Rituals

Posted on February 18, 2006 by Matt Todd

I was watching a show on A&E about the history of pro wrestling. It was pretty interesting, even though I really don’t care that much about pro wrestling. One guy, who apparently wrote a book called, From Wrestling to Rasslin, was discussing the psychology of the pro wrestling pheonomenon. He said this and it blew me away:

“Our culture needs rituals today more than it has in the last hundred years.”

Why is it that our churches don’t realize this? He argued that the WWF satisfies that ritual need. We have the ritual. We just haven’t been able to contextualize it into today’s culture. Maybe we could learn a thing or two from people like Vince McMahon. I’m not saying we should turn church into a sideshow, or make it a melodrama or even infuse violence into our services. I’m just saying that the WWE has tapped into a need that our culture has. There’s a sense of some type of community.

We could do so much better – if we got our acts together.

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Matt Todd

Howdy. I'm Matt. My wife, Christy, and I have four kids and two dogs, I'm passionate about orphan care. I'm a die-hard fan of the Evansville Aces, the Indiana Hoosiers, and Star Wars. I'm trying to live life by the Todd family motto: "It behooves us to live!"