The Certainty of Things Not Seen: Powerlifting and Christianity
As a Catholic revert and devout powerlifter, I’ve found somewhat beguiling the relationship between being a practicing Catholic and an overly-focused meathead. For many Christians, faith and lifting go hand-in-glove. In particular, Protestants have made impressive strides in articulating a strong connection between spiritual practices and those of the weight room. One needs to look no further than Victorian England’s Muscular Christianity movement and its impact today. Spearheaded by Anglican writers Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes, “Muscular Christians” (not a self-applied term) were to stand athwart the flabby excesses of theological debates raging at Oxford University in the mid-nineteenth century. Kingsley and Hughes exhorted young English Protestant men to develop their bodies as part of their spiritual formation. A surviving vestige today is the Young Men’s Christian Association.
Charles Kingsley - you can’t tell, but he’s super strong
My own return to the Church after several years of serious training compelled me to look into Catholic interpretations of what Kingsley and Hughes supported. Much to my chagrin, there were fewer than what my separated brothers and sisters have produced. Protestantism writ large has seemingly made more robust efforts historically to synthesize spirituality and the barbell. Yet even today, these organizations and known doctrines appear to reside only in the shadows of the more culture-defining dogmas coming from the larger secular world of fitness. And that is where others and I have arrived, armed with perhaps more questions than answers.
For those of us who train in a strength sport like powerlifting, which revolves around successfully executing three compound movements, the squat, bench press, and deadlift, it can often by a isolating and lonely experience. Motivation to strain under progressively heavier weight was accompanied by esophagus-scorching heavy metal as I prepare myself mentally for a lift. And in those moments where I felt exhausted and thoroughly unmotivated, I could gain psychological respite by reading a quote or two by Stoic-like philosophy. Simple, yet ennobling phrases which hang in many a garage gym such as “Suffer now to achieve glory tomorrow” or “Today I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can’t” are centering. Whether it’s an excerpt from Marcus Aurelius or Arnold Schwarzenegger, these mentally unencumbering messages allow the lifter to focus solely on his or her individual efforts, and to not waste energy thinking of much else.
Training in today’s culture, in which everything is on demand and doing what makes you happy is considering sacrosanct, allows the lifter to reorganize all facets of his or her life precisely against this ethos, if it can be called that. Powerlifters as well as bodybuilders, often think of themselves as living a life akin to monk. Their diets are often plain and self-cooked, meticulously-measured by the gram or ounce. A good night’s sleep is imperative. And socialization is often limited, often due to the fact that it might disruptive a training schedule or the other two variables mentioned. It was not until Instagram and social media began to surface in the world of fitness when much of those walls of self-imposed isolation began to crumble in the wake of a newfound digital fellowship.
Serious lifters were always leaving supportive messages or responses to a video or picture I would post to document my lifts. And although the lifting scene always has its fair share of skeptics and the occasional mean-spirited commenter, much of their attitude conveys a saccharine-like kindness that can be disarming. This overwhelming sense of encouragement stems from the fact that everyone starts out alone, more or less trains alone, and knows the quiet, daily frustrations. At meets, regardless of who is at the platform, every lifter receives genuine applause for their effort.
Powerlifting and sports akin to it constitute a holistic way of living, so much so that it often competes with other areas of my life.
Yet the growing imperative to have my life be guided by God’s will, invariably begged the question: how do I come to terms with my ritualized life of torturing my body for the sake of strength, while at the same time allowing God to draw me closer to Him? More pointedly, I wondered: where in the Bible and in the tradition of the Church can I find encouragement for leading a life of physical strength and training?
Journalist and Olympic weightlifter Daniel Kunitz writes in his book Lift about how the leadership in the early Church actively dissuaded their newly-converted followers of Greek origin away from physical exercise and sports, due to its association with pagan forms of worship. And indeed, the ancient Greeks did more than just play sports. They wrote poems of famous sprinters, throwers, and wrestlers. They sacrificed to the Olympian gods so as to endow them the strength needed to win in both competition and at war. Followers of Plato saw physical training innately bound up in the idea of living a philosophically-rich life. According to Kunitz, the Church had to invariably grapple with these beliefs and practices, ultimately deeming these activities as un-Christian.
While many of the early Church Fathers were also actively battling against such heresies like Gnosticism, which viewed the flesh as inherently evil, none to my knowledge ever saw the body as anything more than how the Bible describes it in Corinthians 6:19-20, a “temple of the Holy Spirit within you”. Sure, there was Sampson, but no holy exhortation to train like Sampson. How then could I reconcile this life of dedication when Christianity demands the whole of you?
