Athletes, Golden. Olympics, Epic Fail
As the books closed today on Olympiad III, the Paris 2024 games emerged as the most anti-Christian, Anti-Jewish, Anti-Women and Pro-Hamas in history. So far.
The 1972 Munich Olympics saw a massacre of human beings — eight Palestinian terrorists invaded the Olympic Village and slaughtered 11 Israeli athletes. The 2024 Paris Games saw an attack on athletes’ genders and religions. The massacre was worse, but the attack on identity was alarming.
Not only did the Opening Ceremony openly mock Jesus, and Christians, and anyone who thought Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper was a tremendous work of art, it also betrayed the sheer depravity of the organizers. These Woke officials were thrilled — First Lady Jill Biden, a professed Catholic, thought the display “extraordinary,” and worried how the LA Games in 2028 could top it. French President Emmanuel Macron thanked artistic director Thomas Jolly for the “creative genius of this grandiose ceremony.” He called it “a unique and magical moment” and said that people would still be talking about 100 years from now.
The backlash was thundering. Critics decried Jolly for depicting Jesus as a fat woman and his disciples as grotesque drag queen exaggerations. Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, called it “a pornographic corruption of Christianity,” adding, “Paris aspires to be the new Babylon, with a drag queen at the center of the altar.” Finally even Pope Francis weighed in, saying he was “saddened.”
The organizers said they were sorry if they offended anyone, and tried to suggest that the depiction was meant to symbolize the history of debauchery in ancient Greece.
But two weeks later, as the games were winding down, French officials arrested seven people aboard a bus for protesting this blatant attack on Christianity. Featuring a sign that said, “Stop Attacks on Christians!,” the bus was boarded by Gendarmerie agents at gunpoint, six passengers and the bus driver taken into custody.
This attack on Christians continued during the games when Olympic officials gave 23-year-old Brazilian Joao Chianca an ultimatum: either remove the iconic “Christ the Redeemer” image from his surfboards, or be disqualified from the competition.
This was similar to the ultimatum offered to Israeli athletes who showed up in Paris wearing little yellow ribbons on their uniforms, the universal sign seeking release of hostages. Officials, who allowed Palestinian athletes to wear uniforms depicting planes dropping bombs, presumably on Israel, nixed the hostage release signage.
Israeli athletes defiantly showed their spirit, in the pool.
Then of course there was the controversy over two males who competed in women’s boxing. Hiding behind the fact that their passports said they were women, Olympics officials insisted that they had no choice but to let them beat women to the pulp. For details, see my earlier post, New Olympic Sport: Men Pummeling Women in the Ring!
But amid the misogyny, the bigotry, the intolerance, were some wonderful moments of grace from athletes of faith. Simone Biles, perhaps the most decorated American gymnastics woman in history, said she thought the mockery of the Last Supper was awful. Others, on winning their medals, thanked God. As Bishop Robert Barron said recently, sport is the pursuit of excellence, along the lines of God-given skills.
No one was as clear, as proud, as unbowed, as Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. She set a world record in the 400-meter hurdles at the 2024 Olympics, as she had at the 2021 games in Tokyo. She is the first woman to ever win gold twice in the event, the first to break the world record six times along the way.
More than once, she has spoken of her victories as God’s glories. “I credit all that I do to God,” she said. “He’s given he a gift, he’s given me drive…I have a platform and I want to use it to glorify God. Whenever I step on the track, it’s always the prayer of God, Let me be the best in which you are glorified, whatever the result is, how I conduct myself, how I carry myself, not just how I perform. There’s freedom in knowing that regardless of what happens, He’s going to get the praise through me.”
A sports reporter, puzzled by her insistence on God’s existence at a time and amid a culture that prizes anti-religion orthodoxy (unless it’s Islam), asked her the other day how she would feel if her deep faith in God lost her brand-name endorsements.
Amen
Amen!