About those Jesus-mocking Olympic opening ceremonies

What else is new?

I learned a long time ago to steer clear of the Olympics’ opening ceremonies. It’s always weird (and that’s a staggering understatement). Obviously there are some great, even iconic moments. I remember as a young guy watching the archer light the Olympic torch with a flaming arrow shot high into the Barcelona sky on a single shot. Mr. Bean playing Chariots of Fire was hilarious. The parade of nations is always pretty cool to see. But the so-called “pageantry” and artistic nonsense is always just…weird.

And this year, with it being in France, you knew it was going to be perverse. Perversion and surrender are two of the most common attributes you can expect from French culture. So I chose to be as far removed from the opening ceremonies this year as I could be. And yet, because all my news now comes from my curated and selective Twitter feed, I couldn’t avoid seeing the now-notorious display of drag queens and gender-benders “recreating” da Vinci’s vision of The Last Supper of Jesus in his historic painting.

Now, I need to take a minute to point out that the Olympic organizers, feeling the heat of the controversy that followed, attempted to pretend that it wasn’t The Last Supper at all. No, they said it was a celebration of pagan mythology, Dionysus and all that jazz. As dutiful warriors for progressivism and the normalization of depravity, many mainstream media sources in America jumped on that bandwagon and ran “fact checks” claiming that offended Christians were lunatics whose self-absorption led them to conclude it was about mocking Jesus.

Of course, one minor problem remains with that defense. The actual name given in the program for the opening ceremonies was “La Cène Sur Un Scène Sur La Seine.” Just in case you don’t speak French, that translates to, “The Last Supper on a Stage on the Seine.” So, yes, it was a pitiful parody of the da Vinci painting. Yes, it was a morally perverse recreation of a holy moment when the Son of God was just moments away from redeeming the souls of the morally perverse.

So how to respond?

I don’t deign to tell other believers how they should react and what they should feel when they see a depiction like that. I know how I feel when I see a child or a family member of mine – people that I love dearly – mocked by others. It fills me with indignation and anger. How much more are those emotional responses likely to be when it is One I love even more than them who is the subject of mockery?

So no, I won’t tell other Christians the right way to respond. I can tell you what my response was, and tell you that I am hopeful it is appropriate biblically. So here goes.