Macho Ministry Tries to Prove Jesus Was a Cage Fighter

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The problem comes when that message is adhered to so strongly that it verges on self-satire. For example, the front page of the Jesus Didn’t Tap Web site features the following from  Anointed Fighter’s Danny L. White: 

When Jesus stepped inside the cage of life to take on the cross, human legs did not kicked [sic] his out from under him. It was not human hands that broke his arm during the  arm bar of adversity. It was not a human fist that knocked him to the mat for our sins. It was not a human that kept him inside the  triangle choke of suffering. It was not the  fighter’s [sic] sent by Satan to  tap him out that beat him.

God gave him strength while on his back being pounded in the face by the  elbows of sin…

[italics mine]

It is hard to imagine a potential convert needing a metaphor to be laid on this thick. That’s not to say that everything Jesus Didn’t Tap makes is as over-the-top. One of the more moving images can be seen on its  How Do You Train? T-shirt. The rhetorical question is accompanied by the image of Jesus carrying the cross—on his way to Golgotha, no doubt.

Frank tells me a joke he hears often: “Jesus didn’t tap… because he couldn’t.”

I get it. Jesus’s arms and legs were tied (and/or nailed) to the cross, so he couldn’t have tapped.

“Ha-ha,” Frank says, about to deliver a rhetorical punch. “Well, he could have  verbally tapped.”

Frank notes that in the cage one can verbally tap or give up. As an example, he mentions a UFC fight between Matt Hughes and Georges St. Pierre. At one point in the fight St. Pierre had Hughes’ limbs incapacitated, so Hughes was forced to verbally tap, which brought an end to the fight.

For a second I wonder whether the Jesus/MMA metaphor has become literal for the former Green Mighty Morphin’ Power Ranger. Does Frank actually think the same rules applied to First Century A.D. Roman crucifixion as to a sport currently sanctioned in most of the 50 states?

But then I close my eyes and think of Jesus on the cross, and I can’t help wondering what would Jesus wear? The  Warriors of God crewneck? Or the  Jesus Didn’t Tap, Neither Did Our Troops crewneck?