoming book on the experience—Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television (Seabury, 2008), we join her at hour 22 while watching Team Impact with a few of her friends:

Andie is a no-show. I call and wake her up. She’s upset about falling asleep and vows to get here as soon as she can. To miss Team Impact would devastate her, for it is the pinnacle of TBN weirdness. This is what I’ve been waiting for. It’s 2:30 in the morning; I am hopped up on Diet Coke and chocolate like nobody’s business, and there are two (soon to be three) people in my living room watching a show dedicated to steroids for the savior. If over the last twenty-one and a half hours I’ve questioned what makes these shows Christian per se, I will get no answers here. To imply (as this show does) that the ability of enormous steroidal men to break cinder blocks using stage karate is granted by the power of the Holy Spirit is theologically far reaching even for people less prone to cynicism than myself.

On my TV hip-hop (I’m assuming it’s “Christian”) pounds as several musclebound men in tank tops stand in front of a large banner reading “Abundant Life Christian Center.” One of them breaks a dozen or so cinder blocks with his bare arms (Praise God).

“You know what that is right there?” Jerry asks, “Abundant living.”

A montage of images follow. Big men breaking blocks of ice, bending steel bars, karate chopping blocks of wood. This allows Jerry to make a rather keen theological observation: “All these guys pray. All these guys break stuff. Is that a coincidence? I don’t think so.”

I’ve zoned out thinking about the last couple of hours of TBN. The programming, especially the game show, the MTV thing, the extreme sports show, and now this body builder stuff is obviously geared toward young people. It all feels like Christian propaganda aimed at church kids, a false notion of what will keep young people in church. Perhaps the idea is that if being Christian looks just like the culture, then that will keep the culture from luring our kids away. If we are going to get them not to leave church, we have to make Christian stuff just like secular stuff.

On screen, a bodybuilder testifies, “Sitting in my car one day I turned on the radio. There was a song playing from the 1980s called “I Want to Know What Love Is.” It was a secular song; it had nothing to do with God. ... ”

“Much like bodybuilding and breaking stuff,” I interject.

The testimony is followed by another montage of Team Impact feats of strength. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” an amped up announcer voice à la Monster Truck Rally proclaims, “We are Team Impaaaaact. Standing on faith tonight let’s give it up for the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the one, the only, the Risen Warrioooooor!”

Are they talking about Jesus? Is he a cage fighter or the Lamb of God?

If ever there was a cross-denying tribute to a theology of glory, it would be Team Impact. As is the case with the rest of TBN, the scandal of Jesus’ birth, life, teachings, death, and resurrection are ignored entirely in favor of a Jesus-as-Rambo theology; here the Lord just kicks ass and takes names, much like the freakishly muscular Team Impact guys. Taking one’s Christology from a couple of chapters of Revelation (ignoring the central Christ image, that of the Lamb who was slain) rather than the gospels is baffling to me. I recently saw an “inspirational” self-mocking emerging church poster. The word “incarnational” rested below an image of a heavily tattooed guy wearing a crown of thorns made of barbed wire.

The caption read “What would Jesus do? I’m pretty sure he’d do stuff I think is cool.” We all wish to make Christ in our own image because the truth of a God who dies is too much. We’ll believe anything but that, and if that anything happens to bring us power and victory and glory then all the better.

A man with twenty-two-inch biceps bends a frying pan into a burrito shape with his bare hands, which makes me admit, “You know scripturally speaking you can’t actually bend a skillet without the Holy Spirit. I think that’s in Ephesians.”

“So,” I ask, “are these guys just constantly looking around their homes thinking, ‘ What in here could I break for the Lord?’ Their wives are throwing their bodies between their husbands and their cookware. “Please Steve, not the Calphalon. Maybe the Lord needs you to break a socket wrench today.”

Jerry reminds me that it is God, and not us, deciding which household items need to be broken on the Lord’s behalf. Such piety.

“Jerry, now that I think about it, right now when I opened your beer for you, I felt a little victorious in the Lord just doing that.”

We try to focus again on the enormous man giving his testimony.

“When I got saved,” he says, “I got radically transformed.”

“How?” Sara asks.

“Mostly in the triceps area. You should have seen my flaccid triceps. But now with the Lord Jesus Christ in my life cinder blocks everywhere fear me.”

I can’t stop.

He continues by telling of his mother’s drug, alcohol, and child abuse.

When he “got saved” he went back home and tearfully told her that she was forgiven. Here I finally see Christ in this show; I can’t be cynical about forgiveness. In Luther’s small catechism he teaches that where there is forgiveness of sins there is life and salvation. I think that’s right. Forgiveness: there is true strength and true power.

Responding to the weird Christology we’re exposed to, we turn to discussing Trinitarian theology. “So is God one- sixth human?” I ask. Baffled, Jerry and Sara look at me like I’m Steven Hawking. “Seriously. If Jesus is one third of the Trinity and he himself is one half human, then God is one- sixth human, right?” They say nothing. Perhaps I should not be trying to operate heavy theology right now.

Andie arrives. “I was dead asleep, but I couldn’t miss this.”

“Yeah, this guy just broke a bat over his crotch for Jesus.” Jerry fills her in: “This is what being saved is all about.”

Andie and her Super Big Gulp join us on the sofa of judgment. I’m growing weary of my own cynicism. That’s why Andie’s here to take over.

We don’t call her Judge-y Smurf for nothing.

Andie has actually seen Team Impact live, which doesn’t really make sense as she’s Unitarian. I’ve always assumed her interest in Christian bodybuilders who demonstrate feats of strength for the Lord was primarily anthropological in nature. “You guys know more about the New Testament than me,” she admits. “Is there something in there about Jesus breaking stuff?”

Jerry answers first, “I will tear down the temple and rebuild it in three days. Now, if these guys can put this stuff back together, then that’s impressive.”

I ask Andie if she’d be willing to call the number on the screen and ask them to pray that she too might break some stuff for the Lord.

Sara offers, “What about, ‘I’m trying to stay awake to watch this show. Would you pray that I make it?’”

Andie backs down. “I think Jerry should do it. Jerry, call and ask them to pray that you might break some stuff.”

Jerry: “I break things all the time.”

Andie: “But is it for the Lord?”

Jerry: “It is now.”

THE ROUNDUP
Thought for this half-hour: Does a God who can raise the dead really need Team Impact to break stuff for him?

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Nadia Bolz-Weber pastors House for All Sinners and Saints, an urban liturgical community in Denver, Colorado.

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