MMA and Violence: Biblically

The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.

Welcome back to the Holy Note podcast. I am The Holy Note, and joining me today is Pastor Josh Holler to talk about biblical violence and a

Christian ethic of mixed martial arts. Josh is the lead pastor of First Baptist Church of St.

John, Missouri. He's been married to Laura for 14 years and is the father of five and author of Redeeming Warriors, Veteran Suicide, Grieving, and the

Fight for Faith, published by Christian Focus, is a Ph .D. candidate in ethics and biblical studies at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Josh is also an adjunct professor of philosophy at Missouri Baptist University.

Welcome, brother. Thanks, brother. It's good to be on here. Yeah, glad to have you. So this discussion is coming off of the heels of The Hope episode two, in which

John Jones, who I think is arguably one of the best fighters to ever fight—I think

I've heard Dana White say something like that about him—and in that clip, after his win at UFC 309, he gives glory to Jesus by acknowledging that it is from Jesus that he has the gift, the ability, to fight and to win.

And so I think that The Hope was received really well, but there were more than a few who disagreed, claiming that God hates violence,

God hates violence, and the objections were couched in those terms. And so one commenter said, beating someone up does not honor

Christ. And so we want to kind of get into that because that language assumes a theology of violence that I don't think you and I, Josh, are convinced is biblical, or that that's actually not what's going on in MMA, beating someone up.

Another commenter said, it's fascinating how you approve of violence, blood, and beating another human being, so it's wrong to bleed.

Recreational violence is noped by scripture. And then another one says, why is brutal, bone -breaking fighting for entertainment called a holy yip?

How about thanking God for employment that doesn't involve violence for money? So these objections to violence are most likely a case of reading our meaning of the word and the context in which we use it today into the biblical text, thereby skewing our understanding.

And so here's why we want to talk about this today. I think this skewed understanding of violence impacts much more than the octagon.

I think you'd agree, Josh. It impacts how young men carry themselves, how they view their roles and rights as individuals created in the image of God, as husbands and fathers and as citizens.

And so what's being communicated in these objections is a broad view of violence that basically means anything that is physically destructive.

But the real question that we want to get at in this podcast episode is, is the violence that the

Bible condemns the same type of violence that we use in our modern vernacular, and does it prohibit the

Christian's involvement in the sport of MMA? So Josh, thank you for joining us again.

I want to throw some questions at you, but before, why don't you sort of introduce yourself and give us some of your background with mixed martial arts and some of the things that you've done.

Sure. Yeah. Well, I'm named Josh Holler, pastor here in St. Louis, and my background with MMA was really from wrestling.

That's why I'm wearing one of my favorite teams hoodie today, rooting for them. I also like OSU, going for David Taylor, Kale Sanderson at Penn State.

So I grew up in the sport of wrestling primarily. I started at the age of four. Once stayed a couple times for Greco -Roman and for freestyle.

Then I hit the high water mark. You can see it right here. I got my All -American as a school boy in Greco -Roman.

I probably have a thousand matches to my name. Every summer we would go. My dad would take me to athletes in action wrestling camp in Colorado, and I rubbed shoulders of some notable people who've gone through the ranks of MMA and UFC, probably most notably

Joe Stevenson, who he lost the title about several years ago, probably 10 years ago now, man, in London to BJ Penn, got a nasty gash on his forehead.

But I went to, there's somewhere, there's a picture of me and him at this summer camp playing heart and soul on the piano together at an

AIA camp. And so I grew up around the sport, all of wrestling. And wrestling is,

I think very easily, arguably the number one base for UFC fighters, for MMA fighters.

It's had the most dominance. A second to that would be Brazilian Jiu -Jitsu. And so I wrestled all the way through high school into college.

And I wrestled for Jim Greenwald, two -time Olympian. I did a little bit of boxing, came out of the same gym as Victor Ortiz, former boxing champion.

And then when I was in the Marine Corps, I did some mixed martial arts, but that's really where I got into Brazilian Jiu -Jitsu and grappling, mostly no -gi grappling anyways.

And so I've been around the sport and back, I think it was like 2010, 2011, this is after Mark Driscoll made a very short statement on why he likes

MMA. And TGC and Christianity Today went up in a frenzy, and it really seemed like the reason they were against it is because he was for it.

Now, I just want to be clear, his defense of MMA was kind of underwhelming, but he wasn't trying to make a large argument.

And then the responses were also underwhelming. So there hasn't been a good defense for this man yet.

So when I arrived at Midwestern and I'm trying to choose a dissertation to do, I did something I want, that I had a background in, that I was empathetic to, that I knew something about, and there was an open lane.

Nobody had done this, and somebody needed to make the argument for this. Because like you said, man, young men are involved in this, they see that there's something good about the rough play and competition, and the church needs to embrace what is good.

And there's a really good case to be made from scripture for this kind of thing. That's me.

Tell us what was basically Mark Driscoll's defense of MMA back in the day?

