It’s been a long day.
I’m writing this in my hotel room after a full day of flying up and down the East Coast dodging thunderstorms. I feel the need to write, but I really don’t want to write about the big story of the day, which is the Olympic opening brouhaha. On the other hand, I think that there is something that needs to be said on the topic.
My opinion can be summed up in the words of Bill and Ted, who admonished us to “Be excellent to each other.”
To start with, I didn’t watch the ceremony. The Olympics are not my cup of tea. They might hold more interest to me if the nations played for world domination or if, as someone suggested recently, they put an average guy on the field to act like the control in an experiment, showing the viewers just how much better than the rest of us the Olympic athletes really are. As it is, I’m just not much of a TV guy, especially when it comes to sports. Most of the time, I’d rather be active myself than watching someone else, and if I have control of the remote, I usually end up on “Seinfeld,” “Impractical Jokers,” or a good movie.
From what I’ve seen of the opening ceremony, I’m not impressed. And from some of the clips I’ve seen, I can understand why some people would think it satirized the Last Supper.
But I’m not sure whether that was the intent. There’s evidence for both points of view, but the context of a program that contained mostly French and Greek history (as described in the program) doesn’t fit the inclusion of the Last Supper. Neither does what some on the internet called a “man dressed as a Smurf being served on a food platter.”
The Smurf-like character was apparently intended to be Dionysus, the Greek god of the wine and grape harvest. At any rate, the character much more closely resembled a member of the Blue Man Group than Jesus Christ.
Over the weekend, quite a few people who had probably never heard of Dionysus before Friday started attacking the ignorance of people who assumed the performance was an attack on Christianity. This mirrors the official line, but the perception of an attack on Christianity was not limited to the American right. For example, Bloomberg reported that the French Catholic Conference of bishops denounced the performance, which somewhat undermines claims that it was only uneducated American Christians who misinterpreted the event.
As is the case with many things, both sides seem to be wrong here. First, I haven’t seen any convincing evidence that the Olympic Committee meant to insult a multi-billion-member religion. The evidence that I’ve seen is of the internet meme and he-said-she-said variety. Some outlets report to have evidence that the producer of the performance has admitted that Christianity was targeted, but so far I have not been able to corroborate these claims.
If nothing else, the performance was guilty of bad communication. If an obscure mythological reference is going to be used, it would be helpful to provide the audience with some clues. The last thing that the organizers of an event like this should want to do is offend a large share of the world’s dominant religion, yet that is exactly what they did. The performance was a failure from the perspectives of being good hosts and conducting successful sports and artistic diplomacy.
The Olympic Committee did the right thing, however. They apologized. The AP reports that the ceremony’s artistic director denied the Last Supper connection or any intent to shock or offend the audience.
“Clearly there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group,” an Olympic spokeswoman said, adding, “If people have taken any offense we are, of course, really, really sorry.”
The flip side is that some don’t want to accept the apology. They want to stay angry. In my view, this is unchristian.
There are a great many verses in the Bible where Christians are taught to love their enemies and to practice forgiveness. I can’t think of any verses where God delegated his role as judge to humanity. We are never told to be unforgiving or vindictive. On the contrary, we are warned against judging hypocritically.
Going back to the 1990s, we might ask, What Would Jesus Do? After all, Jesus was the one who might have been mocked. Maybe he would have called down lightning from Heaven, but he eschewed a similar temptation to exhibit his power when Satan tempted him at the beginning of his ministry. I think it’s more likely that he would have turned the other cheek, a saying that literally has its roots in the teachings of Jesus. In today’s terms, Jesus would probably be called a hippie.
Christians should ask themselves, which course of action has a greater chance of advancing the kingdom of God, fighting online battles against atheists and agnostics over a perceived slight and boycotting the Olympics or putting Christ’s commandments to show love and forgiveness into practice in a very public way?
The flip side is that pushing boycotts and stoking anger sounds a lot like the cancel culture of the left that the right claims to hate. I’m old enough to remember when the right decried the fact that very-online leftists would fixate on unintentional microaggressions and no apology was ever good enough. Horseshoe Theory is a real thing.
Christianity is a faith of contradictions. The last shall be first and the first shall be last. The meek shall inherit the earth. God’s strength is made perfect in weakness.
God doesn’t want us to defend his honor. He wants us to demonstrate his love. Responding to attacks from your enemies with love is a radical idea, but that is exactly what Jesus said to do.
Jesus’s greatest commandment can be summed up as love God and love people.
Treat people as you want to be treated.
Be excellent to each other.
If we all followed this simple concept, the world would be a much better place, and we should all be praying that God would help us to show his radical love through our lives.
