Tim Briggs wrote:
I’ve been reading for the last couple of years about the growing popularity of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) in the church. Hundreds of churches across the U.S. are using this tool to reach young men. I have no doubt the power of MMA reaching young men but this sport does raise the question: Is it compatible with Christianity? Specifically, is the violence incompatible with the message of Christianity? This article presents the argument and, as you can see, there are people on both sides of the issue.
If you come to the conclusion that MMA is too violent for Christians to be using as an outreach tool then where do you draw the line? How about boxing? Football? What about cheerleading? You may think that is a joke but cheerleading is proven to be more dangerous than football in regards to catastrophic injuries.
As you can see, these are difficult issues. What’s your opinion? More importantly, how do you go about working through issues like this and forming your opinion?
For us at CSO, to start thinking through these questions, we utilize the Four Chapters of the Gospel. It looks a little like this:
1) Creation – What would it (the issue in question) have been in the garden? In this case, what would sports look like in the garden? (For more on this question, click here.) Would there have been MMA in the Garden? Cheerleading? What would it look like? Now we know in the situation of MMA, it is a hypothetical question but one worth asking. Another way of asking this would be “Would there be MMA in a world without sin?”
2) Fall – How did the Fall affect it (the issue at hand)? What ways does the corruption from the Fall distort this issue – particularly the self-glorifying core at the heart of everything? What ways do the judgments from the Fall impact this issue?
3) Redemption – What would it look like to restore this (the issue) back to the Creation picture? How can the corruptoin from the Fall be overcome? How might this be restored to a God-glorifying activity rather than a self-glorifying one? (This implies we have clarity on the Creation picture – showing the importance of looking at the first chapter.)
4) Consummation – What will this (the issue) look like when all corruption from the Fall is removed?
These are the starting points for our thinking and discussion. (By the way, this way of thinking isn’t exclusive to sports but covers areas like marriage (which obviously was in the garden before sin) or business, art, literature, music, etc (which may or may not have been in the Garden before sin.) They bring the key issues to the forefront and set up great dialogue points.
So, what do you think? Would there have been MMA in the Garden?
