The 7 Deadly Sins of Sport
Christian tradition labels the seven deadly sins as envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride, sloth, and wrath.
While each of these is identified as sinful in the Bible, it’s worth noting that nowhere in the Bible are these seven lumped together as a group. The categorization of them as the “seven deadly sins” started with Evagrius of Pontus, a Greek monastic theologian. He started with eight—and he referred to them as eight evil thoughts.
He constructed his list in increasing order of severity: gluttony, lust, avarice, sadness, anger, acedia, vainglory, and pride. St. Thomas Aquinas would later move on from a list ranked by severity.
But how did we get to seven?
Gregory the Great (sixth century) added envy to the list. But he also merged vainglory with pride and acedia with sadness. It wasn’t until the seventeenth century that sadness was replaced by sloth.
What does any of that have to do with sports?
Nothing.
That’s just the brief history of the seven deadly sins. But how we move forward matters.
For the Christian athlete, part of our responsibility involves growing in our understanding of how to apply God’s word in the areas and communities that monopolize large chunks of our time. We must consider how deadly sins (or unhealthy ways of living) like these present themselves within the context of sports. And then we must fight against these sinful tendencies with the tools God has graciously made available to us.
I have adapted the list to fit what I believe are the seven deadly sins that we see in sports today: discontentment, pride, apathy, idolatry, selfishness, comparison, and manipulation.
A quick disclaimer before we get started: while “The 7 Deadly Sins of Sport” is a catchy headline, I do not think some of these are actually sinful, as I will explain further when needed. Each of these prevents a Christian athlete from flourishing (growing in their Christlikeness and athletic ability, in that order) in and through their experience in sport.
Discontentment
In an attempt to contextualize this list, I lumped four of the historical deadly sins (envy, lust, gluttony, and greed) into one. At the root of each of these sins is a discontented heart. Lust wants what we don’t have. Gluttony wants more of what we don’t have. Greed wants more of what we do have. And envy wants what belongs to someone else. All of these share a similar starting line: discontentment with what we have.
How does it show itself in sport? Here are a couple of examples where it often reveals itself:
Someone else is getting more playing time than you
Someone else is getting all of the playing time and you’re stuck on the bench
Someone else is getting the attention you want (from coach, other teammates, fans)
Someone else won the game, conference title, or national title that you wanted
You’re experiencing success but still feel a perpetual need to prove yourself
Or how about this one: someone else, who you are better than and getting more playing time than, exudes more joy than you despite the fact they are not even playing, causing you discontentment because they are happy and you aren’t.
That was not an exhaustive list, but you get the point. Discontentment is everywhere. And it’s worth pointing out that many of the examples above are not inherently sinful. If someone else is getting more playing time than you, that should bother you as a competitive athlete. That’s not a sin. You should want to play.
Discontentment within sports isn’t always a bad thing or sinful. The sin of discontentment is a misplaced belief that finally obtaining it (whatever “it” is) will satisfy the longing of your soul. It’s looking for ultimate satisfaction in and through sport instead of in and through a Savior.
How do we fight against discontentment? It may surprise you that the answer comes from Philippians 4:13. Well, technically it comes in the verses before that.
Paul, from prison, is telling the church at Philippi that he has learned the secret of being content in every situation. Well fed or hungry. Neediness or abundance. Playing time or riding the bench. He didn’t add that last part, but you get the point. So, Paul, what’s the secret? He tells us in the next verse “ I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” Philippians 4:13.
Athlete, the best possible antidote to a discontented heart is a growing relationship and reliance on Jesus. Everything you want in sport (joy, affirmation, hope, love, acceptance) he has readily available for you.
Pride
Pride can easily disguise itself as confidence within sports. And to be clear, an appropriate level of confidence is good for your sport and honoring to God. But the line between confidence and pride can often get blurred. Pride can be tricky to diagnose.
As Jonathan Edwards said, pride is “the most hidden, secret, and deceitful of all sins.”
In the book Killjoys: The 7 Deadly Sins, Jason Meyer talks about the difficulty in spotting pride because it often comes in all shapes and sizes:
“Fighting pride is like fighting a shape-shifter. It can appear in forms that look like polar opposites: building up and tearing down."
He goes on to give six interrelated forms that pride takes and categorizes them in two ways:
Building Up: Self-Exaltation, Self-Promotion, and Self-Justification
Tearing Down: Self-Degradation, Self-Demotion, and Self-Condemnation
“The first three responses usually show up when we succeed and others fail. The latter three are more common when others succeed and we fail,” Meyers says.
Let’s give a quick example of how each of these appears in sports.
Self-Exaltation - Your team won the game and you think you deserve all the credit.
