This Is So Unreal.

Growing up as a kid, I watched professional wrestling. My favorite growing up was Sting with his blond hair and face paint that transformed into the Crow image from the movies. He was so fun to watch. After my sophomore year of high school, I kind of stopped watching the show. The story lines just weren’t entertaining any more, if I did watch it was to see if the Rock would say something funny. Then I picked up wrestling again during my tenure at SBU when most of my friends in the dorm watched the show. It was a male-bonding experience like no other. To this day, my wrestling buddies are the ones I speak with most.

One of the guys I enjoyed watching in my younger days was Christ Benoit. He was a Canadian from Montreal who was an amazing fan favorite (or a face in the biz). He in-ring abilities were very impressive. His triple-German suplex and diving head butt of the top rope was cool. His signature finisher, the Crippler Cross-face, is very painful to watch. His ability to play the underdog was just awesome. He would be put into incredible circumstances and overcome them with tenacity. He was known as “The Rabid Wolverine” for a reason. He loved the sport and the fans very deeply. He lived for wrestling, as anyone would tell you. I remember his feud in WCW with a wrestler known as Raven. I loved it. I just wanted Beniot to get his hands on the guy. I remember watching Benoit in a cage match and pulled off his diving head butt from the top of the cage, incredible.

I was very shocked to see one the WWE website that he and his wife and seven-year-old son were all three found dead in their home in Georgia. I hadn’t liked his character over the last year or two, but I still respected the guy for his hard work. Today, WWE.com and Foxnews.com have reported that the investigation into the Benoit family death is a double-murder-suicide. Authorities believe that Benoit–on account of some very suspicious text messages he sent to friends on Sunday–killed his wife and son on Sunday, not showing up for the pay-per-view that night, and then killed himself yesterday.

If the investigation proves true that Benoit did murder his family and then take his own life, this serves as an extremely painful reminder of sin. We are all depraved sinners who hate the most beautiful and glorious treasure in all of the known universe: God. In our hatred, we scoff at God and belittle his beauty and glory. We reject his lordship and create our own little gods to worship instead. In doing so, we become liars, haters of our brothers, adulterers, murders, drunkards, idolaters. We have transgressed an infinite God and thus deserving an infinite punishment: eternity in hell. But it is too easy to forget that even the “best” people by our standards are still as depraved as Hitler. We forget that we are all evil people.

I will be honest, I never thought in a million years that Christ Benoit would be guilty of anything like this. Speeding, maybe. Using performance enhancers, oh I wouldn’t be surprised if every wrestler used them…I just wouldn’t be shocked. But anything close to hurting someone outside of the wrestling ring is just crazy. But the fact of the matter is, if the investigation proves this, he did it. He killed his wife, son, and then took his own life.

When I reflect upon this I see two things. First, how hideous and ugly sin is. Sin drives you to kill your wife and son. Sin drives you to think there is no hope and take your own life. Sin hurts people. Sin hurts yourself. But most of all, sin defames and blasphemes God. It spits upon the greatest treasure in the universe. Sin is ugly and horrible and wretched. And what makes it so bad is that it has totally corrupted all of humanity. From a “good” person like Benoit to a despot like Hitler or Pol Pot or Saddam Hussein. Sin is ugly because of what it is and how badly we are infected by it.

Second, I am reminded of how much I need King Jesus to rescue me from my sin. I don’t know what happened with Benoit to, if true, do this so I will not speculate any farther than it was sin. But for myself, I know that I need Jesus to atone, forgive and defeat my sin. Without his atonement and righteousness I am doomed to suffer eternity in hell. Without his Holy Spirit, I have no hope of defeating sin in my life. Without my sovereign King, I am nothing.

I offer my prayers to the family of Benoit. I pray that King Jesus will comfort them through this tremendous time of loss. I will pray that he will make himself so real to you that he will draw your aching hearts to him for comfort in this time of tragedy that I hope I will never have to know in my life. I will pray that he will strengthen you to deal with what lie ahead for you, whatever that might be. As the apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 3:14-19,

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

A wrestling fan,
Rev. Henry Thomas Imler