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The Social Justice Commission of the Anglican Church of Aotearoa & Polynesia

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Drugs cheats

By / 18 August 2008

The headline read “America prays their new favorite son is not a drugs cheat.” The body spoke of a hope that at least one of our heroes won’t let us down.

Let us down? Every person who is caught abusing drugs is a mirror for us to look into. Winning is what it truly is all about – forget the noble spirit of the Olympics stuff – it’s about the medal table so what do we expect? Having defined ‘glory’ as standing on the podium, and treating our sporting stars with more honour (and money) than our social workers and teachers are we surprised the pressure to enhance performance is too much for so many young athletes.

A drugs cheat reflects our cultural priorities. When something truly noble happens, like a competitor sacrificing a win to help a fallen runner up we breath a sigh, shed a tear, consider how nice it would if we were all nice to each other, and offer them our respect. Respect. That’s when we think it is great that some people are like that but we don’t intend to be.

The Olympics is about winning. About us (somehow we are involved through our guys who do the actual work) kicking their track and field. China seems to be less hypocritical about the Olympics than anyone.

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About us

This site is run by the Social Justice Commission of the Anglican Church.

We seek to nurture justice spirituality and imagination, and engage in advocacy in all areas of life, overcoming poverty and transforming violence.

We encourage people to think and live “justly”, and emphasise debate and action on local, national and global issues.

Although we are Anglican, our vision isn’t so much about being Anglican. It’s about living justly. Justice is about how you live your life, and being just where we are. Working together, we can all flourish.

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