Church, Millennials, and Nacho Libre...

If you follow me on Instagram, you may be aware that I recently decided to share something very special with my 3-year-old. I'm referring, of course, to watching an amazing movie with him called "Nacho Libre."

For anyone who is unfamiliar with the film, it is set at a Mexican monastery where Jack Black plays a friar who is prone to frustration due to a lack of fresh ingredients and nutrients to help him prepare food for the children who live in the orphanage. In order to secure funds to buy these things for his work he begins moonlighting as a luchador in the nearby town.  He has to do this covertly because the teaching at the monastery is that la lucha libre is sinful and, thereby, forbidden for anyone trying to follow God because they only fight each other to make false idols of themselves and to bring themselves glory and pride.

Some two-thirds into the movie, my little boy ditched the notion of sitting with dad to watch and had gathered a superman cape from his room so that he could terminate a large teddy bear with extreme prejudice in the floor of the living room as we watched
the remainder of the movie. This was really not that big of a surprise to me, but around the same time I had a realization that Nacho is really onto something.

You can walk into any church building in America and find a group of people who have a set of expectations. Each set will be different, but any church has its ideas about how things are done or not done and those ideas are based on past experiences. That's natural and fine, the trouble is that sometimes we get blinded by those past experiences and we cannot move forward because we don't see the opportunities in front of us.

In the movie, Nacho (Black) is eventually outed for his streng verboten wrestling career after his robe catches on fire during a prayer vigil, revealing his stretchy pants underneath. He quickly finds his room emptied and he is expelled from the fellowship after it is declared that "he is not a man of God."

SPOILER ALERT

By the end, Nacho has taken strength from the encouragement he receives from the children and beaten the greatest wrestler in town, which brings in enough money to supply good food for a very long time and a bus "to take the orphans on field trips to parks and places like that."

All in all, our hero had the bravery to struggle through the rejection and do what it took to bring good into the lives of other people, even though it was entirely unconventional and he risked his entire reputation and livelihood in order to do so.

Whether I want my boys to grow up to be wrestlers is still up for debate,... I dunno, those masks are pretty cool,... but I do know one thing for sure. I do want them to grow up casting their own image, acceptance, and popularity aside for the good of others, even if it means having the church people talk about them.

Our youngest adults really aren't interested in traditions and current cultural norms if they stand in the way of getting good things done. Best I can tell, Jesus seems to be similarly unconcerned about societal rules that keep redemption at bay in the name of "the way things work." In 10 years or so, my boys are going to be coming on the scene full force. My prayer is that they will be full of ideas and that they will be in the midst of a church that recognizes failing as a sign of chasing after God with everything you have.