I don’t know; I haven’t seen it. I’d assume that any artist who composed something with people along a table (apparently on one side of the table) would have the Leonardo image in his mind. But the Olympics go back to pagan Greece, so who knows? France may be so removed from Christendom at this point that they don’t even think about it. I don’t know. I have no emotional connection to the Olympics either, so I probably come down exactly where you are about all this.Report
I haven’t seen any convincing evidence that people are choosing to remain angry.Report
If anything, I’ve seen more people upset that they missed their chance to dunk on the Idiot God-Cultists than I’ve seen people genuinely upset about the imagery. Most people seem to just figure that it’s more Olympic Opening Ceremony Weirdness, which has a long and glorious tradition.Report
I’ve seen a lot of people say stuff like “Imagine if they made fun of Mohammed!” without remembering the last time that French people made fun of Mohammed.Report
You are on Xitter!!!! People loooove to remain angry.Report
I don’t know how representative they are, but Evangelical Facebook is still posting about it, though they’ve gone from 100% “The Olympics are the devil” to like 50% “I’m boycotting the Olympics” and 50% to what they were doing before, talking about how stupid they think Harris is, and that they believe she slept her way to the top.Report
I just spent 10 minutes scrolling and I saw a grand total of two posts.
One explaining what “La Cène Sur Un Scène Sur La Seine” translates to and another explaining that, really, it was about Dionysus.
To be honest, if I really wanted to downplay and deny that there was any connection to The Last Supper with the skit, I’d write an essay that doesn’t mention the name of the skit even once.Report
Scrolling Twitter or Facebook? If you’re looking for Evangelicals, it’s gotta be Facebook. If you scroll through Evangelicals’ Facebook posts, you’ll find plenty in the last 24 hours.Report
My cousins are on there. Yes, even the Florida one.
I’ve seen picture after picture of kids getting ready to go back to school soon, can’t believe they’re this tall already, and a whole bunch of MLM stuff. (Would you like to buy a candle?)Report
I see meme after meme, man.
My dad (an Evangelical) posted two posts earlier this week, one arguing that the thing everyone’s pissed about wasn’t what they’re pissed about, and one sharing his pastor’s substack post arguing that even if it was what so many of them think it was, they shouldn’t hate, because it’s un-Christian, and folks from his Church and elsewhere in conservative Tennessee are still in there arguing that it was what they say it was, and that they should definitely hate. So yeah, they’re still pissed.Report
Your examples sound a lot like the essay at the top of the page.Report
Oh yeah, the pastor’s post is like this one. He’s basically asking other Evangelicals not to be mad, because they still are and he thinks they shouldn’t be.
Here’s the post, in case you’re interested.Report
I’ve seen plenty of people argue that others shouldn’t be mad.
Heck, I’ve seen plenty of people argue that “La Cène Sur Un Scène Sur La Seine” should not be translated as “The Last Supper On A Stage On The Seine”.
What I haven’t seen are people, on July 31st, angry about The Last Supper On A Stage On The Seine.
Now, I *HAVE* seen people be pissed off that other people are saying “It’s got nothing to do with The Last Supper!” but being irritated that one feels like one is being lied to one’s face is a different kind of mad than “they’re going out of their way to be the best 2012 r/Atheism posters they can be” irritation.
That’s something else entirely.Report
“nut-assuming”?Report
Is Rob Schnieder being quoted yesterday on Fox News good enough –
https://www.foxnews.com/media/comedian-rob-schneider-paris-olympics-alleged-parody-last-supper-openly-celebrates-satanReport
Or EWTN two days ago on Facebook –
https://www.facebook.com/ewtnonline/videos/the-drag-queen-led-parody-of-the-last-supper-featured-during-fridays-opening-cer/1629439567622047/Report
I’m not saying that people weren’t mad at the time.
It makes sense to be mad at the time.
But the moment passes and all we are left with are a bunch of essays explaining that it wasn’t The Last Supper On A Stage On The Seine but was instead the Dionysus painting.
I get the idea that if any of these sophisticated art-explainers eventually see an art piece where dancers begin recreating one painting and end by recreating another, their minds will be *BLOWN*.
“I didn’t know that such a magnificent idea was possible! You start off by showing one painting… AND THEN THE PIECE EVOLVES INTO ANOTHER HOLY CRAP THIS IS WHY I GOT AN ART DEGREE IN THE FIRST PLACE”.
Huh. Maybe there’s some money to be made in this somewhere…Report
All the websites I just quoted are in the last 48 hours. For these folks – and so many more, the moment hasn’t passed.
Heck, the House Speaker tweeted his anger YESTERDAY.Report
“Yesterday.”
We’ve had three news cycles since then.Report
Useful to consider in this discourse is the idea that if you said something and people assumed you meant something negative or critical by saying it, then it’s your own fault for not considering all the possible interpretations of your message.
Like when you make a joke about “the beatings will continue until morale improves” and it’s interpreted as a paean to white supremacy.Report
Or the Bishops of Orange?
https://www.rcbo.org/newsroom-archive/olympics/Report
They really do sound angry. /sReport
If that’s the definition of “mad” that we’re using, let me say that I have absolutely zero problem with people getting mad.
What we need is a term for what I thought we were talking about when we were talking about people getting mad.Report
See my comment below.Report
They’ve moved on to the Algerian boxer, so we can stop talking about the Opening Ceremony now.Report
Speaker Johnson posted this yesterday:
https://x.com/SpeakerJohnson/status/1818368717123924184Report
This is an awesome response:
https://x.com/RepJackKimble/status/1818458258526314904Report
Buy one teapot get a tempest free of charge.Report
This is where I land too. Also clever!Report
I don’t have much to say about the Last Supper/Not Last Supper brouhaha, but Gojira played, and that was fishing awesome!Report