Tag: USA

The Olympics: We Are the Outsiders

I like the Olympics.  I always have.  As a five-year-old child in 1984, I was able to attend the diving event and track and field in Los Angeles.  The competition and the patriotism were inspiring.  I remember crying while watching the closing ceremony on T.V. because the Olympics were over. 

I still look forward to watching the Olympics and rooting on the United States athletes, so on July 26th, I sat down to watch the opening ceremony in Paris, France.  It was quite the spectacle.  The acrobats were mesmerizing.  The musical acts were all over the place, from pop to rap, heavy metal, and opera.  The athlete boat parade down the Seine was different than the normal walk around the track of the stadium.  There were, however, some controversial skits interspersed throughout the event.  There was a skit about a ménage à trois.  There were lots of men dressed as women throughout the show. The part that has made the most waves, though, was what many perceived as a drag queen reenactment of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “The Last Supper.”

This has led to a huge outcry by Christians in America.  Many have demanded an apology.  Some have vowed not to watch and called for a boycott of the games.  My reaction was quite different, though.  You may remember my article where I explained a saying I have about being offended.  “Don’t be offended unless offense is intended.”  This opening ceremony actually fits that criterion.  I think they fully intended to offend Christians by mocking one of the big events in the Bible.  They wanted that attention and the controversy.  Here’s the thing that might surprise you.  Even though it checks the boxes for being offensive, I was not offended.

Was it a good thing?  Of course not.  Did I freak out?  Not at all.  I do not expect people who reject God to respect God.  I do not expect non-Christians to abide by biblical values.  Quite the opposite.  I expect debauchery.  I expect violence.  I expect hedonism.  This is what the world would be like without God.  Instead of complaining, we should use it as a contrast to turn people back to God.  We should show it as two different paths we can take.

We are leaving a time when Christianity was the common, widely agreed upon religion, and most people in the Western world shared the same ideology and values.  We got used to the expectation that others shared our values.  Unfortunately, that is not the case now.  We are in a time when Christianity is no longer the dominant value system.  Secular leftism is the dominant value system.  We are now outsiders in a pagan world. 

This has actually been the norm during much of history.  Christians were outsiders, not the people in control.  How did Christianity grow in the first place?  My guess is that a bunch of pagans were living meaningless, unhappy lives and they saw these strange Christians living joyful lives with a purpose.  This is the contrast that we need to highlight today.  Complaining that non-Christians are not acting like Christians is a waste of time and illogical.  We should instead highlight the fact that following Jesus leads to a happier, more fulfilling life and a better society, while the alternative leads to a shallow, meaningless life and a hedonistic, indulgent society.

While this perspective is true on a large-scale, societal level, it also applies on a micro, more personal level.  When somebody who is not a Christian does bad things, I am not shocked.  Why would I be?  They do not have the same standards as we do.  It should not be surprising if somebody who rejects the Bible does something unethical in business.  Their goal is not to do what is right.  It is to do what will be of the most benefit to them.  Christians should hold themselves to a higher standard.

Another point that I have heard Christians make is that the French would not have mocked Islam the way that they did Christianity.  This is, of course, true.  This is a good point to make, but not if we frame it as a complaint.  Complaining doesn’t win people over.  What does make Christians look good is to point out how great it is that we will not chop off your head if you try to offend us.  Christianity makes better people.

Unless the world turns back to God, things are going to get worse.  We are seeing things that nobody would have imagined when I watched the Olympics back in 1984.  Who would have guessed back then that people would be pushing for men to be able to compete in women’s sports?  Vulgarity, crime, and sexual debauchery are just the tip of the iceberg.  The marginalization and persecution of Christians (and Jews) will get even worse.  There will be more wars and worse atrocities.  There will be more suffering. 

Instead of feeling shocked and angry at the non-believers who performed this skit, I feel bad for them.  If you have rejected God to the point where you will mock Him, your eternity looks pretty bleak.  Instead of attacking them for showing sexualized content and debauchery during an event that many parents watched with their children, we should be talking to those parents and pointing out the alternative.  This alternative would lead to the more wholesome, yet still exciting and enjoyable path that God provides.  In fact, only our path will lead to true happiness.

