Dr Paul Allen

Sprinting legend Usain Bolt pictured in Brunel University's indoor athletics Centre. Usain used Brunel as a European training base prior to the 2009 Berlin Athletics World Championships. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “Love does not brag” ( 1 Corinthians 13:4). Among other things, the Corinthians were boasting about the supposed supernatural spiritual experiences that they were having, hence Paul’s correction. “Brag.” The word has the idea of self-glorification, boasting, and a superficial self-applauder. It speaks of someone who vaunts, displays, and praises self. Why is love antithetical to bragging? Bragging is an expression of self-worship (over and above God ) and self-love (over and above others). All love and glory is channelled to self. Bragging wants attention. It’s an extreme self-worshiper. It will hijack whatever means at its disposal—work, skills, giftedness, ministry—to applaud itself. And if it does not get attention, it will do things like become jealous, angry,...

Citius altius fortius (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) It’s a worldwide phenomenon . Every four years, the world pauses and holds its collective breath while the Olympic Games take place. Staggered so they occur two years apart, the summer and winter games feature the finest athletes in the world competing in well-known sports such as running, skiing, basketball, and gymnastics, as well as comparatively unknown events such as curling and the triple jump.  The athletes come from virtually every nation on the face of the earth, a vast, magnificent display of humanity in all its diversity: different skin colors, different languages, different dress styles, and different lifestyles. But despite their differences, these national representatives have much in common as they enter the stadium and gather under the Olympic banner with its five interlocking rings representing unity among the nations of Africa , the Americas , Asia , Australia , and Europe .  They all stand togethe...

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, 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 Corinthians  9:24 –27) Corinth was the host city to the Isthmian games, where elite athletes from all over the ancient Greek-speaking world gathered to compete in years between the quadrennial Olympiad. So Paul’s analogy was particularly powerful for his Corinthian readers. And what Paul was saying would have been just as convicting to the affluent, indulgent First Century Corinthians as it is to us affluent, indulgent 21st century Christians in the West: the Christian life should be lived with the ruthless focus and discipline of an elite athlete. But let’s ...