Spiritual Olympians

The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, will open on February 7, and anyone who has ever watched an Olympic broadcast will be prepared for what is coming: Stories designed to play on the heartstrings.

Sometimes, the telling of these athletes’ stories with sweeping musical accompaniment can tilt toward marketable melodrama. But what television executives have perceived about the Olympic movement speaks to a deeper truth that resonates well beyond the world of sport and into the hearts of spiritual seekers.

The sacrifices of an Olympian, after all, are quite real.

At a media summit last October, I watched Olympic gold medal bobsled pilot Steven Holcomb pause when asked about his life outside the sport. The pause came because he honestly couldn’t think of anything he did beyond his sport. When he wasn’t training on the bobsled track, he was working to be better on the track—improving his sled’s design, testing different runners, spending time in the weight room. When he wasn’t doing that, he was watching his diet or taking naps so that he could be at his best the moment he returned to the track. He could think of no moments of his day that weren’t in some way related to his desire to drive a fiber and steel contraption down a rumbling track of ice as fast as humanly possible.

Or what about downhill skier Mikaela Shiffrin, who routinely skipped races when she was younger so that she could do more training? Her reasoning: During a race, skiers take two runs a day. If she trained instead, she could take a dozen. In the back of her mind is an ultimate goal: She believes she needs to put in 10,000 hours of honest work before she can truly master her craft. Added up, that’s 416 consecutive days of nothing but skiing!

For most Olympians, the rewards are slight. No one stops Holcomb—the world’s top bobsled pilot—on the street, and he estimates that, at the moment, he is not in debt (though that is not always the case). Yet when he speaks, a broad smile settles across his face. In the end, he grins. There’s nothing he would rather be doing.

It wasn’t until that moment during that media summit that I felt driven to ask myself: How many of us have the same commitment to spiritual healing that Steven Holcomb has to his sport? Or Mikaela Shiffrin to weaving in and out of a few dozen ski gates?

And if their honest dedication to their craft (which is, in its essence, an attempt to overcome human limitations) can inspire the world so wonderfully every four years, then what could our honest dedication to Christian healing do for the world?

For me, the answer to that question lies in an article written by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, titled “A Timely Issue”: “This work well done will elevate and purify the race. It cannot fail to do this if we devote our best energies to the work” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896, p. 5 ).

When I reread that passage at the media summit, I caught a glimpse, perhaps for the first time, of what Eddy meant by “best energies” and was humbled by it. Could I stake any honest claim to being a “spiritual Olympian”?

The fact is, Jesus was demanding of his followers. One tendency can be to view this bitterly—to see Jesus as a taskmaster. What do we think when we hear Jesus say: “Whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. ... So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27, 33 ). Humanly, that can sound very stern—cold, even. But we misread the Scriptures when we interpret its more demanding sections this way, because, as I see it, such passages are, in fact, the deepest love that can be expressed humanly.

A coach may give us tough love—may tell us to ski that run again until we get it right. But in the end, he or she has no control over us; we can walk away. What Jesus saw so clearly—what enabled him to be the Christ and to heal—was that none of us can ever walk away from God, good. God is the ultimate “coach.” He will not allow us to fail. Jesus was urging us to follow the Christ example because it is the Way—the only means by which we can “put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts” and “put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness,” as we’re exhorted in Ephesians (4:22, 24 ). This was not a matter of choice. It had to be done because God was the eternal lawgiver.

But how is it to be done? One good way to start might be, like the Olympian, to “count the cost.” According to Luke, after Jesus spoke of the need for all of us to take up our cross, he continued: “For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him” (Luke 14:28, 29 ).

None of us can ever walk away from God, good. God is the ultimate “coach.”

Last October, cross-country skier Jessie Diggins spoke of the moment she decided to try to become an Olympian. She knew she was forgoing a college scholarship and a comparatively easy life. She would have to travel the world on a shoestring budget, being away from home for months at a time, living out of one suitcase the whole time, all while training to compete in perhaps the most physically punishing sport in the world for little financial gain. But she did it, and now she has no regrets.

In other words, she counted the cost. She knew what sacrifices were ahead and made them joyfully in the pursuit of a greater goal that promises nothing beyond the pleasure of her own achievement. Wasn’t Jesus saying much the same thing? The Bible repeatedly states that the path of the spiritual healer is distinctly apart from the material world. How, after all, can you learn about the deep and true resonances of Spirit if you are constantly turning back to matter? As Jesus said, “No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62 ).

So why should we be troubled if the material world does not understand us, does not flatter us, perhaps even persecutes us? If we are being faithful to Jesus’ teachings, aren’t we leaving all that behind? In other words, haven’t we counted the cost beforehand, so all the swirlings of the material world won’t distract us from continuing to build the tower?

Snowboarder Louie Vito freely admitted that he now lifts weights. Even four years ago, he said last October, snowboarders would have been mocked if they went to the gym. Snowboarding is too cool for that. But now a veteran of the sport, he said he needs to work harder to continue to compete at an elite level—and if going to the gym (and receiving some good-natured ribbing) is a part of that, so be it.

“Christian Science is not an exception to the general rule, that there is no excellence without labor in a direct line,” wrote Eddy (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 457 ).

Jesus labored “to preach the gospel to the poor; … to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18, 19 ). And because of the purity of Jesus’ desire, his labor was sweet and his burden light (see Matthew 11:30 ). When we learn to work as Jesus did—not for ourselves, but for God and His eternal light shared with all humankind—we will find that we, too, can bring this Christ-blessing to earth, touching our lives and the lives of others. Then we can claim to be “spiritual Olympians.”