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

Belief

Creed

Generosity

Spiritual formation

24 January 2025

4 min read

Love Island: 'thanking the universe’ makes no sense

The universe doesn’t even know you exist, so don't waste time thanking it.

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

A Composite image of Love Island contestants stand together in a group under a fiery heart.

ITV.

I don't watch Love Island, but maybe I should. A friend noticed something odd happening on it recently. Contestants often seem to credit 'the universe' with something happening. The universe has been thanked; it’s been used to bring solace to those unlucky in love (i.e. ‘the universe has your perfect woman lined up to enter the villa’ ); it’s been ‘prayed’ to, even.

I read a moving article about a mother some while ago, reflecting back on the difficult birth of her now teenage son, filled with a sense of gratefulness for the sheer gift of his life. Her words were simple: “As my son turns 16, I thank the universe his fraught birth is only a memory.”

‘Thanking the universe’ has become a common trope these days, maybe because people feel they can no longer thank God. Being thankful, of course, is a good thing, and gratitude is the subject of significant scientific research. Numerous studies have shown the beneficial effects of a grateful approach to life. It helps people live longer, sleep better, reduces toxic emotions like regret or resentment, and builds self-respect. By consciously being grateful for ordinary things – a roof over their heads, clean air to breathe, or a kind word from a friend, people who were previously dogged by resentment and grievance about the way life had treated them have found it possible to express appreciation of others, let minor insults pass and negotiate successfully with tricky neighbours.

Gratitude is the ability to recognise good things in our lives that we didn’t create. It reminds us that we are not the makers of our own good fortune. Saying a simple ‘thank you’ turns us outwards, away from a sense that we deserve the good things that come our way. It contradicts any idea that we are somehow self-sufficient, helping us recognise that we are thoroughly dependent on factors beyond ourselves for most of what makes our lives enjoyable and fruitful.

All the same, there is something odd about being grateful to an impersonal object - like a tree for standing, a river for flowing, or, for that matter, to the universe itself, especially when we usually think of that universe as blind and indifferent. Bob Emmons, a Professor of Psychology in California points out an important distinction between gratitude and thankfulness. We tend to be grateful for something, but thankful to someone. We often talk about life or a particular talent as a ‘gift’, but for something to be a gift, it really needs to be given by a giver. Something that is not deliberately offered can’t easily be seen as a gift.

Imagine finding a bunch of flowers in the street outside your home, dropped by an absent-minded shopper. Then imagine a similar bunch of flowers given to you by a friend who knew you needed cheering up. Which would mean more? Which is really a gift? You might be grateful that the lost flowers exist and are sitting in a vase on your kitchen table, but they would mean so much more if they were a gift from a friend. Gifts which come from a giver, deliberately chosen, and personally given, mean so much more than things which would just happen to be there.

While a sense of gratitude can be psychologically beneficial, something even better happens if we learn to see everything we have as a gift from a giver, rather than a fortunate accident, or mere chance.

A gift we receive is never ultimately about the gift – it’s about the relationship established between us and the one who gave it.

The practice of giving thanks in Christian prayer is rooted in the idea of Creation - that the world around us is not here by chance but is a gift from a God who made it. It therefore changes the way we look at that world. The simple discipline of saying grace before a meal transforms the food from a random plate of meat and veg into a sign of love and provision for our needs. Thanksgiving reminds me that the tree outside my window doesn’t just happen to be there, but is a gift from a heavenly Father who made it and gave it, at least in this moment, to me as the person observing it right now. As G.K. Chesterton once put it: “If my children wake up on Christmas morning and have someone to thank for putting candy in their stockings, have I no-one to thank for putting two feet in mine?”

We often say it’s the thought that counts. If that’s true, then if there is no thought behind the thing we receive, then somehow, however good it is, it means little. A gift we receive is never ultimately about the gift – it’s about the relationship established between us and the one who gave it. Gratitude is better than greed, but if there is no-one behind the things we enjoy, then what we have is not really a gift. To put it bluntly, the universe doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t even know you exist. So, thanking it makes no sense whatsoever.

If, however, behind the gift, there is a Giver who gave us what we needed, or even more than we needed, whether or not we deserved it, that gift becomes something much more significant. That gift – friendship, food, forgiveness and much more, becomes a token of love – a sign that despite everything, there is a God who made us, thinks of us, and even beyond that, gives himself for us at great cost, an even deeper reality than the gift itself.

A version of this article originally appeared in the Times

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