If you watched the Olympic opening ceremonies, you witnessed a small but upsetting detail that has prompted discussion and debate in the media since: the nine-year-old girl out on stage singing “Ode to the Motherland” was not, in fact, actually singing it: she was lip-synching the song while the real singer, a seven-year-old, was concealed behind stage after officials decided that her physical imperfections (crooked teeth) rendered her unfit for a public performance.

The subjects of beauty, femininity, and living as an image-bearer of God are often explored over at Jonalyn Grace Fincher’s blog, and she tackles the Olympics incident—and what it says about our ideas of beauty and physical perfection—in a recent post. Here’s a short excerpt:

…this substitution perpetuates the myth that flawless (read Hollywoodesque) people are also good at everything else. For a few days we all believed the nine year old Miaoke was flawlessly singing. In the days that followed we compared her face to Peiyi’s. What’s interesting is that no on has actually heard Miaoke sing. Wouldn’t that be interesting to compare her voice to Peiyi’s?

We have to shoulder on against this myth that beauty means goodness, beauty means talent, beauty means perfection. We must face the actuality that people with perfectly straight teeth are just as deceptive, ashamed, broken, manipulative, confused as people with crooked teeth.

It’s an insightful post, and just one of many that touches on issues of femininity and human-ness; see Jonalyn’s recent interview with Molly Aley for more discussion about aging and beauty.

While the Olympics are underway, plenty of ministry and outreach is taking place on the streets of Beijing, and at least one Gospel.com community member is taking the opportunity to partner with Olympic evangelists in China. Answers in Genesis is distributing Chinese-language evangelistic DVDs and books in Beijing. Among the items they’re distributing is a brand-new Chinese translation of their Creation Miniseries:

These DVDs were recorded in 2007 on the Pacific island of Saipan before a Chinese audience and then edited and produced this year. A video crew traveled with the AiG team and filmed the live-translation, and AiG has produced them for global use. As they are being provided, people are told that they can duplicate them as often as they like in China.

As part of these efforts, AiG has put online several videos of a Ken Ham presentation (with a Chinese translation) on their website. You can watch the videos online as they add them at the AiG site. As you watch the Games, take a few minutes to pray for those out on the streets of Beijing with the Gospel message!

If you haven’t heard yet, one of our gospel.com community members, Sports Spectrum, is blogging about the Olympics over at More Than Gold News. They’ve been doing short audio updates on the US team and providing rundowns of the medal results as well as upcoming events.

Head over to this post to hear an audio update from August 14th.

They also have a newsreel widget you can add to your website. Click on the play buttons next to the posts to listen to their broadcasts.