The recording was clean, inviting, and the presenter (perhaps the founder of the Lagoinha church himself), captivating. I was in Belo Horizonte on a work trip and I formally turned on the TV in the quasi-hotel to find, on the church’s own station, this guy talking pleasantly about the race and its use in the Gospels, especially in the Apostle’s epistles.
The presenter did not withhold the source. Chapters and verses were inflected, as when Paul addresses the Corinthians to very explicitly say that “all who run in the stadium” undergo “rigorous training,” but yet his crown “soon fades away.”
But with those who believe, Paul teaches, there are another five hundred. “We,” says the Apostle, “dedicate ourselves to win a crown that lasts forever.”
Many other passages appeared, both from the Apostle and from John, to my surprise and, one might even say, admiration. But unlike the exegete’s audience, for me it is not the race as a metaphor that matters, and in this case I prefer that God and his avatars stay away.
The sentence above came across as somewhat spectacular to me due to the small irritation, or rather, the small annoyance that I sometimes experience when observing this type of scene, especially during running events. And, if he really irritated me, he would behave less like an unbeliever than, let’s speak in correct Portuguese, like a bore.
I hope I don’t carry around, fortunately, this cavalier, ancestral nuisance, immune to exorcisms and prays hard. Worthy of my friend Sócrates from Comezinho.
My point is that, by evoking God, Christ or the Holy Spirit, the runner is treating running not as the salutary physical activity that it is, but identifying it with an exceptional sacrifice, an earthly tribute granted to the Almighty He knows how to do. reason or not. An ex-voto in the form of physical effort.
This can have some implications: initially, a hypertrophied appreciation of the test, and, with that, an excessive dedication, sometimes on an almost pathological level, in which a possible withdrawal could be seen as weakness of spirit or even a lack of faith.
The age-old “no pain, no gain” at work.
For me, running is the primacy of pleasure. Do interval training, take your heart rate to high levels from time to time, try sprinting in the 200 meters remaining until the finishing gate.
Let them try to finish a marathon.
But don’t lose sight of what, I repeat, in my opinion and, I hope, in that of many other fans, is the essence of the race — the pleasure.
Pleasure that does not inhibit, look, other gains from running: physical conditioning, especially cardiac; exceptional mobility, which allows the corridor to be its own tour bus; the desire to keep running throughout the week; the inevitable feeling of well-being and happiness, see the enormous paradox, of the “post”.
Matters of faith are particular and irreducible, of course, but here I try to make one last attempt: if every race requires a sacrifice, an enormous commitment, how can we distinguish the championship final from the friendly match?
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