Well, if I remember, it was just a quick YouTube clip. I don't remember where that clip originally came from.

I think they had ripped it from something on Mars Hill, that's where he was.

He said something, there's just nothing, something to the effect that there's just nothing truer or better than two guys, no balls, no sticks, no gloves, or I don't know if he said the gloves thing, getting into a ring and just seeing who the man is, who the dude is.

That was about it. And that put up, a lot of people went up into a frenzy and say, no, this is violence porn, this is voyeurism.

I'm manly, and so you can trust my take. And that wasn't,

I mean, that was such a quick remark. I'm not asking Mark, and I don't even want to defend Mark. Yeah, no,

I hear you. But that's not a good defense of the best defense of MMA, but it certainly was not a good rebuke of MA just to say it's a violence porn.

They're wrong, 100 % they're wrong. So there's a category error going on, right? There is a conflation of the sporting event and that which we see, and we're going to kind of break down MMA and see how it is categorically distinct from a biblical view of violence.

And so there's a conflation of what we call violence today and the

Bible's understanding of violence. And so, Josh, where would you suggest that we begin if we were going to go to the

Scriptures and begin to consider how does the Bible conceive of violence?

Yeah, well, and I approach my ethics or moral theology from a Reform perspective. So just go straight to where we find the moral law of God summarized, the

Ten Commandments, and the Sixth Commandment, thou shalt not kill. That is what somebody would latch onto and say, okay, this is an extension of the

Sixth Commandment, that violence is forbidden. And violence is forbidden. It's about the preservation of life.

John Frame in his book, Doctrine of the Christian Life, does a good job with this. There's not a problem with that view.

The problem is that people latch onto it and say, this is the same kind of violence that then is the

MMA is forbidden by. Well, okay, so the Ten Commandments don't spell out every case.

The case law does. And just, you can go to Exodus 21 and 22, minimally, but just looking at Exodus 21, for example, and it gives all these different scenarios.

If two men are in a fight or have a quarrel, if one strikes a servant, people are near enough, near a pregnant woman, et cetera, et cetera.

And the elements that unify these wrongful, violent acts that are forbidden by Scripture, there's one, there's a power differentiation.

One is trying to exert their will over another. You have the intent to injure, and sometimes you have injuries.

Then there's death is a big part of that. We got to get into that. Like, how many deaths are we comparing

MMA to other sports? And then the big thing, the absence of consent.

Well, when you look at MMA, on each of those four things, it's just distinctly different.

So just take the first one, like the power differentiation. Now, you may have been able to that argument back in UFC one, where you had like extreme heavyweight, so 350 pounds against a small statured person.

And I'm against that kind of thing. I know that there are, what do you call them?

Promoters out there that are trying to do these things. I saw a 350 pound woman against two small statured men.

That's terrible. Or maybe it was one man against two fat women. I can't remember.

This isn't the MMA that we're talking about. Let's just think about UFC. When it comes to MMA, we're trying to say all things being equal, weight class, skill level.

You don't put an O in 10 fighter up against John Jones. Men against men, testing for steroids.

We want to eliminate that. All things being equal. The only thing you carry into the ring with you or into the octagon is your skill set and your strength.

And the thing that I think guys, especially what we like to see the most is when two people are so equally tied that the one thing that's going to put one over the edge to gain victory is the power of the will, where somebody just wants it more than the other.

And that's different, distinctly different. We're not putting against a small woman against a large man.

That would be sinful. That would be wrong. And then second element on the intent to injure, or at least the serious injuries, the type of injuries that we're seeing in MMA are almost laughably.

It's so distinct from the kind of violence that the Bible forbids. Nobody's being stabbed through the stomach with a knife.

Nobody's throat is being cut. Are there rough things happening? Yes. Has somebody's legs been broken?

Yes. Have there been concussions? Okay. Yeah, that's a concern, but it's not the same kind of thing that's happening in warfare.

It's not the same kind of thing what happens if in a rape or in a murder or an assault. These are more incidental to what's happening.

And if you're going to be, if we're going to be consistent, if you say like, well, there are injuries take place, there's blood, you shouldn't do it.

Okay. If you want to go down that road, that's fine. But now you need to compare it to other sports. Because if you have another sport that you like to watch, like football, which has far more concussions, that means if you're going to jettison this one, you have to also jettison this one.

And the last, okay, death, get to the last two death and the lack of or the absence of consent. Just comparatively speaking,

MMA has far fewer deaths have ever taken place. There are more deaths each year at the Boston Marathon, or at the marathon, just people dying from exhaustion.

That's a risk in every sport. And MMA flying colors is far better than the last one.

And it's a huge one. The absence of consent, these guys are willingly going into the ring against each other.

And it's not like they're being they're not being forced to do this. And we shouldn't look over the fact that at the end of these fights, you know,

I know we hype these fights up a lot with the weigh ins. I'm not a big fan of that personally. But at the end of the fights where there's this embrace and touching of gloves, and camaraderie and sportsmanship, we shouldn't overlook that that overlook those little acts of honoring each other and caring for each other.

