Tag: values

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.”

Elvis: Pushing the Envelope

The new Elvis Presley biopic made me think.  Early in the movie, Colonel Tom Parker, played by Tom Hanks, says that the acts that made the most money were ones “that gave the audience feelings they weren’t sure they should enjoy, but they do.”  Then the film focuses on the controversial gyrations that drove the girls crazy and made many people upset and uncomfortable as “The King” began his rise to stardom.  Now we laugh because those dance moves that seemed so edgy in the 1950s seem so tame by today’s standards.  This is not a new phenomenon.

Every generation, you hear the older people complaining that the younger generation is worse than theirs was.  “Kids today,” they often grumble.  The popular culture explains this by saying that old people are stuck in their ways and overly critical of the younger generation.  The media may say that the younger generations are not really that rebellious or bad, because the older generation was also seen as rebellious and bad by the generation before them.  Have you ever considered that maybe, instead of each generation being old, stodgy, and self-absorbed, that actually they are right?  Each generation really is worse than the last, because they have to one-up the previous generation by pushing the envelope further than their parents.  Yes, no generation is perfect and they all have a rebellious streak, but that does not mean that younger generations are morally equivalent to older ones.  Just because Elvis shaking his hips on stage was rebellious and controversial in the 50s, that does not mean that it is morally equivalent to Cardi B singing “Wet Ass Pussy” today.  Can we please bring back the innocence of generations past?

The worrisome part about this is that the envelope has already been pushed so far that it is hard to imagine what somebody can do next that will actually shock anybody.  The Beatles’ long hair is certainly not controversial anymore.  Drug references in lyrics that shocked people in the 60s and 70s are old news.  Maybe it would take it to a higher level if someone bit the head off of a bat onstage?  Nope.  Ozzy Osbourne already did that in 1982.  Remember when Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson’s breast in front of over 100 million viewers on live television at Super Bowl XXXVIII?  That was way back in 2004.  I fear that celebrities will become so desperate for attention in the coming years that we will see some disgusting acts being done to gain notoriety.

Will we soon see live sex acts on stage?  Will our entertainment revert back to feeding Christians to lions in front of cheering audiences?  Are we going to see The Hunger Games play out in real life?  We seem to be heading in that direction.  The good news is that there is now another way to cause controversy and gain attention.  Simply do and say good things that were once considered normal and mainstream.  As the Bible says, when people rebel from God, they begin to call evil good, and good evil.  It is definitely happening.  Think about the things that actually are considered shocking and controversial today: 

  • In June, five Tampa Bay Rays pitchers were attacked by the mainstream press and “woke” social media pundits for opting not to wear rainbow “Pride Night” logos on their uniforms.  You do not even have to go back to my parents’ generation for when this stance would have been applauded.  Now it is counter-culture. 
  • Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling started a firestorm of controversy when she criticized the use of the term “people who menstruate” instead of women.  She also committed the unforgivable sin of tweeting her support for a woman who had been fired for saying that “men cannot change into women.”  I am pretty sure that Elvis could have said that without causing a stir.
  • Actor Chris Pratt (Jurassic World, The Terminal List) has been disparaged as “the worst Chris in Hollywood” for his public professions of Christian faith.  What a Hollywood bad boy, huh?  Personally, I think being a Christian is the best way to be a rebel because it also gets you into Heaven.
  • If you really want to be an outcast, choose not to get what is called a Covid-19 vaccine, even though it does not prevent you from getting or spreading Covid-19.  This is the most discriminated against group in America for the past couple of years (with one possible exception).  They have been banned from many places, and some have even lost their jobs.  They are controversial not for anything they did, but instead for not subjugating themselves to their overlords.
  • When it comes to controversial athletes, former baseball star Curt Schilling is near the top of the list.  He was fired from ESPN in 2015 for tweeting “A man is a man regardless of what they name themselves.  Male bathrooms were created with the penis in mind; female bathrooms were not.  Is it now necessary to have laws to teach us otherwise?  Pathetic.”  To any previous generation, that comment would not only be acceptable, but obvious.  Now it is a fireable offense and has even been used to keep Schilling out of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
  • Actress Gina Carano was famously fired from Disney’s, The Mandalorian, for taking the provocative position that she should not have to ask to be called “she,” since she is obviously a woman.  Apparently, calling a boy “he,” or a girl “she,” is now edgy.  Charlie Sheen had to work a lot harder than that to get fired from a hit show.
  • The one possible exception mentioned above as the most discriminated group in America are supporters of President Trump.  The backlash that Elvis got for dancing is nothing compared to what you can expect if you say you agree with President Trump.  If you support his policies that brought us a booming economy, less government interference in our lives, and four years of peace (including unprecedented peace agreements in the Middle East), you can expect to be attacked more viciously than an opposing sports star in Philadelphia. 

It is terrible that these things are now controversial, but there is one positive thing about it.  Entertainers want attention.  In the past, they had to come up with more and more outlandish and crazy gimmicks than we had previously seen to get that attention.  Now, all they have to do is espouse solid, traditional values, and wait for the media firestorm.

Again, this is not new.  When reading the Bible straight through, the Old Testament prophets were the hardest parts to get through because they were so repetitive that it got boring.  They were all the same thing.  Israel would turn from God and pull further and further away from Him.  He would warn them through prophets, and most of the time they would ignore the warnings and push His patience even more.  Eventually, God said that enough was enough and allowed Israel to be defeated and the people to be scattered into exile.  We are in that same spiral of self-destruction that the Israelites were in.  Each generation seems to push their rebellion a little further than the last.  We have had our modern-day prophets warning us to turn back to our morals and values of the past.  Dennis Prager, Rush Limbaugh, William F. Buckley, and others have warned us about the decay of our values and societal norms of earlier generations.  If America does not heed these warnings and keeps pushing the boundaries, we will soon run out of room to push and we will end up as Israel did. 

There is one last thing I should do before I close out.  To all the old people out there, I apologize for my generation.  You were right.