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Playing sports in safety and freedom

Injury doesn’t have to be an inevitable part of athletics – as a skier experienced when he realized his God-given spiritual nature and found healing from a knee injury.

  • By Mark Swinney

Christian Science Perspective audio edition
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Recently I was on a sports news site, reading about upcoming sports events, and I noticed how so many articles mentioned injury. Whether it was new injuries, nagging injuries, career-ending injuries, or rehabilitation after injuries, these reports portrayed suffering to be as much a part of an athlete’s experience as the final scores.

What a contrast pain and damage are to the fun and fulfillment of participating in sports. The historical movie “Chariots of Fire” portrays British Olympic athlete Eric Liddell putting it this way: “When I run, I feel His pleasure.”

The pleasure that God, divine Spirit, expresses in each of us never truly includes injury. Christian Science teaches that we are not material, but spiritual – the reflection of Spirit, God. This means that our true state of being is permanently unsusceptible to accident or deterioration. The way to increasing freedom from such limitations, as Jesus proved, is a deeper knowledge of spiritual reality.

Athletics, in its highest form, is one of many opportunities to demonstrate what we are as God’s loved offspring. Whether participating in a sport or not, we can win in our own way by prayerfully hungering to know and show forth the wonderful, invulnerable nature of divine Spirit.

I experienced this when I was competing as a skier. On a beautiful, sunny spring day, I did an inverted aerial off a jump. My landing was solid, but as I skied away, I felt a biting pain in my knee.

Whenever I practiced or competed, I focused on the qualities God expresses in me as His child, such as joy. This time was no different. So when I hurt my knee, it felt natural to continue praying, affirming God’s presence. I skied over to my dad, who is also a Christian Scientist, and asked if he’d pray with me.

With comforting love, he reminded me that God, who is divine Mind and Truth, had established my permanent spiritual stability and capability. “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, puts it this way: “The various contradictions of the Science of Mind by the material senses do not change the unseen Truth, which remains forever intact” (p. 481).

Within a very short time, I felt so much better. Over the next few days, I continued to pray to find complete healing. The Second Commandment was especially helpful. It begins, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image” (Exodus 20:4). Just as I wouldn’t bow down to a golden statue, I realized that I didn’t need to bow down in thought to an image depicting myself – or any athlete – as existing out of God’s care, as an injured mortal.

By the end of that week, I noticed that there was no more pain in my knee, and it remained that way.

Even in troubling situations, we each remain God’s perfect, spiritual children. In this light, injury isn’t, and never has been, part of anyone. In humility, we can admit the spiritual fact that we are not mortal bodies of muscle and bone. God can’t be hurt. As God’s spiritual image, we remain safe too.

We don’t need to accept injury and deterioration as natural for athletes – or anyone. Spirit’s creation is unencumbered – running and playing freely in the limitless realm of Mind. Whether as athletes or spectators, rather than getting overwhelmed by images of suffering or struggle, we can pray to see more of God’s unending perfection and wholeness, securely present in us.

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