Competing at the Olympics is like experiencing ten funerals for every wedding. Every one person’s victory is at the expense of many others’ agony of defeat.
So writes Ashley Null, chaplain to elite athletes and coaches, who also is an Anglican priest and an academic. The following letter to the Olympians is taken from his article, Pastoral Care in the Olympic Village, by Ashley Null in the Routledge publication, Sports Chaplaincy: Trends, Issues and Debates*.
Dear Friend,
Congratulations on being selected to compete in the Olympics – the greatest games in the world! These next few weeks will be full of the strongest emotions and potential challenges to how you think about your faith. What does it look like to integrate your faith and your sport in the midst of such pressure?
Joy
First, God has called you to the Olympics to experience true joy. God gave the good gift of sport to bring joy.
“In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course,” writes the Psalmist.
God compares our sport to a honeymoon – both physically and emotionally satisfying – what high praise for the joy of sport!
Every race, every match, every competition, is an opportunity to experience this God-given joy.
These next few weeks, make a conscious effort to count every blessing, thanking God for the joy of sport and the amazing experience he has given you.
Discipleship
Second, Elite Competition isn’t only about joy. It includes uncertainty, fear, and even loss. God can use all aspects of sport, both the highs and the lows, to draw you closer to Himself. God has given you this vocation as a ‘school of discipleship’ to learn what it looks like to love God and love others.
As you compete and lean on the promises of God, you have endless opportunities to grow in living out your faith.
- To remember your identity is based on the cross and not your success and failures
- To remember the power you have to compete does not come from your own strength but from Christ who is at work in you
- To remember your standing before God does not change because of God’s grace, whether you win or lose, fail or succeed
- To remember that if you do lose, God will be there with you and use your pain, but that the pain will not have the last word in your life – God will work all things for good .
Witness
Third, you can serve others as you compete.
As you compete you can witness to many the wonderful joy of sport:
- By competing drug-free and within the rules you can show an alternative to the winner-takes-all attitude so prevalent in all sport.
- By not treating your opponent as the enemy but valuing them as a ‘co-worker’ you can push each other on to excellence.
- By showing humility and thankfulness in victory, recognising that other Christian athletes have worked just as hard and prayed just as much, but that God has set aside gifts other than Olympic success for them.
- By not torturing yourself in defeat with self-loathing and shame, instead rejoicing with those who win and weeping with those who don’t.
In all this you can show the wonderful, transforming news of the gospel at work in your life as you experience joy in the midst of the funerals and weddings seen at the Olympic Games.
Identity
But what if things don’t work out as you hoped? You’ve probably been taught to only feel good about yourself when you’re winning, that if you lose, you’re nothing.
Friend, you need to separate your sense of worth, your identity, from your performance. Equating significance and achievement will always leave your self-esteem at the mercy of the natural ups and downs of being a top-level sportsperson.
The good news of the gospel is that in God, you have unconditional love, not based on any of your performance. You are valued and loved not because of the talents you have or the way you compete. Your worth and value is seen in the love God proved he had for you when he died for you on the cross.
St Paul tells us:
“God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Friends, enjoy these next few weeks and the amazing opportunity it is. If you feel the pain of loss, know that with Jesus pain never has the last word. His love always does. If you win, know that it is a wonderful gift of God to be thankful for, and he will make good use of it, long after you have retired, giving you decades of joy.
Solo Deo Gloria!
*This publication is the first collection of its kind to bring together leading scholars in sports chaplaincy with a view to providing professional accreditation and training amidst the fast-emerging field of sports theology.
Till next week,