I am still watching the Olympics, and enjoying the competition.  The athletes worked hard for this chance and many of them do want to please God.  The next time you see a heathen performance or display and your first instinct is to be offended, instead think to yourself, “I am sure glad I have God and am not like that.”

Updating History

America has a rich, long history of inspiring speeches and eloquently written documents.  As I sat here contemplating this history, it became apparent to me that most of those words are out of sync with the values of our country today.  We need to update them to reflect the enlightened views of modern America.  After all, the coronavirus should teach us that these ideas are far too risky to let stand the way we learned them as kids.  They often even led to people dying!

Let’s start by updating a short one so you get the idea.  Some of you probably know the state motto of New Hampshire.  It actually comes from a quote by Revolutionary War General John Stark.  “Live free or die:  Death is not the worst of evils.”  Obviously, that concept is terribly dangerous, but we can fix it.  Instead, “Live free and you’ll die.”  With just a slight, barely noticeable adjustment, New Hampshire license plates go from being a reckless endangerment to a somber warning.

If you aren’t an expert on American history you might not even notice some of the subtle changes.  See if you catch this one from the Declaration of Independence.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their government with certain Rights that may only be rescinded if exercising those Rights carries any risk, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

A lot of that crazy fringe of people who still want to do things have been using a famous quote by Patrick Henry.  They fail to point out that life expectancy back in that era was only about 38 years, so people wouldn’t have lived to be old enough to die of coronavirus anyways.  That means his words are obsolete and need an update.  Possibly, “Give me a mask or give me death!”  It now becomes a practical health advisory instead of a dangerous demand for freedom.

Here’s one for the kids to recite before they watch school on the computer.  “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with social distancing and unemployment benefits for all.”  And while we’re on things that you stand up for unless you’re a washed up quarterback, we also have to change the last line of our national anthem.  Actually, sports aren’t allowed anymore so we don’t need to worry about that.

The next one comes with some challenges.  Did you know that the inscription on the Liberty Bell comes from the Bible?  It currently reads, “PROCLAIM LIBERTY THROUGHOUT ALL THE LAND UNTO ALL THE INHABITANTS THEREOF LEV. XXV X.”  Coming up with the rewrite is easy enough.  “PROCLAIM STAY-AT-HOME ORDERS THROUGHOUT ALL THE LAND UNTO ALL THE INHABITANTS THEREOF.”  In fact, since we obviously have to change the name of the bell, we might as well call it the Stay-At-Home Bell and people can ring miniature replicates to report their neighbors who are playing at the park.  Now, the hard part.  You might think the difficulty would be telling millions of Americans that their Bibles are wrong, but that has been a favorite pastime of Democrats in our country for years now.  The real problem is figuring out how to change the inscription on a 267 year old copper bell that has already been cracked once.  Fortunately, figuring stuff out is only for the scientists now.  Maybe Dr. Fauci can handle it.

This brings us to probably the two most famous speeches in American history.  The first one is a big problem.  I don’t think Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech can be salvaged.  He speaks far too much about freedom ringing.  If we censor out all of that unsafe talk about freedom, the speech would sound like The Wolf of Wall Street edited for network television.  It just cannot be done.  I think the whole thing has to be stricken from the record.

The other one can be rewritten, and it was a short speech so we can do the whole thing.  Just picture the Great Emancipator, President Lincoln, when he first said these words at the battlefield in Gettysburg:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived to protect us from ourselves, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.  We are met, six feet apart, on a great battlefield of that war.  We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live safely hidden in their homes.  It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate – we can not consecrate – this ground.  The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.  The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.  It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.  It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under the experts, shall have a new birth of dependence – and that government instructing the people, monitoring the people, and regulating the people, shall not perish from the earth.

I will leave you with this one.  For those of you who are not sufficiently scared by coronavirus simply because the odds of dying from it are incredibly small, you need to remember what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address, “The only thing we have to fear is being around people!”