I love watching the Olympics. And I can honestly say that I nearly salivated at the thought of enjoying the treat yet again when the 2010 Winter Olympics begin next month. Yet if there's anything that can kill my zest for enjoying a spectacle (even a potentially awe-inspiring and God-glorifying spectacle like the Olympics) it's the knowledge that human lives might've been demeaned, trampled, or ignored somewhere in the process. It was only after the Olympics in 2008 that I began learning of the downright mess of justice that happens in some parts of China. Now, a year and half later, I guess I somehow assumed that a good ol' North American first world country could of course host an international sports event without all the injustice and oppression.

Well buggers. Here we go again.

Vancouver apparently has issues. This article highlights some of the current tensions that are coming to a head this month. Yet it was this article, written three years ago, that really caught my attention while surfing. Far from reducing it's relevance, I believe that the oldness of the article (in news terms at least) actually works in it's favor in this case.

The closer people draw to an event, the more heightened their emotions get about it, both for and against. But to get a real sense of the way things have been for the locals in Vancouver it seems that a more temporally distant perspective is needed, and that second post provides it. It doesn't claim to be an unbiased take of the matter but then let's be honest, is there such a thing as a wholly unbiased take of anything? Mmm, probably not. In any case, it's a sobering enough look at the situation in Vancouver to make me question whether I want to be involved (even as a "passive" viewer) with the Winter Olympics at all.

Of course, a sport is never just a sport, political baggage and the fallen world in general continue to work against anything true, good, or beautiful. Even the wondrous feats of wonderful creatures made in God's very image, something that should be so exhilarating to behold, just has to get mired down in injustice, oppression, and the cheeping of those very same wonderful creatures. Alas, fallen world!

So perhaps I'll be tuning in next month when the games begin, or perhaps not. But both aspects of Olympic games in this world, both the glory and the shame, leave me hungering for more. For a day when excellence and mercy walk hand and hand together, when God's people soar, not on wings of plastic and steel but on rapturous limbs of bodies made new. Then we will run and leap and dance for joy that both our bodies and our souls are finally fit for the eternal exhilaration of heaven.