And I just like that's just a brief high level summary. When I look at those kind of four elements. This is not what the

Bible forbidding this is something distinct, that is unique to a competitive sport.

And the Bible praises competitive sports. Yeah, yeah. And so the the holy nope, that I are the holy hope that I posted wasn't, you know, an affirmation of the entire culture of MMA today and all the things that are involved in that from fight hype to to ring girls and things like that.

What we are talking about is the the Christian ethic of, of taking taking part in the sport and, and engaging in those fighting techniques and competing against another man as a battle of wills.

And so I think those are great points to highlight and to highlight them in in contrast to the biblical view of violence.

In biblical terms, violence is often associated with wrongful force, oppression, bloodshed against others, particularly when it violates

God's justice and moral law. And so I, as I was kind of studying the use of the the word violence in Scripture, it seems like the the main theme to be associated with it is injustice.

The injustice of of of imposing one's will upon another.

God hates the hands that shed innocent blood. That is violence.

And so the Hebrew word for violence is hamas. It's frequently used to describe unjust actions against individuals or societies.

And there are similar terms that convey those concepts in the New Testament as well. And so there's the the injustice of biblical violence that is is highlighted in Scripture, but not all violence is condemned.

Is that true? That's right. I mean, if like, okay, just let's just break down MMA into its constitutive parts, because MMA itself is, you know, it's mixed martial arts.

It's an intersection of a lot of things, right? It's on a continuum of play to games, to sports, competitive sports.

We're over here in competitive sports. There's different elements of fighting. There's also the entertainment factor.

And if we just look at what does the Bible say about these direct things, because we don't have MMA in the

Bible, right? Not anything directly. The Bible speaks, because the term wasn't coined until the 1990s.

The Bible speaks about play in very positive terms. Speaks about competition. Talk about training and combat.

Psalm 144 is at one and two. Blessed be the Lord, my rock who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.

There's something good and right about preparing for battle. And you could imagine it, just even the rehearsals to prepare for war, you know, like you have

David's mighty men of valor, valiant men. You would have to engage in a rehearsal of combat against another person to prepare.

And there's a place for that that's good. And it's just so interesting looking at how Paul draws upon so many sporting metaphors to talk about the goodness of the

Christian life. Let me just take one. When he says, fight the good fight of faith, he's not saying fight as a bad thing.

And to make his analogy, he doesn't say rape the good rape or steal the good theft.

Just fight the good fight. Well, he draws upon that because there's something good and right about a good fight.

And there's many others, of course, wrestling and boxing. He uses these sporting metaphors, striving for the gold, the

Stephanas, the oral wreath, the crown. So Bible talks about these in very positive terms.

And we shouldn't overlook those things or make little of them at all. Right. So there there's the violence of injustice.

And then there's there's a righteous violence that's introduced in the scriptures, and that is carried out either by God or his agents in the earth.

It's probably worth noting that the summary condemnation of mankind before the flood is that the earth was filled with violence.

And so we had, for example, one commenter pointing to Proverbs 331, making the case that recreational violence is prohibited in scripture.

And so he's creating a category there of recreational violence. But Proverbs 3 actually hearkens us back to the introduction of violence as that that corrupted character of man for which

God condemned the world, even in all the way back in Genesis six. And so it is very clearly in that context, for example, associated with the the devious ways of wicked men and their involvement in the things that God hates at others expense.

And so that that is that idea of violence categorically distinct from from MMA. So we see violence in Genesis six.

Before that, the first act of violence, we would say, is Cain's murder of Abel in Genesis four.

This is condemned as an unjust act. But that violence, right, that's not fighting.

Would you call what happened between Cain and Abel a fighting? It certainly was.

Well, here's that. We don't know if there was a fight. This is one where he rose up, right, and he struck him.

Did he hit him from behind? Certainly wasn't consensual. Certainly wasn't recreational, like, hey, let's see who's going to tap out who.

And it resulted in death. Right. This is that is wrong. One hundred percent.

That's not the same thing we have in MMA. Right. Right. It's different. Exactly. That's unjust violence at the kind of violence that's that's spreading across the earth.

God then meets this unjust violence with the righteous violence of a flood.

Right. There is righteous violence employed to correct or to undo the harm of unjust violence that has taken place, and that's done directly by God or through his agents in the earth.

And so as we see the theme develop in Scripture, Abraham rescues

Lot in Genesis 14, and that shows a justified violence, a commended violence that is taking place in defense of others.

And so that is that is a theme associated with righteous violence that the Bible nowhere is going to condemn a man for exercising violence in defense of an innocent.

Mm hmm. That's right. Yeah. One of the one of the places you can look at this is that Exodus 21,

Exodus 22, where it's when somebody's breaking into your house at night paraphrasing. And if you're unable to discern what his intentions were, if you strike him, his blood is not in his head, your head.

