Think Christian: A Faith and Pop Culture Podcast · Think Christian

Olympics: Is Winning for Christians?

·32 min

The conversation starts with a Nike television commercial. Josh Larson uses it as a way into the 2024 Olympics and into the show’s larger question about whether Christian faith can make sense of competition at all. He does not stay in the abstract. Instead, he invites Eric Danielson and Catherine Freeman to talk about what they have actually watched, then asks them to share their own athletic memories before circling back to the athletes in the games. That choice sets the tone. The roundtable treats sports as ordinary life with spiritual weight, not as a side topic, and it keeps coming back to the idea that how someone wins matters as much as whether they win. One image keeps returning. A speaker recalls Derek Redmond at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, when he pulled his hamstring during the 400 and his father came down from the stands to carry him to the finish line. That story becomes a kind of icon. It points to a Christian vision in which winning can include perseverance, help, and shared burden rather than raw speed or isolated achievement. The discussion does not reject competition. It suggests Christians can compete, but that the deeper standard is not simply being first. Josh presses the point gently. He connects the Olympic frame, the Nike commercial, and the commercial’s wider sporting ethos to the possibility that the games can surface gospel parallels in the stories that unfold. LeBron James is part of that Nike commercial’s backdrop. The commercial’s language of greatness gets set beside a more communal, wounded, and service-shaped understanding of victory. The pace stays measured throughout. The hosts leave room for small self-corrections, ordinary observations, and a little friendly back-and-forth as they work toward a shared theological reading of the games. By the end, the episode has widened beyond medals. It leaves the listener with a picture of competition that includes fidelity, humility, and help along the way.

As heard by us

The episode reframes winning through woundedness, service, and the finish line shared with others.

Think Christian starts with a Nike commercial tied to the 2024 Olympics and uses it to ask a plain but hard question: what does winning mean for Christians?

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Why you'd press play

If Nike's victory language bothers you, this offers a steadier way to think about winning.

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