Olympic Blasphemy Because, Why Not?

The blasphemous fiasco of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics blew up while I was traveling, and so I begin by recognizing that I am late to the party. I would apologize for that if it were in any way my own fault, but in this case at least, it was not. I didn’t even get to post before an inadequate apology was dragged out of them.

What I would like to do here is devote exactly one paragraph to the blasphemy itself, and then turn my attention to the task of admonishing my fellow Christians on the one aspect of their reaction to the whole thing that missed the boat biblically.

The blasphemy was ugly, and deliberately so. The image of God is borne by man and woman, male and female, with man the glory of God, and the woman the glory of that glory. It is glory in the first instance, and then feminine glory layered on top of glory after that. The point of such blasphemy is not to offer us the vision of an alternative glory of another god or goddess, but rather to vandalize the image of God that we have been given. It does no good to point out how lame and wretched the whole thing is, because that would be like telling a vandal that the orange paint he threw on the Flemish masterpiece ruined it. Yes, of course, he would say. The point was the ruin of it. The point is not to display virtuosity, but rather hatred. Imagine a king in an invincible castle on the hill, good and wise in all his ways. Despite his wisdom, there was a village in the valley down below, the residents of which hated him. Although their hatred was very great, there was no way for them to overthrow him or the forces in his castle. And so they resorted to the only thing they could do in such a circumstance, which was to burn the king in effigy. They could not reach him, but at least they could vent their venomous spite by defacing his image. And so that is the meaning of the sexual revolution and all its demented iterations—homosex, drag sex, tranny surgeries, obesity-is-sexy-you-hater, promiscuity, sodomy, prostitution, pedophilia, and all the rest of the creepy crawlies hiding under that + sign. We may be circling the drain, but at least we have these pills now that can ensure that we have an erection as we disappear into the Void—that place where hatred of God is finalized.

And so how would I admonish my fellow believers in their reaction to this? Their anger was appropriate, and the outrage was fitting. Disgust with this French faggotry is what any normal person would feel, including of course, honorable Frenchmen. So what was wrong with the Christian response?

The one thing that Christians should not have displayed is surprise. We should have seen all this coming decades ago. This should have been anticipated and predicted, and when predicted, believed. Bless me, what do they teach them in these schools?

A handful of people did see it coming. Abraham Kuyper once said, over a hundred years ago, that they would not be satisfied until they had made man into woman and woman into man. And here they all are, and they are still not satisfied.

The apostles Peter and John both tell us this.

Do not be surprised. Do not be surprised. He who says A must sooner or later say B. Just a few verses before the citation from 1 Peter, he tells us that the pagans “are surprised” when Christians refuse any and all invitations to plunge with them into the same river of dissipation. And so, Peter argues, don’t be surprised when their surprise turns venomous. You did not go headlong with them into their torrent of porn, and so you must be putting on airs. You must think you are all that. You must be one of those holy joes, the kind that needs to be taken down a few notches.

And a few verses before John’s exhortation to not be surprised, there was a reference to one major component of worldliness being the lust of the flesh (1 John 2:16). And then in the next verse he sums up the vanity of all such lust.

Don’t be surprised. Idolaters are constantly faced with the task of trying to obtain from a finite thing what only the infinite can provide. And the more they work at trying to achieve this fantasy goal, the harder they have to squeeze. It is like trying to squeeze fresh orange juice from your driveway gravel, and the only thing thing that keeps them going in this fruitless quest is the demand for autonomy. This is the demand that their own limited and finite soul become the source of endless satisfaction. The only result is endless dissatisfaction, where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched, but the rebel soul still perseveres.

The internal lure to idolatry is the way it promises some sort of successful autonomy. The autonomy lies in the very nature of sin, but the lie in the sin promises that if the sinner refuses to repent, if he pushes on just a little bit farther, then the promised enlightenment will come. The promises are being made to an empty vessel by an empty vessel, but in the grip of lust, this is conveniently overlooked.

The hearts that generate this kind of blasphemy are shriveled up beef jerky hearts. When it starts to dawn on them that they will never reach the satisfaction they dreamed of, the task turns to wrecking the pretensions of those Christians who are acting all forgiven-like, walking around like they are at peace with God and man. This is not to be tolerated, and so the response is to bite, and scratch.

The answer, of course, is not to be found in an erudite explanation of some finer point of theology. The answer is to be found in what Christ said at that Supper that they so obviously attacked. “This cup is the cup of the new covenant. This is my body, which is broken for you.” That is the enemy that they insist must be thrown down but, as it turns out, it is one thing that can never be thrown down.