But if it's daytime, like the application is, if you can see that he's clearly stealing and not trying to kill you or something else, then his blood will be on your head if you strike and kill him.

So it leaves a there's an opening there to allow someone to defend themselves, even if there's if there's ambiguity about a person's intentions.

And there's several other places like that. The Bible absolutely allows a place for self -defense.

And even if we could even go so far to say that it requires the strong to protect the weak, especially for men have a duty to protect the weak and their wives, their families.

And that's a good thing. And I think that's actually getting in switching the area a little or moving the conversation a little bit.

That's one of the things that's good about MMA and any different other kinds of martial arts and wrestling is that you're rehearsing for the day you hope that won't come when you will have to defend yourself or defend others.

You don't just decide you don't decide one day, well, I'm going to be prepared to defend myself and my home and my family.

Right. You have to you have to be prepared for that. You have to train for that. You have to test yourself and push yourself.

You have to engage in some form form of physical training that for talking self -defense is going to involve combat and competition.

That's unavoidable, really. That's right. Yeah. And if you if you never do train for it, if you've never been in a fight, you're going to be surprised of how different it is than you expected.

It's not going to go like you see on TV. You're not going to find a guy that can take out 12 like John Wick, you know, his way through a fight.

These people don't exist. Maybe one person. I don't know. But that's that's that that doesn't speak to the rest of us mortals.

And that's just a good thing about sports in general and especially especially

MMA. You're rehearsing for a day you hope will never have to come. But you may have to fulfill your duty to lay down your life for another person, which is one of the greatest acts of love.

Right. John, 15, 13, greater love is known. And this one will lay down his life for his friends, ultimately fulfilled in Christ Jesus.

But would you go so far as to say that young men, young men who may be listening, who are coming maybe from sort of pietistic backgrounds who just don't have haven't thought about this?

Would you would you go so far as to say that it is a young man's duty not only to be able to to to lay his life down for others, but would you say even to take life for others?

That may become necessary. One of the things in training in combat sports and it's that happens, it's one of the things just in sports in general.

Sports are good for character formation, but also revealing your character and flaws.

They expose it. They expose your selfishness. But one of the great aspects in MMA, wrestling, boxing is learning restraint.

Let me use a different analogy. And when it comes to firearms, I heard somebody say when they and they did their concealed carry class that when you shoot the person, you don't shoot them until you know they they're dead.

You shouldn't tell they know they're dead. I hate that. I think that's so wrong as somebody who who knows has a proficiency with with my with my pistol with my firearm.

I don't want to and it's kind of a just war theory thing. I don't want to inflict any more damage than is necessary.

I just want to neutralize the person. I don't want this to become an excuse to violate the image of God and that other person and and to then commit a vile act and say, well, hey, look, they attacked me.

I'm just I'm going to neutralize the threat and go no further. No farther than that. I lost track of your question a little bit.

And oh, yeah. Is it is it necessary even to do to do violence? Was that the question for young men?

Well, I forgot. Is it is it a man's duty to be able to be prepared, not not only to lay his life down, which yes and amen, but also to take life if necessary?

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So so you prepare for it, rehearse for it, knowing that you need to you will learn in those rehearsals and practices and grappling with others when you to show restraint and when you're going to like,

I'm not going to just try to make the guy tap. I'm going to try to break his arm because this is what I need to do to end the fight.

And that you know, that's the thing about it's so interesting. People say this is violent. You could break his arm.

Well, yeah, you could. But even in competition, like fighters show restraint.

There's a lot of a lot of the restraint is by the rules that come into, you know, come into play for that.

But yeah, young men should they should train in something. And if they don't want to necessarily do a combat art, you should do a sport.

You've 100 percent. You should do a sport. It's good for your character. It's good for your body. There was a story that my dissertation advisor,

Mark Coppinger, drew me on to. And it was during the Cold War when some

Russians came over to watch the United States and they watched an American football game. I don't know if it was

NFL or, you know, college or high school, whatever. But they just saw how rough they were with each other. And they thought we lost if this is how rough that they play with each other when they play football.

Look, what are these men going to do when we get into battle? And I just thought that's just like a beautiful picture of it.

And it's football. It's not combat, but it's a good thing for character formation that young men should do a sport.

One one quick story. When I was in boot camp, one of the Marine Corps, there there were some guys that like they were on the edge of not making it through.

They did. They just struggled. And uniformly, the ones that struggled, they had two things in common.

They didn't have a strong father figure in their home, like their parents were divorced and they grew up, their mom raised them and they didn't do they didn't play any sports, competitive sports in high school.

Those two things, those two elements just made these guys stand out.

They silhouetted themselves. Then they really struggled. Sports is a wonderful gift from God to form our character, to disciple men.

And I love that's why I love athletes in action and not Campus Crusade for Christ. FCA, which is use sports as a platform, not only to share the name of Christ, but people recognize that there are these wonderful virtues and character formation and discipleship that can take place.

