Famous actor and comedian Russell Brand recently spoke out against the “decadence” of the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony, which has received global backlash from Christians. Brand also took to Instagram and shared an important piece of scripture. In the video, Brand discussed a common issue in the walk with Christ: feeling distant from Jesus.
Brand opened the video message, “There are times that I’ve told you when I felt far from Christ.” He added. “This is the verse that brought me back into connection with our Lord.” The actor then read Isaiah 43:1, which states, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.”
The recently converted Christian continued, “My feelings of faith have altered lately because I’ve had the sense that through fear I might take back my self-will, that I might think I have to be in control of the situation. If you feel that you’re being attacked, if you are under threat, it seems obvious, rational, sensible to take back control.”
The actor further expounded upon the awesome nature of placing one’s faith in Christ, an experience nurtured only by God’s grace. The details of salvation-providing faith are often not understood by those outside of Christianity, as surrendering to Christ forces one to shift one’s perspective away from the material to the spiritual.
“But the sensation of faith — allowing Christ in His sub-molecular potency, right down to the granular, right out into the cosmological to order all things for we are dealing with the King of eternity,” he noted. “And this is something I never understood before I was a Christian, but you are stepping out of the cubic reality afforded to you by materialism and rationalism and into a transcendent realm where you are given grace — where, once I’ve accepted sin, and surrendered, and allowed Him to carry me, I’m granted a new freedom,” Brand added.
Brand emphasized the teaching of Isaiah 43:1 that one should not allow fear to overcome one as the creator of humanity has redeemed them. “Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I’ve called you by your name, you are mine.’ I don’t belong to myself anymore. And that is true freedom,” he said.
In another recent post, Brand addressed the controversy surrounding the opening ceremony at the 2024 Paris Olympics. “I’m pretty down with inclusivity and diversity. I think people should be able to be who they want to be, whether you’ve got a traditional or progressive lifestyle. In a decentralized culture, where you’re not continually being cajoled and bludgeoned by a powerful state backed by commercial interests, you might choose to be a traditional Christian or a Muslim or a Jew or an atheist. And you might want to be a drag queen or whatever. It’s actually no one else’s business,” he said.
However, he called out the seeming mockery seen at the Olympic games. “What was extraordinary, I suppose, to me [about the opening ceremony] appears to be the deliberate evocation of Christian imagery in order to — what? Deride it? In order to what? Attack it? Undermine it?”
Watch Brand’s criticism of the ceremony below:
He continued, “What are the values that are being proposed here? Is it hedonism? Is it decadence? Is it individualism? Is it that the self — your own personal set of decrees, desires and edicts — are the apex and supreme hierarchy of ideologies? That there is nothing superior and supreme to which we have to surrender?”
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.