Spirit of the Games

"The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong," the Bible cautions in Ecclesiastes. Try telling that to today's athletes. Everyone involved in competition is bulked up, slimmed down, buffed, toned, bodysuited, and following a fitness regime the National Academy of Sciences would find complicated.

Swimmers are trimming their eyebrows to get that extra edge. Male sprinters shave their chests to reduce aerodynamic drag. Olympic athletes are training years in advance for their moments in the spotlight. College and pro athletes endlessly assert that winning isn't everything, it's the only thing. Even weekend athletes get caught up in the intensity. Fights break out at soccer games and middle-school sporting events, and sometimes it isn't kids fighting, it's the parents.

What should a spiritual person think about the ethics of competition?

Most religions don't address this question directly, at least not in the sense of granting guidance on organized sports. The Olympics existed when many sacred texts were written, but there was nothing like today's organized-sports mania. Then men and women spent their days in exhausting physical toil and could hardly be expected to chase balls as their form of leisure.

Faith traditions do, however, address questions of competition indirectly. All counsel fairness and good behavior, and of course support sportsmanship, though no religion really uses that word. The Abrahamic faiths--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--generally preach that people ought to attempt to do well at whatever they do, to set good examples, because the outcomes in the material world matter. Buddhism does not exactly bar people from sports competition, but would view it as important not to become wrapped up in winning or losing. Hindus might say that obsession with sports competition would be wrong to the extent that someone must always lose, causing bad feelings in others and, in turn, bad karma. But then, some of the Hindu gods are traditionally depicted as playfully engaged in various sports.

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