Friday 22 March 2019

Still Quarrying 15 - 'What's It All About?'

I have a signed copy of Lance Armstrong’s book It’s Not About The Bike: My Journey Back To Life.  It tells the story of how a cycling career of outstanding promise was interrupted in 1996 when, aged 25, he was diagnosed with stage three testicular cancer which subsequently spread to his abdomen, lungs and brain.   The Consultant in charge of his treatment considered that there was very little chance of recovery.   But by February 1997, after gruelling chemotherapy and surgery, Armstrong was declared cancer-free.  Thereafter began a spectacular comeback which would include 7 Tour de France wins.  

Armstrong’s story was one of the most inspirational in sporting history and he became a popular motivational speaker at various conferences.   He had a cameo appearance in the movie Dodgeball shaming a star dodgeball player who was contemplating quitting on the day of a big game.  ‘What are you dying from that’s keeping you from the game?‘   It was known for preacher’s to use his story in their preaching.  I remember children’s talks and school assemblies where I waxed eloquent about Lance Armstrong and the example he was of perseverance, inner strength, hope in the face of disaster.  

But there were these unsettling rumblings about doping.  Armstrong consistently denied that he had ever used performance enhancing drugs but the allegations would not go away and in 2012 the United States Anti-Doping Agency concluded that Armstrong had used performance enhancing drugs over the course of his career.  Furthermore, he was named as the ringleader of "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen."  As a consequence he was stripped of all his achievements from August 1998.

Armstrong later confessed that some of the allegations were true and that if he had his life to live over he would probably do it all again.  

So what is the message of Lance Armstrong’s life?

First of all,  we should be careful of placing people on a pedestal.  It is an uncomfortable place to be and there is only one way off and that is down.  How many times has someone been lifted high as the epitome of everything that is good in humanity only for something to be revealed that places them in a totally different light?  The truth is that we are all broken people in need of a Saviour and while the lives of others can be inspirational there is always the possibility of disappointment.  

That Armstrong’s fall from grace happened after his experience with cancer should give us pause.  This is represented in his book in the familiar terms of an epic battle which he won.  He undeniably showed enormous resources of courage and perseverance as he hung in with the treatment.  But that in itself did not bring about a healing that goes a lot deeper and would have led him in a different path than the one that brought shame and infamy.  Even with cancer there is a more urgent issue to address, where do I stand with Christ?  

That brings me to the most disturbing passage in his book.  Armstrong takes us to the night before he underwent brain surgery and how he contemplated the prospect of death:

‘I asked myself what I believed.  I had never prayed a lot.  I hoped hard, I wished hard, but I didn’t pray.  I had developed a certain distrust of organised religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs.  Quire simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking and honourable . . . At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I had been baptized.  If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn’t say, “But you were never a Christian, so you’re going the other way from heaven.” If so, I was going to reply, “You know what?  You’re right.  Fine.”  

Setting aside the caricature of God and the superficial notion of judgement, what we have here is someone so confident of his own goodness that he can shrug off any objective assessment of his life, even when it comes from God.   As things worked out, his own goodness was not something Armstrong could depend upon in this life, never mind the next.  It’s the same for us all.   Paul celebrates ‘the righteousness from God‘ and how it comes to us ‘through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.‘  (Romans 3: 22)  He points us to the Cross where it was made possible for us to stand in the righteousness of God: ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.‘  (2 Corinthians 5: 21)   When I read this I am often moved to say: ‘That’s some swap!  Give me your sin and I’ll give you my righteousness!‘  God has made it possible for us to stand with confidence before Him not trusting in our own righteousness but in what has been provided for us through the death of Jesus.  


It’s not about the bike?  In the end it’s not even about us but where we find our salvation.