In an effort to answer these questions, I felt that one needed to tap into the creativity of Christian culture itself. Over the past year, I spoke with two Protestant lifters, both of whom had different angles as to how they saw their lifting as an expression of their faith.
The first conversation was with Reverend Matthew Holbert, an ordained Lutheran pastor in West Virginia, who is a coach as well as judge in several powerlifting federations. Reverend Holbert understands strength training and faith as “pretty much two sides of the same coin.” For him, “Faith is really strength training of the spirit and the mind. The assurance of things hoped for—the certainty of things not seen. And that’s definitely what strength training is as well, it’s plotting a trajectory either a slow, steady climb to a distant horizon or an eight-week peak [program] where you’re trying to get to something that you haven’t ever [lifted] before, but you know it’s there if you just stay the path. And then also, a little deeper, challenging the weaknesses, figuring out what you stink at and doing that—that’s growth and faith. Trying the things that we’re weak at spiritually and when we pay more attention to them, we become closer to our relationship with the divine.”
Contrary to the very secular, modern solution of compartmentalizing our lives into discrete experiences, Reverend Holbert was able to synthesize what I could not. For him, theology and powerlifting was a seamlessly complementary encounter with the divine. When I asked what if any, Biblical justification or impetus there might be for training the body, he simply said “the body.” That is, “[the] resurrection of the body to life everlasting. It’s just not just as spiritual thing, it’s not, you know, ‘touched by an angel’ we resurrect the body, physically. If we’re going to have it, we might as well have something that will last.”
Months after my conversation with Reverend Holbert, I spoke with another Swede Burns. Burns is an elite powerlifter and popular coach, and certainly looks the part—muscular, tattooed, and heavily bearded. He’s also a poet, and so we spoke of our mutual appreciation of literature and its importance in the world of strength.
Towards the end of the interview, Burns told me that he purchased a former Baptist Church and converted it into a home and gym. When I asked whether he was a Christian, he said yes. We decided to schedule another conversation in the near future, and he had asked if we could focus on his faith. Over the course of two conversations, Burns talked about his lifelong struggle and belief as a Baptist, then nondenominational Christian. I told him that one of aspects of Protestant worship I admire is the palpable sense of joy the people have during worship. Preachers like Billy Graham, for example, certainly keep things both interesting and engaging. This brought into sharp relief my pre-Catholic days in graduate school, where a certain mood of irony and melancholy permeated the classroom.
Burns could relate in his own way. Having moved years ago to a small, blue-collared town on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, he spent years keeping to himself while attending a Baptist church. “I live in the middle of nowhere, I have no family here. It’s just me and my dog.” He admits that his “natural personality” was always on the quieter side. Writing in cafes ringing the city, Burns tells me of the “hello/goodbye” quality of his interactions with people. Eventually, he came to realize that he needed people and that God fills the existential void from which he suffered. This ultimately led him to embrace a local and energetic nondenominational church.
One question which still hung on my conscience: to what extent does my belief as a Catholic become momentarily suspended as I volunteering suffer under weights, which as Burns states, can kill you? Dave Tate, a renowned powerlifter and owner of EliteFTS, a gym equipment company, speaks of “the void”. According to Tate, the void is that moment in which operating under a heavy load, all thought is seemingly suspended. The mind and body appear to be in perfect pitch harmony, united in the effort to press, squat, or lift a previously unknown weight. Getting to the void requires preparation and the obvious resort for many a powerlifter is to crank up the aggressive music and get angry. For me, the issue was in the moments of preparation for a heavy where the boundary between having dark thoughts to motivate myself would quickly collapse and bear into sinful ones. It did the trick, but after racking the weights, the dark thoughts would remain long after the lift finished.
Burns learned early on that this sort of emotional alchemy was not an option.
If I was to approach [the bar] in that manner where I had to draw from something dark, I felt as though it was performative, I felt as though as though I was manufacturing things to be upset about, to draw a certain response. And, it’s dishonest. It feels dishonest to me. [Now] as I prepare for a set, I typically pray. I just ask God to strengthen me, and He knows how to do that without me being angry. I look at myself as a useful tool that was perfectly formed for a task, and what I’m about to do is part of it. It might not be the central purpose of what I am, but it’s one—it’s part of the usefulness of it.
And to that I say, amen.