My son, Charlie, is a big fan of professional wrestling. He knows it’s not “real” in the way most professional sports are—that it’s scripted and staged for the giant audiences it draws. Nevertheless, he finds the dramatic storylines, the larger-than-life personalities, and the fireworks around the whole production entertaining and fun. That is to say, he knows what he’s watching.
Actor Jeremy Allen White, who played Kerry Von Erich in Iron Claw—the recent movie about the famous wrestling Von Erich family from Texas—was interviewed not long ago about professional wrestling in the context of preparing for his role. In the interview, he made a point I know Charlie would agree with. “I came to understand,” White said, “just how important storytelling is in wrestling. It’s like dance, gymnastics, combat, but there's also something magical about it too…I began to understand that even outside the obvious athleticism, the performers are real artists, real story tellers.”
Once one comes to an appreciation of this—the physical prowess and storytelling skill of the performers—the necessity of suspending one’s sense of disbelief as to how any particular match plays out, becomes kind of beside the point. That is, pro wrestlers really are in competition with one another, just not in the way you might think. It’s actually more sophisticated than that.
They compete by imaginatively developing charismatic stage personas, leaning creatively into their roles and rivalries with one another. They have to be great athletes but actors as well, advancing a dramatic narrative with an array of ever-more clever and demanding moves that require strength and agility, while braving the dangers of the stunts they perform. The one who does all these things best rises above the rest.
The tension between whether the whole endeavor is real or not dissolves when you see the thing for what it actually is—a kind of storytelling, athletic art form that requires not only impressive dedication but the skills of a circus acrobat, an actor, an athlete, and a savvy show business promoter. Again, to understand and fully appreciate it, you have to know what you’re looking at.
All this came to my mind when, walking around our neighborhood the other day, I saw on the back of a car one of those decals that aims to slyly denigrate religious thought in general and Christianity in particular. You might remember how some folks used to put fish figure decals—the Ichthys—on their cars to denote they were Christians. This seemed to bother some who were not believers, so much that they made their own stickers, adding four little legs with feet on the fish, writing the word, Evolution, inside.
I don’t ever do this, but when I see one of these evolution decals, part of me wants to scribble a nice note and place it under the car’s windshield wiper saying I hold both the theory of evolution and the Bible in high esteem.
With respect to the Creation account in Genesis, I think to understand and fully appreciate it, you have to know what you’re looking at. If I were to expand on my under-the-windshield-wiper note a little bit more, I might also write that I’m aware the creation account in Genesis is not literal truth, but if you—the owner of this car—purport to highly value the idea of the survival of the fittest, then perhaps consider the fact that this text we call Genesis has survived as a central and poetic part of the human story for thousands and thousands of years. For this reason alone—my note might gently suggest—it should be taken seriously and considered without condescension in the light that it was written so long ago.
This is all to say that while we live in a modern society with all manner of scientific knowledge at our fingertips, if we’re truly serious about life's most crucial questions regarding humanity, our origins, notions of divinity, the noble idea of sacrifice, the struggle to become virtuous, and the possibility of transcendent experience, then all of us should return to these rich, resonant, and durable stories in Genesis more often than we do, and wrestle with them.
God—Help me to wrestle with Your Word more often than I do. Amen.
