On the Origin of the Torch

In three months my country will host the Winter Olympic Games. Vancouver and Whistler are incredibly beautiful places and that, like everywhere else on the planet, has its dark side. (See here and here and here.) The beauty and problems of a city are magnified the moment it is awarded the right to go into debt to schmooze the world.

There are plenty of opinions out there about whether the Olympic Games are worth all the effort and cost. National pride, big business, human solidarity and human depravity all mix together in these global gatherings that some love and others hate.

The Olympic torch is currently making its way across Canada. The relay will, of course, end up with a cauldron being lit during the opening ceremonies on February 12. That torch is creating a lot of warm fuzzies for the Great White North as it jogs its way across our wide-open spaces.

All this leads to the interesting question of origins and whether they matter. You see, the original idea for a great national torch relay, which has become the prelude to every Olympics since the end of World War II, belonged to none other than Adolph Hitler. It was part of Hitler’s desire to unite and redefine the German nation that led him to create the first torch relay for the 1936 Berlin Games.

Hitler loved the image of fire and found in the ancient Greek Olympic tradition justification for making it central to his moment in the sun. The torch relay was the tyrant’s way of linking the Nazi movement with the best of Greek history – or so he hoped. Ironically, the modern Olympics were intended to move humanity beyond our warring madness and into kinship and unity. Well, we know how that went and how it goes. We’re still not over our fighting and the torch is now just another commercial opportunity for soda pop and banks.

So, does the origin of the torch matter?

Perhaps the origins reveal more than we’re willing to admit. Hitler wanted to unite his dark dreams with a great ancient civilization. And, truth be told, he did that. Ancient Greece was equally built on warring and conquering, not just tubby philosophers in togas.The light that shines at the heart of the Olympics may unintentionally remind us of just how united we really are in our madness that no fun and games will ever coerce us out of.

The only hope for the Lower East Side or Afghanistan, or anywhere else for that matter, will not be torch relays or two weeks of fun and corporate games. The hope is the light of the world, Jesus Christ, and we who know him must continue to hold him high, resist the madness, engage our world counter-culturally, and not allow our light to be put under a bushel.