Religion and Wrestling

So - I had the pleasure of watching two very different yet both incredibly interesting films in their own right today: The Wrestler and Religulous.

The latter is Bill Maher's journey to end the superstitions that drive the major religions in the world, in order to stop people from being okay with the Rapture, and perhaps bringing it into existence by their narrowly conceived "blind-faiths." Which I can appreciate. But I can't help but think that his approach is still fundamentally wrong. Maybe its because its fine to say that and understand it, but telling 5 billion people they're dead wrong (*even if they are) and they need to abandon their religions, is probably not going to do much either. I guess it's part of a larger problem I've been thinking about for a while. And while organized religion has been highly politicized, and manipulated for centuries, I can't help but acknowledge the fundamental truths of those religions is the same, and not bad: 1) Know who you are 2) Respect others 3) Appreciate the fact that the world is a mystery 4) Love.

If we are ever going to solve our problems and get beyond our differences, we need to start not by denying people's belief systems, but by appealing to their better sides. The sides that are accepting of others, the sides that don't just tolerate difference, but celebrate it.

In the Wrestler, Mickey Rourke gives a tour de force of a show as a washed-up Wrestler who has to work the independent circuit with cheap steroids and in the shadow of his broken past. It was a wonderful film that expands upon his struggle to exist in a world that has gone beyond him. "Guns and roses were awesome, and then Cobain came along and ruined it." The 80's ruled. At one point he sits in his trailer park and invites one of the neighbor kids to play an old nintendo version of an 8-bit Wrestling game. The kid gets bored and elaborates on Call of Duty 4, showing how much the world has changed. Rourke is out of place. The film also has a series of shots that follow Rourke's back as he walks through his routine, whether he is walking through the locker-room towards the Ring, or through the packing room of the grocery store to the meat-kiosk. He can't deny, even after he quits wrestling from a heart-attack, that he is a wrestler, it's what he loves. It's who he is. Albeit, wrestling is a silly sport, it's all a show, and yet so many people love it, follow it, and live in that strange circle of Make-up and Spandex.

I guess that's my problem with Bill Maher. He is unwilling to accept that religion isn't just a dogmatic scheme for peons to be herded through existence. He can't seem to see that there is still good there. It may need to be saved from a collision course with an awful reality of Religious Wars, but the answer is within its own make-up. It's fabric holds the cure to this potentially terrible path it could continue to find itelf on.

Maybe Religion is like Wrestling. Sometime its okay to put on the costume and step into the hyper-real sensation of the arena. If it connects you to people, and it allows you to live a life you Love, and others love also, how can it be purely wrong?

Even if you don't like Wrestling. And I don't.

Go see the Wrestler. It's a great film. And even though Bill Maher get's annoying really quick, Religulous is still worth a watch. He brings up valid points, he just doesn't have a very good way to solve the problems he highlights. Empathy is what's missing from our lives. Maher could benefit from it. Rourke did, certainly in terms of his career, and definitely in the film as Randy the Ram.

It's the force that can truly solve problems, and allow us to be who we truly are.