During the recent Olympics we were treated to a wide variety of world-class athletes pushing their bodies to the limit and reaching heights never before imagined. We recognized their accomplishments because we understood the rules defining each event and the challenges the athletes faced as they excelled within those parameters. Sadly, the specter of performance enhancing drugs haunted this amazing international event and every time we witnessed a world record we had to ask ourselves if it was a chemical illusion. Unfortunately, the Olympics is not alone, and the record books of all sports are quickly becoming filled with achievements marked with the scarlet asterisk of shame. The once noble thrill of physical victory has all too often been replaced by the agony of chemical defeat.

Adam and Eve were convinced by the ultimate snake oil salesman that a simple bite of performance enhancing fruit would give them the opportunity to stand side-by-side with God on the medal podium. Visions of divine victory flashed before their eyes, but in their zeal to go for the gold they forgot that their human sport had some very specific guidelines. As Adam and Eves athletic ancestors we continue to partake of the performance enhancing fruit of good and evil and then try to rehabilitate our image by claiming it was just a sacred supplement. God created an orderly universe that operates within a divinely established set of parameters, He then made human creatures with a unique set of talents and told them not to bury them but take them to new levels in the game of life. Sadly, we continue to entertain visions of winning divine gold as our, I Did It My Way, anthem plays in the background. We break the only established rule of image-bearing by impersonating God. We fail the urine test and then arrogantly mark God’s territory and declare it our own. God knows our ambitions and only asks that we admit that we have dabbled in divine doping. He then encourages us to take a seat in the stands to cheer on the only perfect Athlete who ever ran the human race. As we watch Him take His place on the Golgothan podium we realize that He competed for us, His victory is our victory, and despite our pompous attempts at performance enhancing we are still eligible to receive a heavenly endorsement that can never be taken away.

Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. (1 Cor 9: 24-27)