NYT: "Bad Boys" Who Are Good

Normally, you do not see the words “Christian” and “bad boy” in the same sentence, but the The New York Times did just that when the newspaper wrote an article about Brian Deegan.  Deegan is a freestyle motocross rider, and he and his friends were involved in a group called the Metal Mulisha.  Deegan and his crew covered themselves in tattoos and their lifestyle labeled them as trouble makers and bad boys.  After years of drugs and destructive lifestyle choices, Deegan had a conversion:

After a near-fatal crash in 2005 while attempting a back flip during filming for a television show, he lost a kidney and four pints of blood, and found religion. When a surgeon told him he might not survive, Deegan, 34, who has won more freestyle motocross medals at the X Games than any other rider, made a pact with God. If he lived, he would mend his ways. When he finally pulled through, he sought a pastor, began reading the Bible and “gave his life to Christ,” he said.

This article underlines an on going misconception about Christianity, which is that you cannot do anything cool, rebellious, or extreme when you become a Christian.  By rebellious I mean anything that breaks the stereotype and not anything illegal.  Christianity is often branded by television and movies as being out of touch or old fashioned.

The  NYT article goes on to list other Christian extreme sports athletes:

Nyjah Huston, 14, of Huntington Beach, Calif., won silver and Adam Dyet of Salt Lake City, earned bronze, the first X Games medal for either skater.

Paul Rodriguez, who won his third gold medal in skateboard street Saturday at the X Games, considers himself a nondenominational Christian. With a tattoo of Jesus on a forearm and a Day of the Dead graphic on his board, Rodriguez, 24, won the event with a series of tricks down a dozen stairs.

When I was in college, I discovered a “hard core” movement of Christian young people.  These hard core Christians would go to clubs, bars, concerts, and other popular places and would enjoy the nightlife without drugs, sex, or alcohol.  Many of these hardcore Christians would be called double “x-ers” because they would draw X’s on their hands to indicate their straight edge lifestyle.  This is a similar branding that under agers  receive at clubs and concert venues to mark them as unable to buy alcohol.   This symbol also became a trademark for straight edge people, even those over 21, as a symbol of their way of life.

For all of the times I am critical of the media, there are little pockets of news stories like this NYT article that break the Christians stereotype.  The Christian image that has become the accepted stereotype is the conforming, ultra conservative, use-the-right-Christian-words, Bible carrying, and general religious freak.  As we can see from this article, people are starting to take notice of the 180 that is occurring within Christianity.  What has lend to this shift?

Christianity is not changing, but I think people, Christians, are redefining what it means to believe in Christ in a post-modern world.   These bad boy Christians are proving that Christians are finding out that we must embrace what Richard Niebuhr instructed us to do in his famous book Christ in Culture, which is be Christ of culture, be Christ against culture, be Christ above culture, and be Christ transforming culture.  In other words, be in the world and not of the world.  This thinking has been slow to enter the Christianity intellect.  These “Christian Bad Boys” are guys who have been converted, but have kept their extreme sports interest without compromising their values.

I used quotations in the title of this blog because the bad boys listed above are not really Christian bad boys, but are Christians who left the bad boy lifestyle for Christ.  They may have changed their habits, but they did not change what they love to do, which is extreme sports.  These extreme sport Christians show non-Christians that you can believe in Christ and not abandon your passion, as long as it is not self-destructive.