There are times when you don’t know who to cheer for, not because you like both teams, but because you don’t. As a spectator of various sports, there are many times when it seems more energetic to cheer against someone rather than to cheer for someone else. The same can be true in reality tv or even in dramatic television shows or movies.
Are you Team Musk or Team Zuckerberg?
See? What if you don’t like either team?
You may have heard by now that Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Zuckerberg) has launched a new app to compete with (kill, destroy, annihilate) Twitter (Tesla, SpaceX, Musk). We have yet to hear Jeff Bezos (Amazon, AWS, Blue Origin, Jeff) chime in, as he is currently yachting and working out.
Actually, it turns out that all three of the mega-awesome-successful, own-the-world guys have been working out - a lot. Have you seen the images or read the news stories?
Maybe once you’ve conquered the world, and space, all that is left is to conquer your own body and once you have done that and the other two guys have also, maybe then you need to kick that other guy, to not just finish him digitally, electronically and financially, but finish him physically - then you will finally be - the winner.
This may seem like a comical, farcical wild imagination, but it is real. Here is an article about it. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, having recently beefed up and ozempicked down, have challenged each other to a fight.
Wait, are we in grade school again? Is this progress? These are the people defined by many as successful and influential? Are they trolling us?
Tesla and Meta are not the only two people who have been talking about duking it out. Republican senator Markwayne Mullin recently challenged Sean O’Brien, the president of the International Brother of Teamsters, to a mixed martial arts fight.
Does Joe Rogan rule the world now? Is this a good thing?
Who do you want to fight? Today might be the day to issue the challenge. Apparently, it’s the trend.
All of this recalls an engaging and thoughtful examination of ideas of masculinity, domination, and fear within some expressions of Christian culture in the United States, in and around the 1990’s. Kristin Kobes Du Mez’ book, Jesus and John Wayne, explains a lot about how evangelical Christianity became, by some arguments, as farcical as Instagram vs. SpaceX, all muscled up and ready to destroy.
It would be funny if it had not been so damaging. Millions of people and the theological beauty of a faith that could contribute to healing and hope in the world were damaged by the bravado of some comically insecure men.
Remember Vladimir Putin and “gunslinger’s gait”? Who are these tough guys and why do we fall for this playground ridiculousness?
Kobes Du Mez describes how a “gonna beat you up” or a “my dad can beat up your dad” kind of sensibility was even foisted upon Jesus by these eager pugilists. Jesus was turned into a kick-ass-linebacker, a take-no-prisoners tough-guy, someone who could perform feats of super-human strength and aggression. Kobes Du Mez also points out that these tough-guy preachers and religious leaders, at the same time they were claiming they were the strongest and the toughest, were identifying themselves and their followers as victims, as beleaguered by a terrible and sinful culture that had turned against them. Who were the evil agents to be feared? Who were the people that were a threat? At least the following: feminists, liberals, non-evangelical Christians, people who say that women could be leaders, gay people, the media, public school teachers, Hollywood types, baristas, hippies, poets, painters, secular musicians, secular universities, people who live in New York City, people who don’t live in “the heartland”, etc. etc.
I hope that it is not alarming to you to hear that Jesus would not have been the most crushing linebacker. From what I have heard, he was not good at basketball or even pickleball. I suppose that you could counter that he did rise from the dead. He did, as the Orthodox say, “trample over death by death”. If Jesus was walking the earth right now, instead of all those years ago, do you think he’d be bulking up to keep pace with Musk and Bezos and Zuckerberg?
They might be headed in different directions.
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility count others as more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to your own interests, but also to the interest of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is in Christ Jesus, who though being in very nature God, did not count equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the nature of a servant, being born in the likeness of humanity. He humbled himself …
Jesus strength is a downward way, not as a means to an end, but because it is the very character of God, God’s love demonstrated in its fullness.
Maybe Musk and Bezos and Rogan and Zuckerberg and all of those hyper-masculine pastors and preachers will team up together one day and finally show the world once and for all that the way of Jesus, the downward way, just doesn’t cut it. Joe Rogan could host the festivities. Check that. I don’t think that they could all get along in order to work together. They would, perhaps, wind up battling each other, or comparing the efficacy of workout routines.
The way of Jesus remains the way of hope, but it is still a way that is confounding to the world.