Self-Promotion - Your team won the game and you talk about yourself so that others will give you credit.
Self-Justification - Your team won the game and you believe God is more pleased with you than with the team that lost, as evidenced by your superior play and victory.
Meyers notes that “These three forms of pride all propose a toast to self, celebrating and showing off our successes. And they often raise their glasses with an acute awareness of the failures of others.”
But pride doesn’t always rear its ugly head through an elevation of our “self.” Sometimes it comes at the other end of the spectrum.
Self-Degradation - Your team lost the game and you think it’s all your fault.
Self-Demotion - Your team lost and you let everyone around you (in your physical presence or on social media) know that it's all your fault.
Self-Condemnation - Your team lost and you replay your role in the competition repetitively to stew in shame.
The root of each of the six forms of pride is an obsession with the self. Win or lose. Good or bad. Positive or negative. It’s an inability to step outside of our world and consider the existence—and importance—of others.
How do we fight against pride? With humility. Humility isn’t just a feeling or a state of enlightenment. We need to think of it like a muscle that needs to be worked out, stretched, and cared for if we want it to grow and properly flex it. There are plenty of ways to strengthen your humility muscle, but probably none greater than daily reflecting on the message of the Gospel, as explained in Ephesians 2:8-9:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
God saved us because we couldn’t save ourselves. He did it all. And one of the reasons he chose that route was so that we could not brag about “our” salvation. A daily reflection on that reality would be a healthy workout to grow your humility—and fight against pride.
Apathy
In his short, but brilliant book, Overcoming Apathy: Gospel Hope for Those Who Struggle to Care, Dr. Uche Anizor defines apathy as:
“A psychological and spiritual sickness in which we experience a prolonged dampening of motivation, effort, and emotion, as well as a resistance to the things that would bring flourishing in ourselves and others. It is a sin that expresses itself as restlessness, aimlessness, laziness, and joylessness toward the things of God.”
For the apathetic athlete, it can look like this:
A belief that God does not care about how one thinks about or competes in their sport—or that He is entirely indifferent to one’s athletic life.
A loss of joy that has become numbed out by the increasingly high demands of coach or team culture.
A diminishing desire to compete because it's too hard, not fun, and feels pointless.
A reoccurring injury dampens any hope of reaching one’s full potential.
Now, to be clear, while all of those examples above can fall under the category of apathy, I think for most of them, it is an unbiblical stretch to classify them as being sinful. But I do think an apathetic posture towards our sport is not God’s best for our lives and can have harmful ripple effects in other areas as well.
I think when the word sports comes to mind, especially for athletes, God wants our inward response to be joy, opportunity, and challenge. But for many of us, the response can simply become…meh.
Here’s some good news. Your sport can still be fun and purposeful. You can still experience joy as you practice and compete. But you need a perspective that’s grounded in the reality that sports have a ceiling on the amount of joy they can bring.
When your joy seems lost and you dread waking up to practice for whatever reason, remember this: the longing inside of you to reclaim joy—and to care and be passionate, is good. God put it there. And He wants you to reclaim it too. But just as you wouldn’t run to the ocean to satisfy your thirst, don’t look to your sport to satisfy your ultimate soulful longings. God wants to do that. What does this have to do with reclaiming joy and purpose in sport?
When you release sport from the pressure to be everything for you, I think it frees you up to experience it as God originally intended it to be: an avenue of play to enjoy (joy), be refined (sanctification), and invest in others (mission).
We push against apathy in athletics when we enjoy sport for what it is and release it from the expectation to fix everything in our life.
Idolatry
While an apathetic athlete struggles to care about anything related to their sport, an idolatrous athlete struggles with misplaced care.
In his book Counterfeit Gods, Tim Keller describes an idol as “anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.”
He later explains that it is “anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living.”
Who cares? God does. He cares a lot. Exodus 20:4-5 shows us that God is jealous of our full attention. We see in Colossians 3:5-6 that the wrath of God is coming upon idolatry.
We need to take seriously anything that takes our minds off of God. I don’t know about you, but sports tend to take my mind off of God more than most things in my life. Worship starts with giving our attention to someone or something—and sports has an incredible ability to siphon much of our thought life.
How do you know when a sport has become an idol? Consider the following questions:
Do you feel most significant when you achieve success in sports?
Even when you are not playing/practicing your sport, are you constantly thinking about it?
When you think about your self-worth, do you identify more often with being an athlete than a child of God?
Do you use God as a “good luck charm” in your sport?
Do you feel most loved and appreciated by others when they affirm you for success in sports?
The good news is there is a path forward out of idolatry. It starts with repenting of the idolatrous role that sport has played in your life. This could involve a daily rhythm of asking God to reveal who holds the number one spot in your heart: God or sport?