So I would say at the very least, I may be not as you don't necessarily have to do jujitsu to fulfill that duty, but you should do a sport and it should be rough.

Yeah. Yeah. Amen. Hear that. Receive it. Go do it.

All right. Well, that's a great segue into another concern that people have is that does participating in the sport of MMA, which may necessarily lead to unavoidable participation in some parts of the culture, does that lead to vice or virtue?

Now, you've mentioned some of the virtue. You've mentioned the character development, especially, I wholeheartedly agree.

Is there a danger, is there caution that Christians need to have if they're considering entering something like this?

Yeah, I think so. And this is where the value, there is caution to be had, but it can produce both virtues and vice.

And this is where a good, godly man of character as a coach, as a discipler is important.

And I was blessed just in my wrestling experience. I always had strong Christian men who were my coaches in the camps and clinics from Jim Grunewald, strong, godly man who would preach.

He's like, hey, the strong exist to protect the weak, right? This is what you're for. This wasn't about a praise of violence.

I wouldn't go out there. I remember there was this old documentary called Greater Unfading Glory, I think it is, a wrestling documentary.

It's VHS. Somebody put it on YouTube not too long ago. And you got Ben and Jon Peterson. These are two

Olympic gold medalists from 1972 Olympics wrestling team for freestyle, same guys.

One was gold medal that year, and then the brother the next year. I get the two mixed up. And he just pointed out, he's like, hey, when

I go into a wrestling match, I don't want to hurt the guy, but I do want him to feel pain.

And so you need somebody that can disciple you, like, hey, you're not going out there to purposely injure this person.

If it happens, it happens. And those things do happen from time to time. But you want to, in this constrained area right here, impose your will within the rules that are given.

And so if you have somebody that's godly and good to disciple you, that's awesome. But it could produce vice, because what sports do is it simply exposes your character.

It exacerbates what's already in us. And what we know is that we're fallen creatures. Post Genesis three, there's no part of the creation that is untouched by the invasion of sin.

And it will expose those things in a good way. But it's possible that it could take somebody who has violence in their heart, and just give them the tools that they want to go out there and just and hurt people.

And I think, I think, generally speaking, we're able to spot those people in different sports. And you see it in their sportsmanship, right?

They get the cheap shot in the way that they talk about others, they, they, they show a lack of respect for the competitor.

So I don't want to say that it's a neutral thing. I think it's a good thing. But you should consider who's your coach, who's your teacher, who's the person discipling in this that.

And that's something for parents as they're looking at getting their kids plugged into sports, which which they should do, they should do one of those things is look at the coach and look, look at the kind of people he's creating.

And he's producing through that program. Yep, yep. So well handled, it will it will, it will build character, it will produce strength, it will facilitate the the producing of men in God, men of God who are able to go out into the world and advance his kingdom.

And so you you made a distinction there. And in your answer, you said,

I don't want to injure the person, but I do want to cause him pain within the rules and limitations set by the competition.

And so I think a lot of people also need to recognize that feeling pain isn't being injured. There's there's a distinction there.

And, you know, one of the commenters that I read at the beginning said beating someone up does not honor

Christ. That category error, I think, is being highlighted now as we discuss, because if someone were to learn these techniques and gain this strength, only to use it to impose their will unjustly on those to go around beating people up, that would be wrong.

And that would be sinful. That would be right advice that would not be virtuous. But reading someone up isn't what's happening in the controlled arena of mixed martial arts.

Right? Yeah, it's not it's not the same kind of thing where somebody is concerned about the idea of like, running somebody at the grocery store, and the person imposes their will on a, you know, like a weaker person and destroys them and the other person had no chance.

Mixed martial arts, the other both opponents know what they're doing. They know they're getting themselves and they both signed up for this.

And they're both going to all things being equal, try to impose their will upon the other person.

But within the rules, I mean, there are things that there are strikes within many martial arts families,

I guess you could say, groupings that like throat punches, I mean, you could kill somebody very easily, right?

Or shots to the groin, you know, the fish hooking, eye gouging. There's a reason that we eliminate those things, because we recognize is like, that is a that is crossing a line into permanently damaging and maiming a person which is forbidden by scripture.

And we want the person to be able to come back and fight again. So right. Yeah, it's definitely a there's a distinction there that I think a lot of people are unfamiliar with.

And maybe part of the reason that we're unfamiliar with it with that is because fewer and fewer people are engaging in combat sports.

And we're just not as saturated with actual violence and are familiar with death, as we were in a previous generation.

So for example, Dave Grossman in his book, either on killing or on combat, I get the two mix up because they're very similar.

He mentions how, you know, in a previous generation, it was not uncommon to see somebody die, right?

When you had beyond the nuclear family, you had grandma, you know, dying on on within the household, and people would see somebody draw their last breath.

