“What is beautiful is not always functional…” – Patrick Mahomes and the secrets of the Dad Bod

The Chiefs are on the verge of a three-peat. Now the villains. Which is strange, my life in KC has normally had a “lovable loser” vibe. But winning means a lot of wonderful national articles about our team. Including the quote above from The Athletic on Patrick Mahomes’s dad bod. “You would think he was a soccer dad,” quips Tyreek Hill. A step down from the infamous soccer mom. Yet Mahomes is one of the greatest athletes on the planet. Throwing, dodging, running, even bulling over… Mahomes makes the ripped look ridiculous.

“What we do in sport is that we over rely on our eyes for those answers.”

Yet, it is not just beautiful athletes. In nearly every facet of life we think beautiful means better. “The good-looking are also presumed to be smarter, saner, more sociable, and generally higher functioning” (Think Big), We even consider “pretty people to be morally superior”… morally superior? take that line in. Does no one remember high school?!

Comedian Dustin Nickerson takes on this topic. For him, dad bods equal good dads. “It is a time management thing. Dads don’t have time to be ripped. Anytime I see a dad with muscles, those are just arms not hugging their kids.”

And there is a lot of truth in this laughter. If our core concern is our looks, what about our task? But if performance is central, when physical appearance doesn’t matter, it’s then that we find real beauty. Mahomes, after struggling to pull a snug Chiefs jersey over his regular clothes, shrugs, “Dad Bod!” His body may not be beautiful, but watch him play… with passes, reads, jukes, runs, touchdowns… it is beautiful! (Even if his spikes are not 😉 )

This is especially true in the church. As Jesus comments to the Pharisees. You are concerned with the outside of the cup. It shines with perfection. But the inside of the cup is all grime and mold. Your drink is undrinkable.

When we try to look good in the world’s eyes… whether it with snazzier clothes or super moralism or more powerful positions… we appear beautifully religious, but we do not know how to offer a helping hand (think the priest in the Good Samaritan).

But if the church is concerned with our task: loving our neighbor as Jesus loves us… Our beauty will be encased in dad bods, bodies that look like Jesus, with our hands offering all a cup of living water.

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“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him… Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering.” — Isaiah 53:2,4