Pondering Paris

Well… the socials lost their mind during the opening ceremony in Paris, France. Paris Olympics organizers apologized to anyone who was offended by a tableau that evoked Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” during the glamorous opening ceremony, but defended the concept behind it Sunday.

Da Vinci’s painting depicts the moment when Jesus Christ declared that an apostle would betray him. The scene during Friday’s ceremony featured DJ and producer Barbara Butch — an LGBTQ+ icon — flanked by drag artists and dancers. Pseudo apologies, clarifying statements on what organizers were intending, and serious frustration from religious around the country continues to stream in.

In the thick of all of it, there are a few few things I continue to ponder, as I continue to follow the way of Jesus in a post-Christian culture and polarizing moment.

1) Culture wars = Bad evangelism

2) The church in exile is historically more potent than the church that has cultural power. The church of Jesus was made to flourish on the margins, not on the center stage.

3) A God that needs me to defend them, is not as powerful as the God that I truly need. There is a difference between clearly communicating the beauty of Jesus' truth and grace, and feeling the need to defend a worldview.

4) There is a difference between Christianity being critiqued and Jesus being critiqued. When the Christian worldview is critiqued we must ask if there are legitimate reasons for it (The Church will always have blind spots that need to be addressed, and just like throughout the scripture, it will often be outsiders that help us discover those blindspots).

5) The entirety of the gospel hinges on loss and "giving in". We are meant to lose to culture, not triumph over it. The testimony of the Christian hinges on how we lose, how we receive critique, and how we respond to being ridiculed.

6) Christians have the responsibility to identify the cultural, sexual, ethnic, gender, political, and socio-economic lenses we read the scripture with. When we are unaware of the lenses we read and learn with, it is near impossible to connect with, care for, evangelize, and empathize with those we differ from.

May we continue to dig deep (internally), when frustrated with secularism (externally). Moments like these can tell us way more about ourselves and our deepest convictions and affections than it actually does about others.