The Olympics, the Prosperity Gospel, and the Theology of Martyrdom

A lot of my friends on Facebook have recently been sharing this picture of recent Gold-medalist Gabby Douglas; the caption reads, "'I give all the glory to God. It's kind of a win-win situation. The glory goes up to Him and the blessings fall down on me.' Gabby Douglas after winning the Gold, Women's All Around Gymnast.”

Let's parse this out a little bit and think about it theologically. She gives all the glory to God. Nothing wrong there, and a noble sentiment.

Skip over the win-win part for a bit.

Then she says that the glory goes up to him. Again, great.

Then she says that the blessings fall down on her. Again, can't argue. She has clearly been blessed with enormous amounts of God-given talent and dedication, and has achieved a gold medal as a result. Only a completely world-denying spirituality would question whether somebody's gratuitous amounts of gracefulness and ability are something other than a blessing. Chariots of Fire, anyone?

But the troubling part is the seeming economy of exchange between giving God the glory he is due and receiving his blessing in return. Is it really a win-win situation? Do we receive God's blessing for giving him glory? It depends, I suppose, on how we define "win-win" and how we define "blessing."

Before I go on, let me make clear that I am not denying the sincerity of Gabby Douglas's faith or trying to cast aspersion on her performance at the Olympics. All this probably says more about us collectively as evangelical Christians than it does about this single gymnast.

Nevertheless, it is fruitful to ask about the nature of the blessing we receive for giving God glory, or doing his will, or associating with Christ in the first place. Because Douglas's comments seem to come dangerously close to a sort of prosperity gospel. I do A, B, and C for God; and he improves my life (materially) with X, Y, and Z. Maybe Gabby Douglas didn't mean it this way. I don't know. She was in the thrill of the moment, and no doubt a good many things were racing through her mind.

In any case, do these types of comments (or the quasi-spiritual comments and gestures made by countless professional athletes after, say, scoring a touchdown) have anything to do with Christian spirituality? Many an Olympic devotional reflection has had occasion to refer to Paul's famous words in 1 Corinthians 9:25, indirectly referring to the "Isthmian Games" (games similar to the ancient Olympic Games), which were held in Corinth: The athletes discipline themselves "to obtain an incorruptible crown; but we an incorruptible." This is more an illustration than anything else. Paul's comments in 2 Corinthians 11, however, are more apropos, for Paul deploys the list there as the marks of genuine apostleship; this is what marks him out as a disciple of Christ, over against the "super apostles," who identify themselves by their distinction, their quaffed presentation, their credentials, their success:

Far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.

Or consider the Letter to the Hebrews, where hardship is considered a mark of God's love rather than his abandonment:

And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
    nor be weary when reproved by him.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
    and chastises every son whom he receives.”

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Note that these two passages do not imply that all evil that happens is somehow God trying to work for your good. God is not the author of evil. Rather, the point is, it's a pretty good bet that God is at work in what you are doing if you experience resistance to it or hardship because of it. God's favor, God's love, is not directly linked to our success.

Furthermore, did the martyrs think like Gabby Douglas? The church built on Paul's counterintuitive spirituality by developing a theology of martyrdom that reinterpreted God's blessing as utterly antithetical to prosperity. Listen to the Apostolic Father Ignatius of Antioch, who wrote to the church at Rome while he was on his way there to be killed for his faith.

I write to the Churches, and impress on them all, that I shall willingly die for God, unless you hinder me. I beseech of you not to show an unseasonable good-will towards me. Allow me to become food for the wild beasts, through whose instrumentality it will be granted me to attain to God. I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ.

A little macabre, perhaps, but it provides a bracing tonic to counter the illness of the prosperity gospel. (And note that the church has always condemned seeking out martyrdom for martyrdom's sake; God is on the side of life, not death.) For the martyrs, who, in the traditional attribution, are the seed of the church, "attaining to God," in Ignatius's remarkable phrase, had everything to do with embracing suffering for Christ and his kingdom. I submit, however, that the equation of God's blessing with winning a gold medal has everything to do not with the kingdom but with the American Dream. And there is very little overlap between the two. In fact, unmitigated success may actually be the sign of God's abandonment, for it is possible that he gives us over to our loves that are not ultimately directed to him (which in the end is hell; Read Lewis's The Great Divorce, or better, read Dante's Divine Comedy).

Again, I don't say all this to downplay Gabby Douglas's remarkable achievement, or to deny that her Christian faith had anything to do with her commitment and her dedication and her success. And neither do I want to imply that she is misusing her talent to participate in the Olympic Games.

What I want to question is, on the one hand, the equation of God's blessing with our giving him the glory (which it is our duty and joy to give, not God's privilege to receive), and on the other hand, our uncritical endorsement of any mention of God in the press by any famous person who espouses Christianity.

So let us congratulate Gabby Douglas and affirm her success in London. But let us at least hesitate in identifying it with God's blessing.