The Olympics' Intolerance Race

Society, even that of what once was Christendom, is not Christian. Exhibit A: the Olympics’ opening ceremony’s now infamous scene mashing up Greek mythology, Christian iconography and drag queens. If Christendom is now Inclusivedom, though, could Christians at least get a serving of the inclusivity pledged in this society’s creed?

Our society likes to talk a lot about tolerance and the display at the Opening Ceremony was framed explicitly as promoting tolerance. Fine, but for one detail: how is it inclusive if you mock the heart of two billion people’s faith?

I am not and have never been the “culture warrior” type. An event has to be extreme before it sticks in my craw. The Olympic ceremony’s unmistakable, irreverent riff on Leonardo da Vinci’s the Last Supper passes the qualifying round.

But, but, Tim, it wasn’t the Last Supper being depicted! Despite the PR repair effort, the resemblance to the da Vinci masterpiece was not spotted only by easily offended Christians. The Olympic Committee’s press agents and major outlets such as the Washington Post and ESPN also noted it.

The latter, not a bastion of Christian culture warrior activity, described what happened:

The segment, which recreated the Biblical scene of Jesus Christ and his apostles sharing a last meal before crucifixion, featured drag queens, a transgender model and a naked singer made up as the Greek god of wine, Dionysus.

Likewise, the mixed messaging from the Olympic Committee suggests those of us troubled by the depiction are not insane. In statement to the Wrap, the Olympic Committee said:

For the ‘Festivities’ segment, Thomas Jolly took inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting to create the setting. Clearly, there was never an intention to show disrespect towards any religious group or belief … [Jolly] is not the first artist to make a reference to what is a world-famous work of art.

The aforementioned PR repair effort has attempted to recast the carnal display as unrelated to Christianity. It is a scene of Dionysos (a.k.a. Bacchus) reveling with the Olympian gods, the apologetic goes.

Oh, that we could be merely discussing if the level of worldly debauchery in a ceremony was beyond good taste at an event intended for families around the world. But, before Dionysos appears in the middle of a silver platter, the scene wasn’t just drunken vice as depicted by drag queens.

Let’s be clear, the ongoing revision of the scene is meant to shut down criticism of a scandalous display, not to provide deep insight into the performance’s background. Yet, the recasting continues and adds to the initial scorn. On top of having the Savior mocked, Christians are now accused of being uncultured ignoramuses for misunderstanding the scene. Viral posts from critics of Christianity share stone reliefs of Dionysos feasting from the Greco-Roman world as a flourish. Score one against the Jesus following bumpkins.

We Christians earned some of that. Christians have flown off the handle on misunderstandings before. If anything, the opposite has happened here, though: I’ve seen gracious Christians, not wanting to contribute to misplaced outrage, share the posts reinterpreting the Olympic scene.

I’m glad for my fellow Christians who are cautious; we should be. And, yes, the scene did eventually star an unclothed “ Dionysos.” That’s true. True, but also a misdirection.

Consider if a director put on a scene of a woman looking enigmatically amused, wearing flowing, dark clothes, right hand resting on the back of her left hand, in front of a nondescript landscape. Would you believe that person if she said Mona Lisa was not in view? Or scene with a farmer-ish couple, stern looking, man holding pitchfork and yet he insisted, “I never gave a second thought to American Gothic in creating it”?

A rarified few pieces of art are iconic enough that approximating aspects of them immediately calls the observer to the source. The Last Supper is in that exclusive club and requires far less of a parallel than it received on Friday night to be immediately recognizable.

Yes, there are other pieces of art that the Olympic performance alludes to and, yes, if the scene had instead depicted a mysteriously smiling woman, Mona Lisa may not have been the only work in view. But, consider how many people were involved in the preparations for the Opening Ceremony. No one thought, “This evokes the most famous depiction of a group of people sitting on one side of a table with a holy person seated in the middle”?

This defies credulity.

You could utter the phrase “We will rock you” in reference to someone being stoned in the ancient world. But, if you do and then claim you didn’t think of Queen and didn’t fight the urge to go stomp, stomp, clap as you said it, no one would believe you. Nor should they.

The devout follower of Islam would not depict Mohammed, but imagine for a moment a world where Muslims made artistic depictions of their prophet. Would even an accidental, but in retrospect, unmistakable depiction of him during an Olympic ceremony be excused? Would followers of Islam offended by it be told they were being foolish for seeing the allusion? Of course not.

Such a gaffe would have been caught before the ceremony was ever performed. The green light never would have illumined for a risqué interpretation of a moment in Muhammad’s life.

Yet the arbiters of tolerance do that with impunity in conjuring scenes of Jesus. So it has gone on for years. Yet at the Olympics, a place allegedly of goodwill to all, and combined with the postmortem re-interpretive switcheroo, it cuts especially deep. As the Vatican’s representative to the Games, Bishop Emmanuel Gobillard, said:

The fact that our religion should be mocked is usual and we are used to blasphemy in France, but the context isn’t the same. In an event that brings together all or part of the population, I found this staging hurtful and out of place.

I have no expectation that our world today will always behave as my beliefs say people should. Nor is my purpose as a pastor to be the morality police. I preach the Gospel that Jesus came to save sinners like me. Behavior change is what the Holy Spirit does in us after believing. I cannot harangue people into acting in line with God’s Word.

But here is my simple plea as one who is not a culture warrior: if you are going to talk tolerance and inclusion, please don’t blaspheme my God as you do. Don’t claim that blasphemy is actually the demonstration of tolerance. Don’t attack those of us who are troubled by it, reimagining the scene after the crime to make those whose beliefs have been denigrated somehow the attackers.

Walk the talk of tolerance and inclusion.

If tolerance and inclusion mean “we only exclude those we dislike,” it’s uglier than the most nasty forms of judgmental fundamentalism. Such “inclusion” is a mirror of its hated foe, made worse by not admitting it.