And now it's it's distance, it's out in the hospital, away from somebody, if you grew up on the farm, kids were from an early age, we're already seeing the sight of blood when they're butchering the cow and chickens.

And now the place that we see violence is through video games and movies.

And I have some serious reservations and watching that kind of violence of because of what that does to a person more so than competing in MMA.

I think john wick or Deadpool, you should stay away from young men stay away from those movies.

And rather I you should learn how to fight and compete in combat sports, those sorts of things.

Much. I would say that you need to do that way before you ever engage in watching one of these films or something.

Sorry, got a little bit of a tangent there. I want to ask you, I want to ask you about spectators of MMA. But But before we get there, there's one more question

I want to ask about. For participants, would you would you say that there is a kind of person, a

Christian young man who cannot or should not participate in MMA, because of its propensity for him to produce vice to create sin in his heart for him to act upon?

Yeah, if it causes you to stumble, you shouldn't do it. Yeah. But don't take that if, if you're, if you're a weaker brother in this area, and say, and expand it to everybody else.

I mean, this is that's the air that that happens of alcohol when somebody says, Well, I'm an alcoholic, so I don't drink people shouldn't drink.

It's like, well, you just took your sin. And it's what Sproul calls the tyranny of the weaker brother expands everybody else.

So yeah, it's possible, you know, that this could this could be bad for a person, in which case do something different.

Do something that is still good for your body. Good for your soul still pushes you and presses upon you.

But if it's going to if it's going to cause you to stand or stumble, just say it blanketly like that, then don't do it.

Don't pursue it. Don't watch it. Sure. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think that's helpful for people to hear.

So considering spectators of the sport, you were making the case that the glorification of violence in movies and TV shows is far worse for a spectator than viewing real combat,

I'm trying to, we're still want to keep the distinction between biblical violence and, and what we call violence today, but the violence contained in MMA, which

I don't know if we can really appropriately call violence at this point, because nothing unjust is taking place there.

But can Christians watch MMA? Can you speak to that a little bit more? What are some concerns that you would that you would address when considering that?

Yeah, and here, and this is where there are more concerns or things to navigate and be aware of.

So can a Christian watch MMA? Yes. Let's just ask who is watching MMA. And you have a full gambit these days of people who didn't grow up doing any of these sports, like, you know, wrestling, boxing, any karate, you know,

Muay Thai, one of these base that are watching MMA. There's, so there's a spectrum of the trained to on -train spectator.

When a trained spectator, let's just use myself an example. When I watch MMA, I'm, I'm watching it from a very technical point of view, maybe like somebody who's just done football their entire life.

And they, they, they're playing the game, they're doing the strategy in their head, they're problem solving, as opposed to the person who like they're being exposed to this first time.

And you go to like, you know, Buffalo Wild Wings to watch a fight night, and it's a lot of hooping and hollering.

Those guys are watching it for a different lens than these guys over here.

And my biggest concern is for these over here who are watching, who are getting wrapped up, they're wanting to see the knockout, they're wanting to see blood, they're wanting to, they're wanting to be entertained by somebody's arm being broken or something that is so distinctly different than these guys over here.

And that's something that's like, we should be concerned about that culture. But we can't say that like this dismisses it for everyone.

But we also have to acknowledge here like that if somebody starts watching becomes a fan of the sport, over time, they're going to, they're going to go over to this side, they're going to learn about jiu jitsu, they're going to get involved in a class, they become they become a trained spectator.

And they suddenly they take on an appreciation for uniformly, people like to see knockouts more than a submission.

But more and more people are getting savvy with the jiu jitsu with the grappling game and understanding these very technical chess matches that are taking place.

And they don't have the flair of what we're accustomed to in movies with spinning back kicks and Superman punches.

But they're just as fascinating once you get schooled up in those things. So to back up to recap, it depends what kind of spectator you are.

And this is this is a tendency of our culture as a whole is that we want it to be more violent than it is.

One example. I think it's Ridley Scott. He was the director of gladiator. I haven't seen gladiator two yet.

I heard that it was garbage. But yeah, when he went and visited the Colosseum in Rome to to for the filming of gladiator, they realized this thing is too small.

We need to make this bigger. We need more blood, we need more violence. And I read a couple books in for my dissertation about people who actually studied the the ancient

Olympics and then also gladiatorial games is that the gladiatorial games the way that we portray it was more violent than it was then.

I'm not I'm not here to defend the gladiatorial games. I'm here to actually to condemn our culture that has this fetishizing of violence where we want it to be more violent than it is.

And I think that the big cases of that are especially with especially with violent video games, not a big fan.

And especially with like movies like like John Wick Deadpool, two or whatever, whichever the one it was, or maybe it's both of them, which is the blood comes across the lens of the camera.

And you're like, what, what? So yeah, there are concerns and spectating.

And you need to be asking that question. What is this doing to me? If you're watching this?

