Information Related to "Courageous Olympic Moments-and the Race We Run"
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Berlin, Germany, 1936: This was supposed to be the Olympics that showcased Adolf Hitler's boast of Aryan supremacy in athletics. He wanted to show the world how the German "master race" would excel in athletic prowess-to the detriment of the other races. Tragically, in just three year's time, this mindset would help trigger the catastrophe of World War II.
However, Jesse Owens was quite the opposite of what Hitler had in mind about the supposed master race. An African-American, he was the son of a poor sharecropper and the grandson of a slave. He was definitely not a pampered Aryan athlete or part of an elite group.
Yet during those Olympics, and in spite of the psychological pressure exerted against him, he did the seemingly impossible. He blew past all the track and field competitors-including all those of Aryan stock-and won four gold medals!
He became the fastest human being on earth-and proved it by winning the 100-meter sprint, the 200-meter dash, the 400-meter relay team race and the long jump. It was a feat unequaled for 48 years until another African-American, Carl Lewis, was able to repeat it in 1984.
What a courageous achievement in front of the assembled hostile leadership! Hitler had definitely been humiliated.
Montreal, Canada, 1976: The men's gymnastic competition was a close contest between the Soviet and Japanese teams. The overall team score on the last day would determine the winners. Then disaster struck the Japanese team. Shun Fujimoto, one of the key gymnasts, shattered his kneecap during the floor competition.
The pain was excruciating, yet taking pain medicine would disqualify him. He could not be replaced, and withdrawing would most likely mean they would lose. On top of this, Shun had to get a high score on the rings for the team to have a chance at winning the gold.
As he was helped up to reach the rings, the pain was shooting from his injured knee. Yet he knew the worst was still to come. At the end of his performance, he would have to do a flip and then land some seven feet below-all with a broken kneecap!
Not wanting to disappoint his team or his nation, he gritted his teeth and withstood the pain. He swung one final time from the rings, flipped in the air and made a clean landing on both feet-and then his injured knee buckled. But he remained standing and was given a fine score. His team won the gold medal, largely due to Fujimoto's courage in the face of seemingly unbearable pain!
Atlanta, United States, 1996: The U.S. and Russian women's teams were in hot pursuit of the top position in the gymnastic team competition. On the final day, American Kerri Strug badly wrenched her ankle on the vault jump. She still had a second vault to do-but could she?
She was determined not to let her team down. Gritting her teeth, the 18-year-old successfully performed her second vault-although at the cost of a broken ankle. But her team won the Olympic gold!
These are just a few examples of courageous moments in Olympic history. The 2008 Summer Olympics will be held in Beijing, China. There the world will surely witness more such thrilling performances of courage under fire.
Almost 2,000 years ago, a man writing a letter to the early Christians in the Greek city of Corinth also recalled some Olympic-type moments. This man was the apostle Paul.
He had lived at Corinth for a year and a half and knew of the people's great enthusiasm for these Greek athletic games. In fact, Corinth hosted a type of Olympics called the Isthmian games, held for all Greek athletes every two years-the first year after the Olympics and the year before the next Olympics. The term "Isthmian" refers to Corinth being on an isthmus, a narrow body of land between two seas.
The inhabitants of the great commercial center of Corinth were justly proud of all the fanfare that accompanied these athletic contests. Athletes from all over Greece participated in the games that were second in importance to only the Olympics-and they had already been held for more than 500 years! They reveled at the great Isthmian moments of triumph and courage, knowing how their heroes were revered for decades-perhaps even centuries.
Paul, however, wanted the Christians in Corinth to concentrate on a different type of competition-an even greater one than the Isthmian or the Olympic games. This was the spiritual competition they were engaged in with its final reward of the Kingdom of God, and Paul emphasized the importance of finishing the race with a victory.
Paul's words to them are still applicable to all of us as the 2008 Olympics approaches and, more importantly, as we likewise fight the Christian fight and run the spiritual race to God's Kingdom, hoping to one day cross the finish line.
"Don't you realize that in a race everyone runs," Paul stressed, "but only one person gets the prize? So run to win! All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified" (1 Corinthians 9:24-27, New Living Bible).
Let's consider four principles from this passage that help us successfully run the spiritual race set before us.
Paul notes that "all athletes are disciplined in their training." He compares Christians to the runners and boxers of the Isthmian games. Those who competed in these games limited themselves to a sparse diet and trained rigorously. They toiled for seemingly endless hours to toughen their bodies so they could withstand the grueling competition.
Of all the events, boxing was the most brutal. The God's Word translation of 1 Corinthians 9:27 says about the spiritual fight, "So I box-but not as if I were just shadow boxing. Rather, I toughen my body with punches and make it my slave . . ."
In those days the boxer wrapped his knuckles with leather straps. When the Romans took over the competition, the wrapping included lead, iron and even spikes! Sometimes athletes boxed up to four hours at a time-a contest that ended only when a competitor was either knocked out or he signaled defeat by raising his index finger.
At times, Christians can also face grueling trials. Paul warned his fellow minister Timothy that "all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution" (2 Timothy 3:12). Persecution can take many forms, including open hostility, economic hardship, verbal beatings or humiliations for trying to follow God's laws. Much sacrifice is required. Some believers have been imprisoned; many have even lost their lives.
