The Weight of Glory

Last week as the Western world slept, the US Women’s Gymnastics team was losing it’s decade-long lock on ‘best in the world.’ 

Cracks in the foundation formed days earlier at the Olympic trials, where routines from nearly every competitor were spotted with significant errors and uncharacteristic sloppiness. But the floor fell in during the team all-around when Simone Biles, the US’s not-so-secret weapon, stalled in mid-air during her Yurchenko vault and came down one full rotation short, her knees buckling on impact under her own weight. She was seen exiting the arena, flanked by her coaches and the team doctor. 

She would later pull out of the team competition altogether, leaving her teammates on a quixotic mission to defend the gold medal against Russia. They were unsurprisingly unsuccessful. “Mental’s not here,” she explained at a press conference later that day, “so I just need to let the girls do it and focus on myself.”

She subsequently pulled out of the vault, uneven bar and floor finals, leaving space for teammates MyKayla Skinner and Jade Carey to take medals home. She placed third on the balance beam. 

Biles, who is widely considered the greatest of all time, has been seen recently representing her country in custom leotards emblazoned with Goldie the cartoon goat, glimmering in all her rhinestoned glory. The idea was all hers - “she came to us and said, ‘I wanna go with the GOAT,’” said GK Elite chief commercial officer Matt Cowan before 2019 Nationals. 

Some call it ballsy, some egotistical. Some just call it fact. Regardless, the GOAT inadvertently became an albatross. 

Meanwhile, across Tokyo, other legacies were being built. The men’s 4x100-meter freestyle relay was underway in Tatsumi-no-Mori Park, led by Phelps-like figure Caleb Dressel. The United States were heavy favorites and clinched the gold in 3:08.97, the third fastest time in history.

In a telling act of humility, Dressel was seen tossing his first Olympic gold medal to teammate Brooks Curry who had qualified in his place so he could rest for finals. “I had the easiest job last night out of everyone here,” he said. “I got to watch it on TV, so I felt like Brooks deserved that a little more than me.” 

The result of Dressel’s efforts? Two world records, two Olympic records, and five gold medals. He is only the third American male swimmer after Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz to win three individual golds in a single summer games. 

There is a natural glory in athletic triumph, in the sacrifice of Kerri Strug, Phelps’ domination of three straight summer games, the dream team’s gold medal run in 1992, the depth of Eliud Kipchoge smiling through mile 25. It’s one of the reasons that the games are so moving to behold - the moment when the Olympic gold is placed around an athlete’s neck (or, in COVID times, when they put it on themselves) and the crowd erupts. The anthem is played. They are approved of, revered. Their years of work have culminated in validation. For a moment, there is the illusion of belonging to the world. 

However, this earthly validation is temporary and proves itself impure. With a medal comes an albatross - the tangled ribbons of expectation, responsibility, notoriety and pride. This weight is burdensome for even the steeliest competitor. Our lawful desire to make the most of our God-given gifts morphs into selfishness and rigidity. The praise of those it was our goal and obligation to please morphs into corrupting self-admiration. It can pull the most grounded, humble athletes under. Even Michael Phelps had to reach for help to keep from drowning. Glory is a heavy thing. 

Why? Why can these earthly accomplishments corrupt instead of satisfy? If we were made to shoulder the glory we strive for, why would it be so heavy? Could it be that we aren’t made for glory at all? 

C.S. Lewis addresses this layered problem in his 1942 sermon at Oxford entitled The Weight of Glory. “If a trans-temporal, transfinite good is our real destiny,” he posits, “then any other good on which our desire fixes must be in some degree fallacious, must bear at best only a symbolical relation to what will truly satisfy.” 

Try as we may to be satiated by earthly reward and acclaim, “there is the reward which has no natural connection with the things you do to earn it, and is quite foreign to the desires that ought to accompany those things.” Lewis knew that as much as we try to make heaven of this world, we are made for an eternal place in the immediate presence of the living God. Our real goal, our real treasure, is elsewhere. Olympic medals are but a foretaste. 

Glory is relevant to this deep desire to live in God’s presence. “Glory meant good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things,” Lewis writes. We long not for the world’s recognition, but for that of He who knows us already, in whose image we are created. 

If this is true, our work on earth is to point all people toward that conclusion. “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do,” says 1 Corinthians 10:31, “do all to the glory of God.” This is echoed with blatant frequency throughout the Bible, repeated in almost every book.

“Let your light shine among men,” says Matthew 5:16, “that they may see your good deeds and give glory to your father in heaven.” All of our gifts must be aligned in that pursuit, because they come not by us, but through us. Our gifts, though we may recognize their power and work tirelessly to hone them, are not ours, they’re God’s. They’ve been given, unearned. Thus, any glory we may receive on behalf of them does not belong to us either. 

The message is clear - clear as Isaiah 42:8. “My glory I will not give to another.”

And what a relief. When we toss the albatross onto a God-man strong enough to withstand the weight of both our successes and failures, therein lies freedom. Freedom from man’s judgement and expectation, from fears of inferiority, from striving and existential exhaustion. “If God is satisfied with the work, the work may be satisfied with itself.” We can, in symbiotic humility and confidence, stand in exactly who we’ve been made to be. 

The moral of the story? 

Do all to God’s glory, and don’t put a goat on your leotard. 

Image: Oprah Daily