And so, you know, somebody that's that's trained their whole life in one of these sports, and you've probably seen this,

I don't know, Austin, what kind of sports background you have football or whatever. Have you ever had that moment when you're watching a sport and somebody does a motion that you've done and you feel it?

They that's actually called your the mirror neurons are firing within your body. It's where it's where your your brain knows that action that's being rehearsed in front of you.

And so what a person that has seen this same kind of the punch, kick, jump, arch, run, or whatever, they can literally feel with the person that's out there.

There was a study, I forget her name, she did where they they took the people are doing free throws.

And they pause it at the very bottom arc of the free throw. And people who play basketball their whole life could, but statistically much higher predict from the very beginning of the arc, is that basket going to go in or not?

Is that ball going to go in the basket or not, versus those who hadn't played, and they could feel it, they could predict that, that trained spectator is in such a distinctly different person than the on train spectator.

And so I want to be, I don't want to, if I if I'm going to do MMA, I really,

I'm not a big fan of having watched parties of a bunch of people who just want to see people get bloodied up.

I would rather watch it with my wrestling buddies. Oftentimes, spectators like that are simply are simply allowing the fight to be the the the facilitator of of indulging the flesh in other ways, right?

Yeah, like that. And so but one person's wrong use of a thing doesn't make the thing itself wrong, right?

That's right. Yeah, that's right. So and then I think that's a great point about the the amount of skill and technique that that is involved that a trained spectator appreciates about the sport.

We had people commenting in response to that, holy hope that that that this was mindless violence.

And I just I couldn't help but chuckle. And yeah, I have a background in boxing. But there is this is mindful combat that there is a lot going on in the minds of these men who are engaging each other.

And so yeah, couldn't couldn't be more wrong on that front. For sure.

But yeah, I think I think with with all things, we've got to be asking what is this doing to me?

You know, if I can't watch a fight without or even participating, you know, if I can't fight without unless I'm enraged, unless I'm like, sinfully angry.

I know there's men like that. Well, you shouldn't do it the same way that if you can't have a beer without having four more, you shouldn't have a beer.

Right? And so 100%. Yeah, you said that's right. That's right. Yeah. That's right.

You know, John Piper, one of the one of the sermons he did. Back up a little bit.

One of the wrong questions we often ask when it comes to our ethics or the how do you live the

Christian life is how far can I go without sitting? We like to find Java and find the line.

And that's good. We need to find boundaries about where sin was not. But then we want to go up to that line and hang out there.

And he said, in the sermon, I'm paraphrasing. Rather, we should be asking the question of Hebrews, the author of Hebrews, does it help me run?

Is this pray? Is this helping live high and holy living and pursue the heart of God? And if it doesn't, even if you're technically within this permissible category, you know, why bother?

So I'll just lay my cards on the table. I haven't watched a full fight night in probably about 10 years.

And one of the reasons at least at least for me is because when I would go to bed at night, I'd be rehearsing for mental visualization, all this old wrestling and old old fights and stuff.

And there was a habit back from the J. Robinson wrestling camp to rehearse do that mental visualization, what are you going to do?

And I would be losing sleep over it, because I'd be kicking my wife in bed, I'd be throwing elbows, you know, twitching.

And she's like, Stop, you got to stop this. It's like, Oh, you're right. So I don't watch it. But I wouldn't forbid somebody from watching it for all the reasons that we said.

Right? Oh, yeah, I haven't. I don't I don't keep up with boxing anymore. I don't keep up with the

UFC anymore. But nevertheless, I'm glad we're that we're having this conversation.

Let's talk about women. I actually don't know your position on this. What do you what do you think about women in combat roles?

Women in the MMA? Yeah, I actually wrote an article for American reformer after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

And we saw the the di the di Secret Service agents just in a gaggle mess.

Yeah, out there. And I'm very much against women in combat, it should be men. And there's a lot of there's actually if you want to go watch an interesting testimony,

Mark Coppinger, testifying on the hill about women not shouldn't be in combat. And it's an it's excellent testimony.

I do think it'd be good for women to learn some basic self defense. Yeah, there are going to be times where the men are at war, right.

And this is we can agree with what Jordan Peterson says here, that we send men into combat because men are expendable in a way that women are not.

First of all, men are just stronger across the board, stronger, more endurance are made for this thing. But if we if we send our women to combat, who is going to bear the next generation who's going to raise the children?

It's a it's a it's an indictment. It's a judgment in our culture and our society that we would send our women to combat.

So but but for like training in MMA, some self defense, I'm, I'm in favor of that.

I have big hesitations about women fighting women for entertainment.

For one thing, it does. Women's bodies are different. There are risk to them fighting that men don't have, for example, getting getting a need in the abdomen could permanently damage a woman's ability, ability to bear their children.

It can destroy her uterus. And this has happened before this is documented. And truth be told, the fighting just isn't as good.

That you can call me sexist or whatever you want. It's just I don't like it. I don't I don't enjoy it.