This is why Paul says: "Training the body helps a little, but godly living helps in every way. Godly living has the promise of life now and in the world to come" (1 Timothy 4:8, GWV).
When Paul mentions "training," he had in mind the gymnasium, a common feature in Greek cities of the day. There an athlete would spend time exercising and strengthening his body to prepare for the upcoming games.
In contrast, Paul tells us our priority should be on exercising and developing our spiritual life above and beyond the physical life. Paul is not against physical exercise because he points out that it brings some temporary benefits. However, the training of the spiritual life-which includes the discipline of daily prayer, Bible study, meditation and occasional fasting-should be a priority because it has both temporal and eternal benefits.
No doubt about it--our spiritual performance largely depends on our spiritual conditioning!
Paul also writes, "I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified" (1 Corinthians 9:27, NLB)
Before participating in the games, athletes in Corinth vowed they would follow the rules in their training and not cheat to try to win the crown.
Paul states, "If anyone competes in athletics, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules" (2 Timothy 2:5).
We have probably heard some of the sad stories from Olympic history where athletes were disqualified for violating the rules. They might have been the swiftest or the strongest-but they neglected to obey the rules and were banned from the competition.
In the Christian race, we must also obey the rules-which in this case means keeping God's spiritual laws! When a young ruler asked Jesus Christ what he needed to do to inherit eternal life, Christ answered him, "If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments" (Matthew 19:17).
We should become familiar with God's commandments-including both their physical and spiritual dimensions. Then we should learn to appreciate each one and apply them with God's help. The more we practice them, the better results we get-and it's all for our own good and for the benefit of those around us.
The Today's English Version translates Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 9:27 as: "I harden my body with blows and bring it under complete control, to keep myself from being disqualified after having called others to the contest."
No athlete wins all the races or contests during his lifetime. In baseball jargon, it means no one bats 1,000. The only spiritual athlete who never lost a contest was Jesus Christ! For the rest of us, we have to learn how to handle failure and not give up. It means dealing with our sins and mistakes and becoming more resolved to overcome them.
Michael Johnson, the only Olympic champion to have won both the 200-meter and 400-meter races in the same Olympics, said in his book Slaying the Dragon: "I know that I would not be the runner I am today if it weren't for a string of losses dating from my first year in college to my disappointing performance at the Barcelona Olympics.
"It was a harrowing, bitter time that threatened to define me as someone who couldn't win the big race. But my reaction was the force that tempered my strong dedication and led directly to my performance in the 1996 Olympics. I am stronger because of those losses. Without the awful taste of Barcelona in my mouth, who can say how furiously I would have gone after both the 200 and the 400 in Atlanta?" (1996, p. 50).
Paul said of his mistakes: "Brethren, I count not myself to have laid hold of the prize; but one thing I do, forgetting the things behind, and stretching forth toward the things before, I press on toward the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God, by Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13-14, Living Oracles New Testament).
Paul learned from his mistakes, left them behind and rededicated himself to improving and overcoming. That's the best any of us can hope to do.
Paul uses another illustration of a runner who focuses on the finish line. He says,"Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it" (1 Corinthians 9:24).
Unlike the modern Olympic games where runners-up are awarded a prize, in the ancient games only the winner received a crown. There were no second- or third-place awards-so coming in first meant everything!
In the Isthmian games, those who won the competition were awarded a wreath of wild celery or of pine as the prize. Paul called it a "perishable crown" that was insignificant compared to winning the "imperishable crown" of eternal life (verse 25).
A paraphrase of Hebrews 12:1-2 tells us: "Do you see what this means-all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running-and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in.
"Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed-that exhilarating finish in and with God-he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside God" (The Message).
Remarkably, even when Paul was awaiting his execution in Rome, he still had in mind the Isthmian metaphors of the boxer and the runner to describe his disciplined Christian life. He knew he was about to gloriously conclude his boxing match with the world and his spiritual race.
He wrote to Timothy: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing" (2 Timothy 4:7-8).
One of the archaeologists who excavated in Corinth, Oscar Broneer, described Paul's words this way: "The words in Greek have a more distinctly athletic flavor. To bring this out this passage might be rendered: 'I have competed in the good athletic games; I have finished the foot race, I have kept the pledge (i.e. to compete honestly, with reference to the athletic oath).
"'What remains to me is to receive the crown of righteousness, which has been put aside for me; it will be awarded to me by the Lord, the just umpire, on that day' (an allusion to the last day of the games when, presumably, the prizes were handed out to the winners)" ("The Apostle Paul and the Isthmian Games," Biblical Archaeologist, 1962, p. 31).
Yes, now at the end of his life, the discipline had paid off. Paul was a winner and he no longer feared being disqualified. He was about to cross the finish line.
So the coming Olympics is not only a great athletic event-it can also serve as a reminder to us of our spiritual race as we strive to enter God's Kingdom.
The reward that awaits us is greater than that any Olympic champion ever received-if we apply the principles given by Paul and are able to triumphantly finish our great race! GN
Sports seem to bring out the highest aspirations and the worst attitudes.
Many of its lessons apply equally well to other aspects of life.
The Olympic Games represent a striving for excellence in athletic achievement.
Paul used them to illustrate another great contest.
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Keywords: Olympics courage perseverance discipline determination
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