When Christians Take Offence

My Thoughts on the Olympic Opening Ceremony

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

I recently spent a week in a tent with very little phone access, but from what I hear, some French people did some performance art while I was away, and it sparked quite the controversy!

From what I understand, the Paris Olympic opening ceremony openly mocked Christianity by including the Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse and a scene where a variety of drag queens impersonated DaVinci’s Last Supper with the god of wine, Bacchus/Dionysus, feasting in the foreground.

Although the organisers have now apologised for the controversy, I struggle to believe that the moments in question were not intended to mock the Christian faith. The Four Horsemen plus the Last Supper drag parody are pretty strong visuals.

However, I do think that this mostly came out of carelessness and naivety. I do not think that the organisers were specifically trying to attack us as a group. The most likely explanation is that the directors were so caught up in their echo chamber that they didn’t realise there are still millions of people around the world who actually still believe in this stuff.

Plenty of ink has already been spilt on how and why this performance was problematic. But what fascinates me more is the way Christians on the internet responded.

Many acted with genuine shock at the scenes in question. Some believed that it was their responsibility to police the actions of non-believers. Some thought it was the beginning of the End Times.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the charge of blasphemy is probably fair. My issue is how Christians have responded to this blasphemy.

Is it our job to get angry on Jesus’ behalf? Does he need us to come to his defence? Are we really being persecuted?

So, without further ado, here are my thoughts on what happens when Christians take offence.

Enjoy!

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When Christians take offence, we forget that our own story is inherently offensive

Christians in the West have a peculiar vantage point when we examine the basic narrative of our faith. Much of our story is now taken for granted, largely because it has been in the Western social imaginary for many centuries. As a result, we too easily forget that the basic premise of our faith is inherently weird.

First, we worship a god-man who was born in a grotty stable and raised in a backwater town in first-century Palestine. This is strange enough.

Second, we worship a god-man who died. This is frankly bizarre.

Third, we worship a god-man who died the death of a humiliated slave. This was enormously offensive to the ancient world.

A key question that still baffles historians today is, how on earth did such a subversive Jewish cult manage to kickstart a social revolution that overturned the basic value principles of Rome?

Don’t get me wrong, the ancients had no problem ascribing divine status to certain special people. What made Christianity peculiar was the fact that it deified someone who had been publically humiliated in the most extreme possible form.

Historian Tom Holland writes,

Divinity… was for the very greatest of the great: for victors, and heroes, and kings. Its measure was the power to torture one’s enemies, not to suffer oneself… That a man who had himself been crucified might be hailed as a god could not help but be seen by people everywhere across the Roman world as scandalous, obscene, grotesque.¹

The symbol of the crucifix was seen as a mockery of divinity itself. This is why, for the first 400 years of Christian history, Christian artists hardly ever depicted the crucifix in their paintings.² It was seen as too shameful, too gruesome.

It was, however, used as a form of artistic mockery against Christians. Below is an inscription made by a pagan, intended to mock a Christian called Alexamenos. In it, we read, “Alexamenos worships [his] god”, while a person with a donkey head is crucified above.

The Alexamenos graffito, circa 200AD. Source: Wikipedia

In fact, the very term “Christian” may have been originally intended as a mockery of those who followed the dead god-man.³

So, the basic premise of the Christian story was an offence to the original culture that received it.

There were also times when the early church unintentionally made their situation worse. They (un)tactfully decided to call their meetings “Love Feasts”, which gave plenty of scope for their pagan counterparts to accuse them of having secret orgies. Moreover, the way they spoke of the bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ led many Romans to believe that Christians were actually practising cannibalism.

So, how did the early Christians respond to such mockery? Paul writes about it in his many letters, saying,

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. (1 Corinthians 1:20-21)

And,

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. (1 Corinthians 1:27-29)

My point is that Christians have intentionally and unintentionally lived in opposition to culture for a very long time, and being mocked for the faith isn’t anything new.

It should not come as a shock; it should be expected.

The early church was very familiar with this kind of scenario.

When Christians take offence, we forget how our own king responded to mockery

When trying to find the original video of the scene,⁴ I stumbled upon a Catholic YouTube Channel which posted a video entitled, Defend The Name of Jesus: Whom to Contact at the Olympics. So far, it has over 1.3 million views. Its main premise is that blasphemy is the worst of all sins, and that Jesus needs us to take action to defend his honour. The comments section is full of outraged Christians claiming they will boycott the games in protest.

But does Jesus need defending?

If Jesus ever did need defending, the most obvious time would have been in the lead-up to his death. In Matthew’s account of Jesus’ arrest, we read how Jesus went willingly to his death and scolded those who tried to defend him:

Then they came up and laid hands on Jesus and seized him. And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear.

Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who live by the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:50-53)

Then, after his arrest, Jesus is falsely accused by the Sanhedrin and handed over to Pilot. When Pilot asks Jesus about the many charges laid against him,

he gave him no answer, not even to a single charge, so that the governor was greatly amazed. (Matthew 27:14)

The gospel writers tell us that this was to fulfil the prophecy in Isaiah 53:7:

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,

    yet he opened not his mouth;

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

    and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,

    so he opened not his mouth.

Photo by Tonia Kraakman on Unsplash

Then, when Jesus is about to hit his most vulnerable moment,

…the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor's headquarters, and they gathered the whole battalion before him. And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand.

And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they spat on him and took the reed and struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him. (Matthew 27:27-31)

I firmly believe that Christians are called to participate in the life of our rabbi. As John Mark Comer often states, discipleship to Jesus requires us to “be with Jesus, become like Jesus, and do what Jesus did.”⁵

And yet, people claiming to defend Christianity have been sending actual death threats to the organisers. Like Peter, we think our saviour needs us to protect him.

However, unlike Peter, Jesus insists that he needs no defending. He has full authority over the nations and could easily smite them if that were his will.

We claim to be a persecuted minority when in actual fact, it looks like we are the ones doing the persecuting.

Eight years ago, I had the privilege of befriending a group of Christians who live in a nation where it is becoming increasingly illegal to practise their faith. I have met young men who were made homeless because their families kicked them out onto the street when they discovered their conversion. I have met women who have been beaten and locked in cupboards by their husbands when they were caught going to church.

One year later, I managed to revisit them. When giving me a report on how things were going, a leader in the church finished by saying, “and praise God, persecution is also increasing!”

This was not said in jest or sarcasm - he really meant it. When I pressed him further, he quoted Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, concluding that it is a great honour to be counted worthy of such a trial.

In Matthew 5:10-12, Jesus says:

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

This verse has been taken very literally by Christians in the East who are suffering genuine persecution.

We in the West have a lot to learn from them.

When Christians take offence, we give power to the wrong actors

One of the problems with being permanently outraged is that it makes us highly vulnerable to being manipulated by bad actors who do not have our best interests at heart.

We should not need reminding that the goal of every social media platform is to keep us hooked for as long as possible and put us in an emotional state where we are most likely to click on an ad.

As it turns out, we are more likely to do both of those things when we are angry. Studies have shown that Big Tech has a genuine financial interest in keeping us outraged. If you are angry, you are statistically more likely to continue doop-scrolling, more likely to share posts with friends, and more likely to click on ads, which is where they make their money. Multiple reports and inquests have found that social media platforms are well-known to be “monetising misery”.

So, it is no secret that the real winners in almost every controversy are the Big Tech firms.⁶

Moreover, there are plenty of large-scale influencers who also have a vested interest in keeping us angry. We are far more likely to share their content if what they say keeps us in an emotionally heightened state.

With regards to the Olympic opening ceremony, Andrew and Tristan Tate recently joined the circus by protesting outside of the French embassy and an Orthodox church in Bucharest, with signs saying, “Christianity will not be mocked.”

The irony of renowned sex-traffickers attempting to “defend” Christianity is not lost on me.

Screengrab from AP Video by Nicolae Dumitrache

I do not know what to make of this. Either, they are so hubristic that they genuinely think that the man who conquored death needs the likes of them to defend his honour, or, (more likely) they don’t really believe in this stuff and are just capitalising on the outrage because that is how you win in the attention economy.

Either way, this is not going in a good direction.

I strongly believe that being easily whipped up into an emotional frenzy is the exact opposite of what Jesus wants for his followers. He very clearly instructs us to,

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matthew 5:44)

It is understandable to be upset about all this. It can easily feel like a personal insult. However, my advice would be to take your lamet to God like the Psalter does, not to hurl insults online at your enemies.

Until next time,

S

1. Tom Holland, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (2020) Abacus, p.xviii

2. Ibid, p.xiv

3. See Acts 11:26 for the first use of the word “Christian.” A literal translation of the term would be “little Christ.” Some commentators claim that it was originally intended as a pejorative term to mock early followers of Jesus, who then later reclaimed the word as their own.

4. It looks like the original video has been taken down, so I must confess that I still haven’t seen it.

5. In addition to his course, see also his book, John Mark Comer, Practising The Way (2024) Form.

6. The best analysis I have read on this is Jamie Bartlett, The People Vs Tech, (2018) Ebury Press.