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I'm always filled with a sense of melancholy when I watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics. It's a beautiful—if sometimes over-the-top—spectacle, filled with all those robust, attractive, and smiling athletes, from all manner of (and often warring) nations, smiling and laughing and having a wonderful time together. But there's always a twinge of sadness as I watch.

The subtext and supratext of the Olympics, of course, is world peace. We hear plenty, in the ceremony and by the announcers, about good will among the nations. It's never quite said so naively, but it surely is implied, that if we can get together like this for a couple of weeks every two years, maybe the nations can learn to turn their swords and into ice skates.

As Chicago Tribune sports columnist Rick Morrissey put it, "This was a night to be reminded that something like peace is possible, even if history would tell us otherwise. Even if history would laugh in our faces at our silly ideas." The cynical Morrissey feels compelled to add those lines about history because he knows that bit about peace sounds corny. But it's not silly. Any decent human being should wish for nothing less.

And certainly no Christian should. "Thy kingdom come … " we pray regularly. Indeed, the hope of the Olympics is fundamentally a Christian hope.

Still there's that poignancy. On the one hand, we have an earnest Yoko Ono proclaiming, ""If one billion people in the world think peace, we'll have peace," followed by her late husband's song, "Imagine," whose second stanza says:

Imagine there's no countries,
It isn't hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
living life in peace.

It's nationalism and religion that kill people, says John Lennon, and he's not far from the truth. But contra Ono's wishful thinking, we Christians believe that peace will not come until the King of Kings pressures the kings of the earth to relinquish their warring sovereignties, and the Elusive Presence abolishes religion because he dwells plainly in our midst (Rev. 21). But come it will.

On the other hand, we see signs of age-old moral bondage that make peace impossible for now. I've increasingly noticed something curious about all those beautiful athletes—more and more of them are bringing cameras into the stadium. And more and more are taking pictures of, well, themselves. In the same edition as the Morrissey column, the Chicago Tribune perfectly captured two Swiss athletes, cheek to cheek, while one held an outstretched camera pointed at their own smiling countenances.

This is harmless enough at one level—two athletes enjoying the moment. But their action, however innocent, symbolizes what the Olympics have become for so many athletes—it's about them. An unmitigated example of this was reported the next day, when Shani Davis said he would not skate in the team speed skating event. "All in all, I know what's best for me," he said. "And if I feel that not skating the pursuit will do me better for the 1,000 meters, then I'm not going to do it."

And just below the picture of the Swiss athlete-photographers ran an article about a drive-by injustice. Zach Lund, the head-first sledder (and medal contender, many believed) was banned from these Olympics because he used an anti-balding product that contained a substance that is used to mask steroids. But this aggravating injustice merely highlights the fact that Olympic officials have to spend a lot of energy trying to thwart the genuine and willful greed of athletes who illegally use drugs to enhance their performance, who cheat to win the gold.

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February (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50