On Phelps and Nero: Some Records Do not Matter (With Emily Dickinson!)

Last updated on: August 12, 2016 at 8:36 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

On Phelps and Nero: Some Records Do not Matter (With Emily Dickinson!) 2016-08-11T22:02:40-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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1896 Olympics

We are told that the Emperor Nero won quite a few Olympic prizes, including one for a chariot race he did not finish. Unlike Michael Phelps, Nero’s laurels were challenged on the grounds he bribed officials. Winning, if you cheat, is not everything. Unlike Phelps, the Emperor never “lost” a race, but unlike Phelps, Nero never won a race either.

Your mom was right: cheaters never win, even when proclaimed the victor. History sometimes doesn’t know the truth, cheaters are not always discovered by humans, but God knows.

This is a forgotten benefit of theism: cheaters never win. Knowing this makes a serious theist less likely to cheat or should do so. We see the prizes of the medalist, the lifestyles of the rich and famous, and we envy them, but of course we know nothing of their actual lives. A Christian does know that after death comes the judgement and God measures our actual lives and not the lives we pretended to have.

Cheaters never fool God.

The viewing public does not know the Phelps from the Neros. We cannot know, but God does. When you “win,” you know how small a thing victory is, a lesson Phelps has learned and tries to share with us. Even victory earned fairly is not such a much. The Olympic champion, even the one who is not a Nero, is still mortal man doomed to die.

Here is a hard truth: we are all losing. We admire “winners,” because we are heading to death and long for victory. Emily Dickinson understood that it is the loser who most admires the victory of the winner:

Success is counted sweetest

By those who ne’er succeed

To comprehend a nectar

Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host

Who took the flag today

Can tell the definition,

So clear of victory,

As he defeated, dying,

On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph

Break, agonized, and clear.

We must rejoice in great human performances like Phelps is turning in at the 2016 Olympics. He is an amazing swimmer, but not just a swimmer. He is a man and as a man he needs a purpose beyond winning, since nobody wins in the end. Only the loser thinks winning is awesome. The art of Phelps in the pool is a great gift to us, but that gift is not worth his soul. Thank God, he has (evidently) found peace with God.

Losers imagine winning makes a person happy. Winners know that only the soul counts long term. Pity the man so jaded, he cannot marvel in the beauty of a Phelps’ swim. Be repulsed by the man who measures Phelps’ greatness in Olympic gold. Winning, at least any prizes human beings pass out, is worthless. Winning the favor of God is everything.

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