Article

Character

Creed

Sport

6 August 2024

6 min read

Letter to the Olympians

A veteran sports chaplain writes a letter to Christian Olympians, on how they can find joy amid the 'funerals and weddings' of the games.

Ashley Null

Ashley Null serves as a chaplain to elite athletes and coaches. He is also a priest and an academic.

A swimmer at the end of a race, looks to the result screen.

Adam Peaty after an Olympic race.

BBC.

Dear Friend,

Congratulations on being selected to compete in the Olympics - the greatest games in the world! I’m sure you can’t wait to get out there and show the world what you’ve got - your amazing talent and skill and all the hard work and dedication that has gone into becoming an Olympian.

Now, it has been said that being at the Olympics is like experiencing 10 funerals for every 1 wedding. You know this if you’re in elite sport - every one person’s victory is at the expense of many others’ agony of defeat.

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?

First, God has called you to the Olympics to experience true joy.

The first reason God gave the good gift of sport is for it 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.

This joy will help you in the ups and especially in the downs over the next few weeks. The Bible makes this clear again and again, that it is joy that helps us endure the difficulties in life.

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.

As you compete you can witness to many the wonderful joy of sport... By not torturing yourself in defeat with self-loathing and shame, instead rejoicing with those who win and weeping with those who don’t.

Second, but 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.

The second reason God give gifts to his people is to use them as a school of discipleship.

St Paul writing to Christians in Ephesus said: “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ."

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

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.

But what if things don’t work out as you hoped? God will be there for you and with you in the midst of the pain. As you grieve, look for Jesus.

He will give you the comfort you long for.

He will remind you that his love for you is stronger and will last much longer than your present pain.
He will assure you that he still has good things for you.

Ask his help to hold on to this truth. Because when you are hurting, it is so easy to listen to lies. You see, it’s a real danger to view God as your ultimate coach.

The lie says that if you make good spiritual choices then you will be on God’s winning team and blessed with success. But when success doesn’t happen, the lie says it’s because you have made bad choices and don’t deserve to be on the team, at least not until you can prove yourself spiritually good enough again.

In all of your sporting career you’ve probably been taught to only feel good about yourself when you’re winning, that if you lose, you’re nothing. Your coaches may have told you to use the shame of losing to motivate you to success.

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. But only love has the power to make humans feel significant, performance never will.

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.”

Now, as people reconciled to God there is no condemnation, nothing can separate us from God’s love and we are adopted as God’s children - this is who you are. This is where you identity alone can be found. This is where you can find peace, even in the midst of a major loss.

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!

Adapted by Jonny Reid, for Christians in Sport, from Pastoral Care in the Olympic Village by Ashley Null in Sports Chaplaincy: Trends, Issues and Debates.

Article

Comment

Politics

Sport

9 September 2025

5 min read

Bad blood is damaging both football and politics

Are we all in the stands baying for blood?

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

A view from a football stand over heads to the pitch.

Steven Collomb-Clerc on Unsplash.

Am I going mad? It definitely feels like I’m going mad. Let me tell you two tales, one about an ugly football match, the other about the early release of a ‘political’ prisoner’. It feels as if society, not just the fans in the stands, are baying for blood. I’m mad about it. Here's why.

There’s been little love lost between my team Liverpool and their recent opponents Newcastle United.

Liverpool’s crime? Wanting to buy Newcastle’s striker, Alexander Isak. How dare they!

If reports are to be believed – and everything should be viewed with raised eyebrows when it comes to football transfers – Isak informed Newcastle of his desire leave at the end of last season and was given assurances he would be able to. Liverpool, with no recognised striker following Diogo Jota’s death placed a bid of around £110 million.

A British transfer record fee. As an opening bid. A fee subsequently described as “disrespectful.” I feel like I’m going mad. If anyone would like to ‘disrespect’ me with £110,000,000, please let me know and I’ll send you my bank details.

