Volume 27, No. 8                                                    
February 24, 2002

Playing Games

   The Olympics:  a five-ring circus, or a potent symbol of our potential?  To most of us, the Games fall somewhere in the middle, representing all that’s good and bad about sport and the human spirit.   

   Though it’s tempting to see the modern, restored Olympics as a mere shadow of some pristine ancient pattern, the originals weren’t exactly perfect, either.  Historians tell us the first Games were highly political, overly commercial and stained by cheating and brutality, right from their start in 776 B.C.

   That’s when athletes began to gather every four years at Olympia in western Greece to compete in honor of Zeus.  All  city-states were to lay down their arms during the Games in “a Sacred Truce” but it didn’t always hold.  Rival cities fought for control of the Games for centuries and a full-scale battle once broke out in the middle of a wrestling match.

   Events such as the long jump, javelin throw and a foot race in full body armour were once tests of a soldier’s fitness for battle.  In the competitions themselves, brutality was normal, especially in the pankration, a combination of wrestling and bare-knuckled boxing.  Rules allowed for kicking, gouging and finger-breaking.

   Losers were shamed but victors were honoured with life-size statues in Olympia and back home. Eubatus, a very confident runner from Cyrene, arrived in 408 A.D. with his own statue already made.

   Though athletes could protect themselves from dirt and sun with olive oil, wrestlers were to dust themselves with powder. But cheaters rubbed an oily hand over body parts to make them hard to grab.  If caught, cheaters were beaten or fined and the athletes' path to the stadium was lined with statues of Zeus financed by those penalties.  One boxer who bribed three others had to pay a “six-figure” fine!

   Even the line between "amateur" and "professional" was blurred.  Many competitors relied on their city to pay for the glory they brought home.  In a preview of today’s free agency, those athletes were sometimes bribed to switch cities so -- in the world's first sports salary cap -- Athens limited Olympic victory grants to five years wages plus free meals for life at city hall.   

   Women were largely excluded from the Games.  Young girls could go, but married women caught watching were thrown head-first from Mt. Typaeum.  All were allowed to participate in their own sport festival honouring Zeus’ companion, the goddess Hera.  The athletes wore a tunic that covered one breast.    

   The Olympics ended in A.D. 393 when Holy Roman Emperor Theodosius abolished the “pagan” Games.  They weren’t fully revived until 1894 when Frenchman Baron Pierre de Coubertin staged a modern version in Greece.  His idea was not to restore the Games exactly as they were played originally.  Even today, few of us would want a full duplication of the first Olympics because that would be culturally irrelevant and ignore the great gains made, not just in technology, but in social values affecting everything from violence to the involvement of women.  Instead, people around the world seek a restoration of the Olympic ideals;  the timeless principles that power the pursuit of excellence, achievement and harmony among humankind.

   In the same way, the church must passionately pursue the purity and perfection of God’s original plan without confusing that quest with a need to impose every element of a first century pattern on the process.  The Gospel is clear.  The teachings of Jesus are relevant and reproducible today.  But it’s not a cynical sell-out to modern society when we seek a fresh approach that places the Gospel in a setting that speaks to the hearts and lives of people today -- people who don’t buy the notion the golden age of godliness was the 1940s, 50s and 60s.

   It’s time to declare a “Sacred Truce” among warring factions in the church.  Instead of anyone trying to wrest control, let’s embrace our differences and let our grappling with the scriptures take place without the kicking, gouging and bare-knuckled brutality that’s characterized so many of our dealings with each other.  

   That will happen a lot quicker if church leaders resist the temptation to build monuments to themselves, seeking instead to honour the One true God in whose Name we all run the race.  Rather than trying to win the allegiance of those on “the other side”, let’s focus our energies on those who need Jesus.  Let’s play by the rules, but make sure we’re not adding our own.  And yes, some of us think that’s precisely what’s happened with the well-intentioned but flawed traditional interpretation of passages that, on the surface, seem to prohibit the full participation of women.  The truth has nothing to fear from examination.  Just because we’re wrestling with it doesn’t mean we’re playing games.

By Rick Gamble, published in Cross Current, the weekly newsletter of the Followers of Christ congregatgion in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.  Reprint at will in not-for-profit publications.