Chaos, Idolatry, & Sports

Armstrong confessing to Oprah Winfrey

Source: CNN

Disgraced professional cyclist, Lance Armstrong, is everywhere in the media right now.  His story is a classic rags to riches to disgrace story of a sports icon tarnished beyond recognition.  Not since Tiger Wood's fall from grace has the media had this much fun, clucking and wagging their collective heads—"for shame, for shame."  There are a couple of theological points, at least, to be made of it all.  They have to do with idolatry and chaos.

Chaos is the theological condition of anti-creation or un-creation.  It is that state where God's creative power is absent.  In our lives chaos manifests itself by "sin," but that old-fashioned word is so loaded with baggage that it is hard to use it seriously or even correctly.  Anyone trapped in addiction is living, to one degree or another, in chaos.  Lance Armstrong has been living in chaos, which in his case is composed of cheating, lying, bullying, and self-denial.  He admits as much himself (here).  His disgrace, the media attention, and the skepticism that has widely greeted his confession of sin are all integral elements of the chaotic storm blowing through his life.  The fallout, which has adversely affected so many lives and continues to do so is one of the surest effects of a life trapped in chaos.  There is almost always "collateral damage."

This is where the theological concept of idolatry comes in.  It is a concept that seems especially applicable to the world of sports.  Past Rom Phra Khun postings include reflections on the self-destroying worship of sports success by a South African swimmer, Cameron van der Burgh,who cheated his way to an Olympic gold medal (here) and the awful, hurtful events at Penn State (here).  Idolatry is intimately related to chaos.  It is a face of chaos, a consequence of chaos, and an immensely destructive (un-creative) cause of chaos. Idolatry is that state when we invest worship and trust in anything mundane before and above God.  In sports, success is the god of choice, the prefered spiritual poison of athletes who devote long hours of training often at serious personal sacrifice to be successful—the love of winning, of accolades, and sometimes of financial gain.  When one is willing to do almost anything to be successful, winning has become god.  And chaos ensues.

In our media-driven world, event the media is sucked into the chaos.  Its purveyors become endlessly fixated with failure stories, "rewarding" the disgraced athlete of the moment with still more of its attention and with momentary fame.  We like failure stories, obviously, and that too is part of the chaos that swirls around our stubborn inclination to worship those things that are not worthy of worship.  At the end of the day, we are not constructed to put our faith in mundane things but in The One That Is Beyond And Present—that is Creator, Savior, & Spirit.