Joe Rogan is a popular podcaster and announcer for the mixed martial arts organisation Ultimate Fighting Championship. Joe spent his early childhood in Newark, New Jersey, and had a difficult upbringing under his father, whom he described as extremely aggressive and physically abusive. Joe’s interactions with his father were traumatic for him. His parents divorced when Joe was five years old and when he was seven, he and his mother moved to San Francisco. During his teens Joe studied Taekwondo and won the Massachusetts full contact Taekwondo championship 4 years running. When he was 19, Joe won the U.S. Open Taekwondo Championship’s lightweight title and then its Grand Championship.
In a recent interview with professed agnostic Konstantin Kisin, Konstantin said, “I’ve started going to church every now and again.” Joe asked him, “Do you enjoy it?” Konstantin replied, “I love it, I do.” Joe said he had begun regularly attending a Christian church and enjoyed it. He loves being around Christians who want to study and understand the Bible together. He said, “It’s a bunch of people who are going to make their lives better. They’re trying to be a better person. It’s a good vibe. The place I go to, they read and analyse passages in the Bible. I’m really interested in what these people are trying to say.”
Joe went on to question the reasoning of self-professed intellectuals who scoff at the Christian faith and dismiss it as a ‘fairy tale.’ He said, “There’s a lot of, like, atheists and secular people that just like to dismiss Christianity as being foolish. You know, ‘It’s just fairy tales.’ I hear that amongst, you know, self-professed intelligent people, like, ‘It’s a fairy tale.’” Joe says the Resurrection makes more sense to him than the Big Bang, saying: “I’m sticking with Jesus on that one.”
Joe admires Jesus and appreciates the benefits of faith. He speaks about the evidence for the historicity of Jesus Christ’s life, death and resurrection: “Christianity in particular is the most fascinating to me because there’s this one person that everybody agrees existed, that somehow or other had the best plan for how human beings should interact with each other and behave and was the best example of it and even died in a nonviolent way, like didn’t even protest, died on the cross supposedly for our sins. It’s a fascinating story.”
Joe Rogan’s experience is an encouragement to us all to read the Bible and to meet with others to seek help in understanding it. When we come face to face with Jesus, listen to what he said and understand what he did by his death and resurrection, like Joe, our lives begin to make sense.