The game’s turning point is a tackle by Newcastle’s Anthony Gordon on Virgil Van Dijk, Liverpool’s captain, just before half-time.

Gordon comes flying in, studs up, raking the back of Van Dijk’s leg. It is a deeply unprofessional tackle from Gordon. A cynical attempt to hurt a colleague with no discernible attempt to win the ball. It’s a tackle that’s beneath him, frankly.

By the time Anthony Gordon lunges in, the tone of the match is clear: we’re here to cause harm to anyone in a red shirt. (And the Newcastle fans are still in the stands cheering them on).

At the end of the day, I’m just glad Liverpool won. But I am genuinely baffled and alarmed by the amount of normally level-headed people who became intent on causing harm because of a (potential) transfer. Bad blood is flowing, indeed rushing to the head of many of them.

Most of all, I’m glad Liverpool won because, when I say what I’m about to say, you know it’s not coming from a place of bitterness that my football team lost a match. Because another story this week has left me feeling like I’m going mad: the release of Lucy Connolly from prison.

In July 2024, three young girls were stabbed to death at a dance class in Southport. In the aftermath, amid (false) reports that the killer was an asylum seeker, riots broke out across the country as people targeted mosques, asylum seeker accommodation, and even libraries.

In the midst of this, Lucy Connolly – whose husband was, at the time, a Conservative county councillor – tweeted:

“Mass deportation now, set fire to all the [f***ing] hotels full of the [b***ards] for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government & politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it.”

Having left prison, Connolly told The Telegraph that she was a “political prisoner” and that Keir Starmer “needs to look at what people's human rights are, what freedom of speech means and what the laws are in this country.”

The irony of her saying this in an interview with a national newspaper was apparently lost on her.

Am I going mad? It definitely feels like I’m going mad.

Lucy Connolly encouraged people to burn down hotels with people inside. To spill blood. She pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred by publishing and distributing ‘threatening or abusive’ written material on X. She literally admitted to doing this in a court of law.

But she is now being hailed in some quarters as a political martyr and champion of free speech. Let’s have it right: you are free to say what you want, but you are not free from the consequences of your speech. Whether you like it or not, migrants and asylum seekers are made in the image of God, as we all are, and are beloved by the creator of the universe. None of us has the right to end their lives. Incitement of violence towards them is rightly a crime.

She deserves to be in prison.

The people who rioted last year are ultimately responsible for their actions. But Lucy Connolly – and everyone else who incited violence in the aftermath of the Southport attacks – is also partly to blame for cultivating a society in which thugs feel as though that is an acceptable course of action. Now she is released from prison, every media outlet, every interviewer, every politician who repeats her reality-defying nonsense without challenge is as culpable as she is for fostering this climate of violence. This is before we even begin to talk about the record numbers of asylum seekers who have already died in our care.

It was ultimately Anthony Gordon’s stupid decision to go in studs-up on Van Dijk. But referee Simon Hooper and the Newcastle fans should reflect on their part in fostering a climate of violence in which Gordon’s felt his decision was reasonable, too.

We are all Simon Hooper. We are all the referee. When we allow rhetoric to become calls for violence, this has real-world consequences. People get hurt and killed. Blood is spilled. We are all responsible for the society in which we live, and the rhetoric of the debate that occurs therein.

It’s not just febrile Newcastle fans that are losing their grip on reality: there seems to be a society-wide willingness simply to bypass the concrete facts of reality to further personal ideologies. The more people like Lucy Connolly are rehabilitated by media whitewashing, the more statements like “set fire to all the [f***ing] hotels full of the [b***ards] … if that makes me racist, so be it” become acceptable, the less safe the most vulnerable in society become and the more likely they are to be killed.

That’s the nub of it. Lucy Connolly should be in prison because what she said leads to people being killed. No-one should have been surprised when Anthony Gordon went in on Van Dijk that night. No-one should feign surprise when migrants and asylum seekers are eventually killed on the basis of rumour and misinformation. Because they will be. And because we will all have been cheering on from the stands.

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