The Olympics and Eden

I like the Olympics.

That was an understatement.  I love the Olympics.  They are invading my dreams.  I get edge-of-my-seat nervous for the results of people who I'd never heard of 5 minutes earlier.  I've never felt more appreciative towards the British.

It's a beautiful relationship.

I've also realized the Olympics have great potential.  Positive and negative.

They can show just how nationalistic I am on one hand.  Though glued to the screen for most everything, as soon as an event starts without an American in the running, I've lost interest.  Further, I may or may not have clapped when a Russian girl fell off the balance beam the other night . . . admit it, you did too (at least mentally).

But, also, we find striking positives in the Olympics.  No matter what their perspective or worldview, all onlookers talk about the Olympics as a "testament to the human spirit" or a "great example of worldwide unity", etc, etc.  It doesn't matter who, American, Chinese, post-modern, traditionalist.  There's a thread that runs through people's understanding and view of the Games.

"Isn't it wonderful that all these countries can lay aside their differences and come do this?"


"Isn't it amazing that all these people from different cultures and backgrounds compete with honor at the same thing?"

This view of course is helped along by NBC's use of touching back stories and perfectly edited time-delayed evening broadcasts.

But, I think there's a greater truth to this than mere editing or emotionalism. I began to see it when I saw this quote by J.R.R. Tolkien the other day:

We all long for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature...is still soaked with the sense of exile.

 We are marked by a sense of exile.  We live in a world where every one of us has some sense that "it ought not be this way."

It shows up in subtleties like a minor wound from a friend or weeds growing in our lawn and it shows up in catastrophes like divorce and mass shootings.  No one looks at the injustices and terror of the world and says, "That seems about right."

No one.

This is because we are, as Tolkien puts it, exiles.  We were made for something different.

The New Testament will tell us that we are "aliens and strangers" here and that our true citizenship lies elsewhere.

Where is that other place? Or from what or where do we feel exiled?

I think the Olympics provides us a hint at it.  A foretaste of a world where people from every nation, people speaking every language, and people from every culture come together and live harmoniously in relationship with one another.

We love the Olympics not because it is warm and fuzzy, but because those warm fuzzies point the compass of our hearts back towards Home.  A place where injustice is set right, a place where peoples become a People, a place where our bent hearts are made new.

A lot of people misconceive Christian teaching about The End.  No one is headed for an existence, antiseptically floating on a cloud.  No one is headed for a castle in the sky all to themselves.  No one is heading to a place that fulfills my hopes and my dreams and my desires (as you know if you've read this blog much, because, it's not about me or you).

The End takes place in a city.  A New City.  But very much a physical, real, tangible city.  A place.

A place that our human words and metaphors can barely even attempt to describe.  A place marked by this:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them.  They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.  He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.  I am making everything new."  Revelation 21:3-5

Let our pangs for different, better, and right point us towards a reality that is to come.  A place that is to come.  A city where a God who loves his human creation so much has assured that this perfect home won't be complete until all aspects and peoples are included.

That'll be way better than some games.