Aaron Rodgers, RFK Jr., and Ayahuasca: On the “Enigma” Docuseries and Man’s Search for “Church”
by Ted Kluck
Netflix recently dropped its three-episode “Enigma” docuseries on Aaron Rodgers, and for the first time in a few years, I wanted to ghostrwrite a book again (with him).
As has been fairly well-documented by Mina Kimes and others, Rodgers grew up evangelical and then was partially (or fully?) deconstructed by Rob Bell (or, perhaps it’s safer to say, was never “constructed” at all), and has now embarked on a life that includes reflecting on his many football successes while at the same time searching for significance and “community” through getting high with other rich white people on the Ayahuasca retreats he helped mainstream by talking about them all the time.
A sentence or two on Ayahuasca (because I had to look, because despite watching the docuseries I really didn’t know): ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic drink that is made from a decoction of plants, including the Banisteriopsis caapi vine and the Psychotria viridis shrub. It is also known as hoasca, daime, iagê, santo-daime, and vegetal.
So per the documentaries, people with means gather someplace exotic to drink the concoction, then puke it up, and then Have Realizations about the meaning of life and stuff while playing acoustic guitars, making it not all that dissimilar from college sophomores who do the same things on a much smaller economic scale with Coors Light and/or weed. In the college scenario it happens in dorm rooms and not expensive little huts in Honduras (or wherever).
A sentence or two on Rodgers, in case you don’t watch football: He’s a 41-year-old quarterback, who has never married, who has also won a Super Bowl and been named the NFL’s Most Valuable Player four times. He’s interesting because he goes on The Pat McAfee Show often and says non-scripted, non-party-line things about issues like Covid, which is probably the reason that you either love Rodgers or hate him. In short, he enraged the Left by not taking the vaccine, but Evangelicals can’t fully embrace him because of the heretical, hippy-dippy things he now seems to be saying about the church and the world.
One response to the “Enigma” docs is to feel sad for Rodgers, who is (per the doctrine of the RIP Emergent Church™ ) always searching and never finding. This would be a completely normal response. Another response would be that he seems to embody many of the sensibilities of Podcast Bro Conservatism, and like him for it. The films devote an odd 12 minutes or so to Rodgers’ burgeoning friendship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who made a run at Rodgers as his Vice-Presidential running mate in the run-up to the election cycle. It was unclear how Rodgers ultimately responded to the invitation, other than the film showing the two men taking a hike up a mountain and saying some semi-deep things to one another.
But I think the most interesting response is to consider Rodgers in light of the book of Ecclesiastes, in that like the author, Rodgers has tasted and seen most of what the world has to offer vis-à-vis money and sex and fame and achievement, and found them to be basically meaningless.
On one hand, most of us would say we would want Rodgers’ life in terms of achievements. He was the biggest deal in the biggest city in the world for about a week, when he signed with the Jets. On another hand, Rodgers is just another guy who had a bad year at work and is afraid of losing his job and having to start over in middle age. In this, he is not unlike most of us most of the time.
There was a time in my career when I would have made easy, low-hanging jokes about the Ayahuasca retreats and left it at that. Though it was clear through the docs that this is Rodgers’ functional “church.” They are gatherings that promise insight, where “study” (of a kind) occurs, where bad music occurs, and that promise a kind of personal transformation not brought about by the God of the universe, but rather by public vomiting and hallucinating. It is a “religion” that requires nothing of a person except the budget to take the trips and a willingness to be faux deep in front of a bunch of other people who will get on planes and go back to their lives.
Like almost all secular narratives, the “Enigma” series ended up presenting a certain secular “theology” of a good life.
But, like Rodgers, I am a sinner in lots of specific ways. I’ve sought fulfillment in the unfulfilling, and I’ve worshipped creation, rather than the Creator. So I need more than hallucinogenic escape. I need a redeemer. Give me the church, in all its uncoolness. Give me long sermons and conviction of sin and the hope of the Cross of Christ. Give me a God who loves, and a God who judges sin. Give me a God who is sovereign and good and working for my good, and for His glory. Give me a life of service to this church, where fulfillment isn’t housed in winning or achievement or political alliances, but where my gifts can be utilized by God, for His glory.
I wish Aaron Rodgers loved the church, and I would love to invite him back. Or at least to have a conversation.