This past Saturday (4/7/07) I had some friends over to watch UFC 69: Shootout where Georges St. Pierre was defending his welterweight title for the first time. St. Pierre won the belt back in Novemnber of 2006 in dominant performance against Matt Hughes (my personal favorite welterweight) where he knocked him out early in the second round.
Now I'm a big St. Pierre fan as well, as I respect the sheer talent that this man possesses. He completely dismantled Frank Trigg by conducting a mixed martial arts clinic against his obviously undermatched opponent (Aug. 2005) and who can forget his fight with the legendary B.J. Penn where he won a decision having fought almost the entire fight with a severely bloodied nose (Mar. 2006). My first encounter with St. Pierre however was in a fight against Jay Hieron (Jun. 2004) who was known for his stand up skills and knock out power, but St. Pierre knocked him out quickly. I was immediately impressed. In his first fight against Matt Hughes (Oct. 2004) he was fairing quite well, and in my opinion was winning the round until he slipped up and allowed Hughes to catch him in an arm bar at the end of the round.
So having observed all of these priors showings, there was little to no doubt in my mind that St. Pierre would completely destroy The Ultimate Fighter reality show winner Matt Serra. Before commenting on Serra allow me to digress for a moment and speak about how my placing faith in St. Pierre based on past events agrees with the Christian presentation of faith in the New Testament.
So often Christians are represented as believing in Jesus (or more broadly God) blindly and without evidence, and for some this is true. This is known as fideism, but this is not the Biblical presentation of faith. Without writing a detailed treatise on the subject allow me to just point to two passages from the book of Acts.Peter in his Pentecost sermon in Acts 2:22-36 makes many appeals to his Jewish audience in order to compell them to place their faith in Jesus as the Messiah of Israel and Savior of the world. Rather than post the passage in whole I will simply present the highlights. In vs. 22 Peter speaks of Jesus as a man attested by God through miracles, wonders, and signs. In vs. 23-24 the crucifixion and resurrection are mentioned. In vs. 25-35 Peter recounts and interprets a prophecy of David's from the psalms as being fulfilled in Jesus, highlighting in vs. 32 that they were all witnesses of the resurrection! The conclusion in vs. 36 is that God has vindicated the Lord whom they crucified by making him both Lord and Christ.The next passage I wish to mention is Acts 17:30-31 where Paul states that God has commanded all men everywhere to repent and that he has appointed a day where he will judge the world in righteousness by the man (Jesus) whom he has ordained. But notice what follows... Paul says that God has given 'assurance' (Gk: pistin, i.e. faith) of this to all by raising Jesus from the dead!So what's my point? My point is that 'faith' in the Biblical context is never to be some great leap whereby one must abandon logic and reason. Faith is not the cliche 'believing without seeing' that we hear so much about. No, rather faith is trusting something based on the evidence of past events. Read the narratives in the gospels in which Jesus healed and delivered the sick and demon possessed. They were delivered because they trusted that Jesus would do for them what he had done for others before them. The woman with the issue of blood is a prime example. In Mark 5 we see this women being healed by touching the hem of his garment and then a chapter later we see many being healed the same way!
Now back to the fight... Serra is a stocky 5'7" Italian guy from Long Island, NY who is known for his superior ground skills. The thought was that for Serra to even have a chance at winning he'd have to take St. Pierre down and catch him in a submission but this isn't what happened.
Serra stood up and actually boxed with the man and contrary to all past performances, St. Pierre got beat up. It was an upset to say the least. So how can this relate to the abovementioned comments on faith? Well, in my mind I see this as one of those occasions when a person believes God for something that they need (or even want) and sees no fulfillment. We don't know why exactly this happens although James 4 gives us some insight into the issue (cf. Jam. 1:6-8), but when it does happen it is a great upset of faith.
But we need to take a page out of the book of those UFC fighters who continue on in their sport and fight again with every intention to win back their titles (or even to win a title for the first time). Rather than giving up on God because we didn't get what we asked for, we need to forget what lies behind and strain forward to what lies ahead, pressing on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:13-14).
::WARNING::
The music in the background of this video contains profanity -- I recommend turning the volume down
