Chick-Fil-A and John Cena, Professional Wrestler

I’ve been ignor­ing this whole Chick-​Fil-​A thing online. The founder of the insti­tu­tion was inter­viewed and said he opposed mar­riage between same sex peo­ple. That was his opin­ion. Those who dis­agreed jumped on him and decided to boy­cott. The Chris­tians decided to make ⁸⁄₁ a day to sup­port his business.

You can read the story any­where. Seri­ously. Any­where. Online. Unless you’ve been asleep. It’s out there.

I kinda felt like this: “Good for you. You have the right to make a free­dom of speech state­ment. But you also have to carry the con­se­quences of it.” All of us do. When we speak our feel­ings and thoughts, they carry weight.

Then I saw this posted online while every­one was ral­ly­ing around Chick-​fil-​A.

It kinda made me think. Even a day after the Chris­t­ian sup­port of Chick-​fil-​A, there were a lot of peo­ple lined up at the restaurants.

My daugh­ter asked me what it was all about. I told her, “The founder of Chick-​fil-​A, who makes the most tasti­est chicken sand­wiches (yum!), made a remark that he didn’t sup­port gay mar­riage. And that’s his opin­ion. Some peo­ple decided they wouldn’t eat there any­more because of his opin­ion. And that’s their right.”

She said, “Okay, so what does that mean?”

I said, “Think about your favorite restau­rant, Señor Lopez. What if the owner said, I’m in favor of gay mar­riage. Would that mean we wouldn’t go eat there?”

She was think­ing really hard. They have really good cheese dip.

I said, “No, I don’t think it would. We don’t go to restau­rants because of the owner’s polit­i­cal views. We go there because they have fan­tas­tic food. Unfor­tu­nately, there are peo­ple who want to boy­cott some places because of their views.”

I chal­lenged her again. I said, “What if the own­ers of Señor Lopez said, ‘We’re going to donate six mil­lion dol­lars to sup­port gay mar­riage. Would that change your view?”

Good ques­tion.

Now to another. I used to watch pro­fes­sional wrestling when I was grow­ing up. My favorite wrestler was Bru­tus the Bar­ber Beef­cake. He’d wres­tle, then put his oppo­nent in a sleeper hold and cut his hair. AWESOME.

Lately, my doc­tor put me on a ter­ri­ble anti-​depressant that didn’t allow me to sleep. I’m off it now. But on those sleep­less nights, I started watch­ing old school wrestling. And I started watch­ing new wrestling.

Please don’t email me and tell me wrestling is fake. Those guys go out there and put their bod­ies on the line and through hor­ri­ble pain. It’s enter­tain­ment. I know that. The win­ner is deter­mined before­hand. While I was watch­ing, I was intro­duced to a new wrestler who has been around in the mod­ern era — John Cena.

Nice guy, great build, a man of the peo­ple. He fights hard and hardly says a bad word about his competition.

Now, back to the pic­ture I posted ear­lier of the Chris­tians who were sur­round­ing the Chick-fil-A’s. They will stand in line to do a good deed for a few days.

John Cena, who does not brag about his off the mat per­for­mances and is a long time giver to the Make-​A-​Wish Foun­da­tion. You know, the Make-​A-​Wish Foun­da­tion that accord­ing to Wikipedia, that grants wishes to chil­dren with life-​threatening med­ical con­di­tions to enrich the human expe­ri­ence with hope, strength, and joy.

Do you know what ath­lete, per­son, super­star tops the list for kids wishes? Not Tiger Woods, not Michael Jor­dan, not LeBron James. It’s a man who takes time out of his extremely busy sched­ule and actu­ally goes to see these kids in the hos­pi­tal. It’s John Cena. He recently made his record break­ing 300^th visit.

Why? For noto­ri­ety? I bet a lot of you haven’t even heard of him. No, because he cares.

I hon­estly Googled to find out whether he’s a Chris­t­ian. The evi­dence is scant. It seems like he prob­a­bly is. Whether he is or not, he cares about kids. He’s not stand­ing out in front of a Chick-​Fil-​A, he’s in the hos­pi­tals across Amer­ica mak­ing sick kid’s dreams come true.

http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​G​b​O​X​E​C​LgnIo

Good for Chick-​Fil-​A for mak­ing a stand. But bet­ter for men like John Cena to go to hos­pi­tals and touch the lives of chil­dren. I’ve heard that the Make-​A-​Wish Foun­da­tion even has a spe­cial “John Cena” room for the man.

John Cena is one of my new heroes, just for that fact. He cares enough to stand by sick kids on his days off when he could be see­ing his fam­ily. Instead? He’s vis­it­ing kids who want to see him and feel hope.

Want inspi­ra­tion? Go touch a life. Skip the restau­rant. Donate clothes. Work in a Sal­va­tion Army refuge. Find out what your neigh­bor needs who is strug­gling. Look to your church mem­ber who is hurt­ing. Find some­one you know who needs help. Skip your chicken sand­wich and make a dif­fer­ence in the world.

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Ray Car­roll is author of “Fallen Pas­tor: Find­ing Restora­tion in a Bro­ken World,” and is a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to Pro­voke­tive Mag­a­zine.