Are the Olympics Good News?

How the games are shot through with both sin and grace

It’s hard to argue with my daughter. When she takes the time to be critical of something, she comes loaded with information and well-reasoned, clearly-articulated arguments.

She thinks the Olympics are scandalous. Her viewpoint on this is bolstered by her experience in our church, where every day we open our doors to feed a staggering number of people in our small city as a means of filling the gaps for the food insecure and unhoused of St. Catharines. It runs entirely on the generosity of donors, who give it time, money and groceries; not one tax dollar funds this essential 365-days-a-year feeding program. It is impossible to see the need in our community, represented in the hundred-plus people coming every day for breakfast, and not conclude that our richly-resourced nation, in not seeing this desperate level of poverty and hunger as the first order of business in the allocation of money and resources, has a huge priority problem. And then it’s not a huge jump to hear numbers like $11 billion bandied about as the cost of the Paris Olympics and conclude that this extravagant outpouring of resources from host countries for events that are so elite and rarified is downright sinful.

“It’s just an excuse for countries to spend taxpayer dollars on glamour and prestige and ignore the basic needs of their people,” she declares passionately, before detailing numerous abuses and outrages to back up her point. Paris unabashedly has been rounding up the unhoused for the past two years, not to crack the back on homelessness, but to relocate inner-city poverty to the suburbs so the poor won’t sully the image the city presents to the world. Human rights advocates have long railed against the discrepancy between the Olympics’ stated commitment to justice, peace and human well-being and their blatant cooperation with the governments of host countries whose human rights track records are among the worst in the world. Doping scandals and judging controversies add to a picture of corruption that results in athletes’ bodies and reputations bearing the brunt of political posturing and ambition.

Most hypocritically, there is a tremendous economic disparity built into who gets to the podium of any given event at any given Games. Countries that prioritize money and resources for sports win the most medals. The children of families that have disposable income and that have sacrificed unfathomable quantities of money and time get identified and supported and cheered along. The Olympics don’t celebrate the best in the world; they celebrate the best of those who had the dollars needed to finance their quest. Perhaps the most dishonest thing about the Olympics is how the occasional upset and surprise win allows us to continue to believe that anybody from anywhere can achieve anything.

There is a world in which the Olympics could and should be something else. The story we like to tell is that the investment of taxpayer dollars pays out in increased tourism and money pumped into much-needed infrastructure. That this has mostly been proven not to be the case—that host countries are more likely to see Olympic tourists displace other kinds of visitors and that infrastructure investments can prove to be expensive and not particularly useful in the long run—doesn’t mean that the Olympics couldn’t be a means by which intentional choices are made around bolstering local and small businesses, enlisting procurement strategies that favour social benefit and environmental sustainability when awarding contracts or making affordable housing and more equitable access to sport and art..

I know that my daughter stands on the side of justice when she calls out the Paris and all other iterations of the Olympics.

I also know that I want to live in a world where competition can bring joy, where excellence is pursued and celebrated and where whole teams of people invest themselves in wondering what power, potential and possibility in the human body and spirit remain still to be discovered and unlocked. I want to live in a world where another person’s accomplishment is seen as a thing in which we can all take delight. I want to live in a world where beauty matters. That’s what I see when I watch our Olympic athletes. I see an extravagant, unnecessary, excessive outpouring of beauty. I see people who have invested themselves in the minute and the specific ways that the human body can be powerful and magnificent. I see the world coming together to care about something with very little utilitarian value and with such capacity to nourish the soul.

The Olympics began thousands of years ago in Greece as a religious undertaking. They were held in a sacred place and the competition was part of a public festival that involved sacrifice to Zeus that was thought to facilitate the whole people’s well-being. I would be in the category of faithful who imagine that the main sacrifice God wants from us was long ago summarized by the prophet Micah: that we learn to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God. There is no reason why the Olympics couldn’t be part of this kind of faithfulness. This premiere sporting event could be intentionally and creatively used to align our world better with the ways of God’s justice and mercy, and that would be a good thing.

And yet what I can’t help seeing in the Olympics is something that God offers to us. What always bubbles up for me in an Olympic year, even knowing all of the problems and critiques, is the reality of grace.

I see in these athletes, each at the top of the top of their disciplines, an astounding combination of dedication, folly, good luck, community, sacrifice and discipline which goes into any pursuit of excellence, any pushing of the human body and psyche to achieve a narrow brilliance in one particular skill. It is undeniably a partnership between all of the things that we as human beings can nurture and pursue, as well as the realization of how much of what we can do comes from beyond ourselves and our own individual resources. The most appropriate posture toward this partnership must be surrender and gratitude.

I see in our role as spectators a clear desire for the communal that our individualism can never quite override. We collectively agree to be swept together into a shared drama, and in doing so, we  set aside any stakes that may be claiming their ground in our real lives so that we can feel collective pride and make memories as a country—silly, loud, whooping memories. And at the end of all of the pageantry and competition and podiums, it really is just a game.

I hear God’s clapback to our innate and easily sinful drive for survival and competition, our long human history of drawing bloody battle lines around who is worthy, who owns what, who will rule and who will serve. Surely it must be a profound gift from God to show us the way to draw battle lines instead around mountain bike trails and swimming pools and gymnastic floors. I imagine God delighting in and blessing the fervent prayers that ascend from athletes and spectators alike, from all sides and for all of our teams. Those prayers aren’t for God to come down violently on one side or another but for strength and clarity and strong limbs and stellar hand-eye coordination and for power and artistry and control to come together in physical feats that defy belief.

For a few weeks every two years, we get to have athletes, most of whom are excelling in sports about which we rarely hear, be centered in our national conversation and fighting for reasons that are right and ultimately inconsequential: to push us to be better, and to sweep us into a few shining moments of something that gets to be about all of us.