This rhythm of repenting should put sport in its proper place in your life: a good gift, given to you by God.
Most idols start as good gifts that God has given us that we misuse by turning into gods. What if we began to use sports as a vehicle to drive us closer to God instead of using God to get more out of our sport?
Selfishness
Like pride and idolatry, selfishness feels like an obvious category to include. Selfishness is a sin.
“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” - Philippians 2:3
“Incline my heart to your testimonies,
and not to selfish gain!” - Psalm 119:36
“And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.’” - Mark 8:34
How does selfishness play out in sports? Let’s go back to another list:
An inability to engage with (or even notice) other teammates because you are overly preoccupied with yourself.
Placing a greater emphasis on personal stats than team success.
Ignoring the Great Commission.
That last one is what I want to focus on because I am guessing you already know what selfishness looks like in other aspects of sports—and life. But ignoring the Great Commission is at best ignorance, and at worst, selfish and sinful.
I mention ignorance because some of us may not know what the Great Commission is or what it means. It’s one of the last things Jesus said to his followers after he rose from the dead.
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” - Matthew 28:18-20
The Great Commission is our call as Christ followers to share the Gospel with those around us with our words and actions. It’s one of the primary reasons we exist. But many of us (me included!) go through our athletic careers and neglect the pursuit of this calling in our lives as we relate to our teammates and coaches.
God may have put you where you are and given you your specific skill set to win a championship. Maybe. But I can promise you, that as a follower of Jesus, one of the reasons you are where you are, is to be a light to those around you. This isn’t easy. It’s a daily dying of self and asking the question “who can I show the love of Jesus to today.” You probably won’t have to look very long. Just show up and practice and look for the opportunities God makes available.
One really practical way to ensure you have a Great Commission mindset on your team is to create a space where your teammates can learn about God—like a team Bible study.
Comparison
President Theodore Roosevelt famously said that “comparison is the thief of joy.” It’s true—sometimes. In sports, there isn’t a way around consistent comparison.
In a track race, compared to someone who beat you, you are slower.
In the gym, if you put up more weights than the person next to you, you are comparatively stronger.
If your team loses a game, by comparison, the team that won is better.
You get the point. We are constantly comparing within the sports culture. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Comparison can be a measuring stick that helps us know where we are to know where we need to improve. Comparison can help fuel us to take one last rep or run the extra mile.
So, why is it listed as one of sports deadly sins? Because constant comparison to those around us inevitably places us on a trajectory of pride (I am better than they are) or insecurity (they are better than I am). The difference between sport and self needs attention.
Healthy perspective after a loss: They are the better team today because they won.
Unhealthy perspective after a loss: They are better than I am because they won.
The difference is subtle, but significant. The healthy perspective focuses on the outcome. The unhealthy perspective focuses on identity. And that is when comparison rears its ugly—and dangerous head. Unhealthy comparisons in sports can look like this:
I lost, and they won, therefore, I suck.
I’m injured, others are healthy and contributing, therefore, I am worthless.
I was benched, and others played, therefore, I lack significance.
The opposite of each (pride) is equally wrong
I won, and they lost, therefore, I am amazing.
You get the point.
Finding our primary sense of self-worth by comparing ourselves to others is an affront to our Creator, who has the final say in defining who we truly are.
Manipulation
Attempting to manipulate God to get what we want through our sport is the last one to make the list.
This type of manipulation is one driven by a false narrative of who God is and how he operates. It’s often referred to as the “prosperity gospel.”
The prosperity gospel says this: if I trust in God and have enough faith, he will reward me with earthly blessings like health, wealth, and success. It’s a belief that we can put God in our debt by practicing obedience and eventually cash in our spiritual efforts for athletic blessing. In sports, it plays out in some of the following situations:
If you lose, it’s because you didn’t pray hard enough, sinned earlier in the week, or didn’t have enough faith.
Faithful living translates to athletic success.
Using God as a lucky rabbit’s foot (do people still use rabbit feet?)
Work as hard as we can to refrain from sin in the days (or hours) leading up to competition, and then we pray that God would bless us for our efforts.
But God cannot be manipulated that way.
The beauty of the gospel is that God does not bless us based on our awesomeness, but on his. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
We don’t need to perform for God for him to bless us. Jesus already performed for us. And his performance earns us a restored relationship with God, not an injury-free career, not GOAT status, not even a starting position.
Because of Jesus, we get a relationship with God, which is infinitely more satisfying than the fleeting pleasure of sports success. This is a promise of presence, not prosperity.
And that’s what I hope a growing awareness of these seven “deadly sins” in sport point us towards—the presence of God as we align our lives with the way He designed this world to flourish.