And I think I really think it's just our cultural moment right now where I think

I think the perception is this is what people want. And it isn't it's not going to die down for a while for the upstream sports from the

UFC like wrestling. Right now the fastest growing sport in America is girls wrestling. Really?

Okay, girls can wrestle. That's fine. I want girls to I don't

I don't want them in the UFC. I don't want to see them get hurt. They can't. They fight differently.

They're they need to be protected. Yeah, I think I agree with you. I think I think a biblically informed

Christian should bristle against seeing two women compete on that kind of stage and and engage in in combat that way because they're doing something that is inherently against their nature.

They're not made for that kind of thing that self learning some self defense. Obviously, I agree that that's a good thing to do.

But the the the combat involved is inherently masculine and contrary to the nature of females.

And so we should be uncomfortable seeing that we shouldn't like to watch that. It's against nature.

And we should be especially because this the the women fighting MMA has opened the door for this whole transgender mess that we're in, where there have been men biologically male fighters entering into the space beating up women.

You know what that is? That might be brother. That might be violence. I think that is violence.

That's right. That is a biblically forbidden violence. That's what we're against. Yeah, man.

All right. So in conclusion, I want to I want to list out the distinctions that you provided in something that you wrote.

Between MMA and biblical violence. Now, obviously, as we just mentioned, they're not everything about MMA is is perfect in the culture they're in and everything like that.

But one, it's mutual. Two people agree to to fight two. It's evenly matched. They fight.

They're not going to fight somebody who's far better than them. There are medical examinations, pre fight, post fight.

There are drug tests to make sure that it's fair. The fights are sanctioned. There's a third party for quality control.

The fight is refereed. There's a man in the ring with them there to keep control.

It's ended quickly when somebody loses so that we don't so that no one is maimed or permanently damaged.

The combat itself is constrained by rules. You can't kick somebody in the groin. You can't beat them repeatedly in the back of the head, that kind of thing.

Fighters wear protection. It is objectively judged. And finally,

MMA, well, it's a sport. And so all of those things make mixed martial arts categorically distinct from biblical violence.

And if you are a spectator, if you do enjoy it, then you're free to do that. But you should also be aware of what it's doing to you and making sure checking your own heart often.

And you should decry when real violence does become a factor.

When you start seeing men dressed as women beating up on women, that's horrible. That's horrific.

You ought not to participate in that. Do you have anything that you'd like to conclude with, brother?

Yeah, I think just a couple of things. This isn't to say that everything, like you mentioned earlier, that you see in a

UFC fight night is good. There are things that we should, as Christians be against the objectification of ring girls.

A lot of the hype around it is silly. I don't like that UFC fights are only in casinos, kind of uniformly, which draws a certain kind of crowd.

And then CTE, that's the big question that I'm willing to amend my view on this.

If we found out in 10 years or next, tomorrow, that 100%, or just a strong percentage of guys are getting permanent brain damage or CTE because of fighting

MMA, I would say, okay, we need to adjust our safety protocols. And what would we need to do?

Would you explain to our viewers what CTE is? Okay, so I don't want to say it incorrectly.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, what you said. Okay, quick introduction to that.

You can watch the movie Concussion, Will Smith about, I forget, the African doctor, the mortician who first discovered this about what's happening with the brains being choked and these proteins are attacking the body and the brain.

I might be saying that 100 % incorrectly, but it's what was happening in the NFL. Guys with their entire disposition was being changed.

People that are taking their own life and suicidal, their affect, everything, bipolar disorder, all these things were happening because of brain damage.

If that is happening at MMA, we shouldn't have pause. And we just need to put a pin in that and flag that.

Let's keep our eye on that. So far, that hasn't happened. And one of the reasons it hasn't happened in MMA, like you've seen in boxing, is because in MMA, the stoppages are so quick.

In boxing, you can get back up, you get a five count or eight count, five count. I'm spacing right now.

There's so many times that you can get back up. And also in boxing, you're going to take more hits over time.

And deceptively, because of, I forget who did the study for this, because the boxing gloves, 16 ounce gloves are larger and they're spreading the damage over a larger surface area.

You're actually, it's actually worse for you to get hit many times at a lower intensity than a few times and have a quick stoppage.

It's worse for your brain. It's worse for your body. And that's why you've heard of the term, a boxer who's punchy, he's slow.

And Muhammad Ali displayed these, he just saw that he just wasn't there later in life.

You're not getting that with MMA fighters like you are with boxers. But flag that, let's keep our eye on that.

If that's something that increases, which it could, that's cause for concern.

And we should, as Christians, we should be concerned about the rotten things in the culture around MMA that aren't good, like the drinking, like the ring girls, so forth.

So. Amen. Well, I hope that this conversation has been helpful to you, the viewer.

Special thanks to Pastor Josh Holler for visiting with me today and discussing this important topic.

And we will see you next time on the Holy Note podcast. Lord bless you, Josh. Thank you for joining me.