Moving Towards Openness?

In our College & Career Life Group (aka Sunday School) this morning we discussed the Olympics and how impressive the opening ceremonies were. Then I brought up this article regarding some Olympic athletes who are Christians and are facing a dilemma of sorts during their respective events, and probably even their stay in the Olympic Village, as well as travel throughout the host country, China. How far can they go in displaying gratitude to God whom they credit with their success?

To quote Sanya Richards

"It's important because I want people to know that I'm not the best because I'm Sanya Richards. I'm the best because of God. I truly believe we can't will ourselves to win. I hope people see the same thing I see."

So what is the dilemma? According to the article:

The Olympic charter specifically prohibits demonstrations of
"political, religious or racial propaganda" at "any Olympic sites,
venues or other areas."

China, the host country, also has strict prohibitions regarding religions and their practice.

So what are these athletes to do? Here's what we discussed during our study this morning. For all its wonderful displays and story lines during the opening ceremonies, China is still far from being an open country. Its citizens still have to deal with limited freedom even though there has been some movement in a positive direction. One of the areas still heavily restricted is religion. This is true even for visitors, and the athletes are no exception even during the Olympic games. The athletes should be respectful of the host country's culture and norms, but the host country in desiring to host the Olympics should also be respectful of the culture and norms of the participating countries.

For Christians, we have scriptural direction in regards to such matters of standing for your belief in God. See Daniel 6 (whole chapter), Exodus 14:13, Matthew 10:22, and Luke 21:17-19. Finally we discussed that we should have the correct attitude. See Philippians 2.

What would you do?

What's My Job Description?

Wow! Talk about mixed up priorities. I couldn't pass up commenting on this article regarding the rating assigned to the movie "The Dark Knight".

Ms Clark of the British Board of Film Classification justifies the rating that was assigned to "The Dark Knight" because of the target audience the movie was made for. According to Ms Clark, "Younger teenagers would not have been able to see it, and they are the very people who are going to love it...We would have ended up with far more complaints from people who wanted to see the film and couldn't." I guess that's the same logic the MPAA used in issuing a PG-13 rating to the film.

So what happened to the notion that a film will be rated based on its content and not its intended target audience, or how many people may be upset? How about challenging the producers and directors of movies to work
harder at removing content from a movie if they really are targetting a
certain audience. In other words make the content match the target
audience, or accept the appropriate rating and live with the fact that
the movie as produced missed its target audience.

Its all subjective of course but people rely on the ratings assigned to films to understand the general content of movies, and whether there is anything in them that they would not want to see or experience. By using the logic cited in the article I'm referring to hear it shows that in some cases the BBFC and MPAA are not doing their job. In the connected world we live in we are probably better served checking out reviews by sites such as Plugged In, and Christianity Today, than relying on the ratings assigned by the associations.