“This is unjust”: Travesty at the Olympics

Yesterday, in the Olympic Games, Italian boxer Angela Carina surrendered her boxing match to Algerian boxer Imane Khelif after just two punches and forty-six seconds. Before she forfeited, she cried out, “This is unjust.” The reason she forfeited the match so quickly was that she was fighting a biological male. At the Olympics! Let that fact sink in for a moment. A biological male who considers himself female was allowed by the Olympic Committee to fight in the women’s boxing division. If Khelif dominates other matches like he did this one, he will end up winning Olympic gold—in women’s boxing.

These facts do not make sense to the rational mind. Not only should we ask, how could a sport where women box each other be celebrated? But also, How can a man be allowed to participate in that sport? How could a man be allowed to hurt women under the guise of sport? Many will talk in the coming days about how ridiculous this is. Many will be righteously outraged, as they should be.

But the question we really need to focus on is this: how did we get here? As with all decisions contrary to God’s design, the issue is theological. The issue is spiritual. 

The Rule of Honor

There is a hard-wired rule written into the fabric of the universe called the rule of honor. It is stated in 1 Samuel 2:30 when a prophet declared, “Therefore the LORD, the God of Israel, declares: ‘those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed.’” The prophet states that those who give honor to the triune God will, in turn be honored. Those who fail to give proper honor to God will be shamed. They will be “lightly esteemed” by God.

Therefore, when we understand and see that something shameful is taking place in front of us, it begins by first treating God lightly. The issue always begins vertically with man dishonoring God. Paul says the exact same thing in Romans 1:21-25:

[21] For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. [22] Claiming to be wise, they became fools, [23] and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. [24] Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, [25] because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. 

The prophet and then the apostle Paul are saying that if you mock God, He gives you up to your futility. If you turn your back on God’s design, you will inevitably walk in absurdity. Man thinks he has pulled the wool over God’s eyes. In reality, God has given man up to futility. “Claiming to be wise, we became fools.”

Mocking God and the Futility that Follows 

Our secular culture does not just ignore God. It mocks God. It dishonors God. It is not enough to edit out crosses from Olympic posters. Christ must also be blasphemed. During the Olympic Opening Ceremony, a crude visual of Leonardo DaVinci’s The Last Supper was re-enacted. Drag queens took the place of the disciples, and a woman dressed in a large halo took the place of Jesus in the Supper’s depiction. Why would those planning the Olympics in Paris go out of their way to mock Christ like they did—for the same reason that they did 2,000 years ago? Christ stands for righteousness. Jesus Christ is the truth. Jesus is the only way to God (John 14:6; Acts 4:12). And He testifies that the works of the world are evil (John 7:7). But in mocking Christ, who is the light of the world, the world sits in darkness. The world doesn’t see the lunacy of its own thinking.

In mocking God, the world also inevitably mocks God’s created order. And that’s how we get a biological man boxing a biological woman in the Olympics. God made us in his image as male and female (Gen 1:26; 28). God’s design of maleness and femaleness is hard-wired into the cosmos. If you had a spaceship and you could fly to another galaxy, you could not be rid of your XX or XY chromosomes. It is who we are because it is who God made us to be. We are mankind, created in God’s image, either male or female. And no amount of shaking your fist at God can change that reality. But when you dishonor God, God gives you up to your own futility. That’s how his judgment works. God allows you to fall on your own sword. He allows you to confuse the most basic things in your mind: like your own gender. Or affirming someone else’s gender as something contrary to what it actually is. So, we shouldn’t be surprised by the travesty of a man beating a woman in women’s boxing. It is the direct result of what happens when a culture dishonors its Creator. When you dishonor God, he gives you up to the futility of your thinking.