Time: 2024-07-26
The opening ceremonies of the Olympics are extravagant celebrations of national glories and global unity . But if you watch past this weeks opener to the Games themselves , you ll notice an unusual pattern : Athletes are always talking about God.
If you caught last months Olympic trials , you ll have noticed the same thing . Athletes of every kind continuously gave God the credit , often in explicitly Christian terms . It was almost like a competition within the competition to see who could outdo the others in redirecting praise heavenward.
For my money , US track star Sydney McLaughlin - Levrone won . After breaking the world record ( again ) for womens 400 - meter hurdles , she answered a reporters question this way : Honestlypraise God . I was not expecting that , but he can do anything . Anything is possible in Christ . I m just amazed , baffled , and in shock . The reporter laughed nervously and moved on to the next qualifier.
Athletic discipline is rigorously controlled because , when the whistle blows , nothing is under control . Its chaos , contingency , and chance all the way down . The skies fill with rain clouds ; the court is slick with sweat ; the track is spongy ; your opponents are strategically unpredictable.
With good reason , therefore , do athletes turn to God . None but God is sovereign . I ca nt control the weather , but he can . I ca nt stop my body from failing , but he can . Even the wind and the waves obey him ( Matt . 8:27 ) . Should nt footballs and softballs obey him too?
For athletes , God is nt just in charge of the moment . He s the governor of history . This is true for all of us , at all times , but elite athletes are viscerally reminded of it with a frequency few of us experience.
It should come as no surprise , then , that a victorious athlete will speak of more than God answering a prayer . Hell tell the world a storya saga divinely directed by the heavenly Playwright . Hell say : I was born for this ; I was meant to do it ; this outcome was ordained from the start.
From a secular perspective , it makes no sense : Are you grateful to yourself ? You re the one who just did this!
Sports , like other art forms , are potential channels of transcendence . Its why we watch and admire athletes . Its why athletes sometimes ca nt tell you why they made some choice on the field or what they were thinking in the moment . They were so in the flow , so self - forgetful , so present to teammate and circumstance that they lost themselves . The beauty that results , for them and for us , is marvelous . Our breath catches in our throat . David Foster Wallace called watching Roger Federer a religious experience . In a sense , he was nt wrong.
This should help to explain the sometime acquiescence of otherwise secular fans and journalists to athletes relentless religious enthusiasm . For many , following sports is as close as they get to liturgy . Observancealready a religious wordis a kind of bearing witness , and the experience is far from passive : Fans participate vicariously through their cheers , boos , clapping , stomping , and chanting . Athletes in turn draw energy , strength , and encouragement from this unique relationship.
Having said that , there are other , less savory reasons athletes faith is tolerated among the press and irreligious public . A more cynical take is that many journalists see it as the price they pay to cover sports . They must feign listening to the devout drone on about Jesus before asking , for the umpteenth time , So , what was going through your head when you hit that shot?
At times , if you look closely , you ll see what looks like an ugly dynamic at work . In many popular American sports , an increasingly privileged , irreligious , and still mostly white media writes about a mostly religious , mostly non - white league in which relatively few come from privilege . The upshot is a chasm between journalists and athleteswhether marked by class , education , race , or all of the above . In this respect , liberals are right and conservatives are wrong : You ca nt take politics out of sports . Ironically , this is never more evident than when God enters the conversation.
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