GLUTTONY AND SELF-CONTROL, 7

Other people can help us to see if we are gluttonous or lack self-control, especially if our behaviour becomes addictive. But most of us need an honest appraisal of ourselves, before God. It is all too easy for others to misinterpret us. We can see this in the life of Jesus:

"To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others: " 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge and you did not mourn.' For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon.' The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and "sinners." ' But wisdom is proved right by her actions." (Matthew 11:16-19)

John the Baptist lived a life that was obviously extremely self-controlled, but his opponents used his lifestyle as an excuse to accuse him of being demonized. Jesus’ life was also extremely self-controlled, but he was unembarrassed about enjoying the pleasures of this life in appropriate ways; something that his enemies used as an excuse to accuse him of being a glutton and drunkard.

When we come to practical examples it is very hard to lay down clear lines. If we do, that leads to legalism, which is death. So, for example, with food – we live in a day of superabundance of food. We have a choice of food which is quite unprecedented in the history of humankind. We could respond to the need for self-control in the midst of this superabundance of food by laying down rules – “no ice-cream except at weekends; no chocolate except at Christmas; no second helpings of pudding…” Now it may be that such rules could help you for a time – it may do you good to cut down on ice-cream or chocolate or pudding, but it would of course be disastrous if we tried to apply such rules to the whole church.

What we need to do instead is to follow the example of Jesus, and live a life that has rhythm to it.

Jesus clearly knew about self-control. He lived his life entirely for the glory of God and the good of others. He knew what it meant to go forty days without food and he knew what it was to go without sleep in order to have time to pray. But he also knew how to feast – he went to weddings, he attended parties. He took time out with his disciples and knew when to rest. Jesus lived an ordered life, a life with a rhythm to it. Jesus also lived in a society that had more of a rhythm to it because people lived close to the land, so there was seed time and harvest time. And it was also a society that had a rhythm around the religious feasts – the Sabbath, the Passover, the feast of Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, Yom Kippur, and so on.

We live in a society that doesn’t work to a rhythm but which grinds on like a motor. Every day is a working day, a shopping day. We live in a 24 hour, seven day a week, 365 days of the year society.

One of the ways in which we should exercise self-control and fight against hedonism is by a recovery of rhythm in our lives. There should be times when we feast and times when we fast. There should be days of rest – Sabbath days. There should be days of high activity and days of prayer. Days of solitude and days filled with people.

The way we can begin to recapture this self-controlled, ordered, rhythmed life is to live for Jesus. Our society encourages us to live for ourselves, to be hedonists, and in so doing actually robs us of ourselves. By living for something outside ourselves, something bigger than ourselves we will actually recover our true selves. The hedonists first principle is ‘pleasure’. This way lies boredom and distortion. Our first principle must be ‘Jesus’. In His way lays life and pleasures forevermore.

Happy Easter!

GLUTTONY AND SELF-CONTROL, 6

There are a couple of examples that help me to understand the principle of self-control better and apply them in my own life. The first example is a general one – it is the application of self-control that is needed to achieve success in any human sphere. Almost anything worthwhile or precious requires self-control. You cannot be an excellent teacher without self-control, being prepared to forgo some apparent pleasures in order to dedicate yourself to teaching. You cannot be an excellent parent without self-control, foregoing some pleasures in order to invest in your kids. You cannot be a successful businessman or scientist without self-control, denying yourself pleasures now in order to pursue your career. You cannot be successful at sport without self-control – enduring the discipline and pain of training in order to win the game.

Another term for this is delayed gratification. Delayed gratification is a virtue that has to be developed and cultivated. It doesn’t come naturally. Children do not understand delayed gratification – for a child it is all, “I want it, and I want it now!” When adults fail to display delayed gratification all sorts of negative and destructive behaviors result. But if we are to practice delayed gratification we have to truly believe that it is worth giving something up now in order to get something better later on.

The second example of this is a specific one – that of Nelson Mandela. In his biography, Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela describes how while he was still free he went into training in order to toughen himself up for the day when he would not be free. He knew it was inevitable that he would one day be imprisoned and he knew it would be even tougher to be imprisoned if he was soft and out of shape. So he ate less, exercised more, toughened himself up. He went without some pleasures he could rightfully enjoy in order to prepare himself for when the pleasures would not be available, and he did this because he was looking ahead to his ultimate goal, his great pleasure, of seeing a democratic South Africa. Without self-control would Mandela have achieved all he has achieved? Without Mandela what state would South Africa be in now?

GLUTTONY AND SELF-CONTROL, 5

Self-control is necessary because we are called to run for a prize that lasts forever. We need to control our bodies now so that we are not disqualified later. Our actions now impact upon eternity.

Self-control is a fruit of the Spirit and evidence of His presence in our lives. An interesting thing to note is that all the fruits of the Spirit are listed elsewhere in the bible as characteristics of God, with the exception of self-control. God is full of joy and peace. He is patient, kind and good. He is faithful and gentle. Only the word for self-control is not used anywhere in the bible with reference to God. This is because God does not need to exercise self-control – he is in total control! We should also note that all the other fruits of the Spirit are things we experience together – we love together, we know joy together, we are kind to each other, we are gentle with each other… In contrast, self-control is something we do by ourselves – it is self-control and it is something that God expects us to exercise.

Self-control is given to us as a gift to help us overcome our natural weaknesses and serve God as we should. Self-control is needed if we are not to fall into sin and bring shame upon the name of Jesus. In 2 Peter 1:9 the Apostle writes that if we do not have self-control we will be unproductive and ineffective; we are short-sighted and blind and have forgotten that we have been cleansed from our past sins.

So the conclusion we have to draw from the bible’s teaching on self-control is that it is a very significant thing. It is central to the gospel message. It is a necessary requirement of Christian leadership. Without it we can miss out on eternal rewards. This should make us sit up and take notice. Self-control is not about legalism; not about punishing ourselves. Instead it is about freedom, freedom to live a self-controlled life in order to enjoy greater pleasures forevermore.

EVERYTHING

Yesterdays Everything conference was a lot of fun. We had loads more people there than anticipated - about 800 in the end - which gave us a few logistical problems, but overall it went very well. Thanks to all those of you who were there!

There were a number of people tweeting the day, and you can follow the twitter thread here.

Next month we are doing it again in Leeds, so keep leaving questions and comments on the Everything website - even if you are not going to be there it all feeds into what we are doing.

PREPPING

Today is a bit of a manic preparation day.

On Monday I fly out to Zimbabwe, where I am speaking at the Easter Camp for New Creation Church (along with Julian Adams). I've three sessions to do, and to claim that I am well prepared would be an exaggeration...!

Sunday, I am at Gateway, where we are having a special Palm Sunday service. We make it a core practice of our small groups to break bread on a regular basis, but we also like to do this on a Sunday and this week we are building the whole service around the celebration of the Lord's Supper. To help focus us on the meaning of the Supper I am preaching a message built around this wonderful quote from Calvin's Institutes:

This is the wondrous exchange made by his boundless goodness.
Having become with us the Son of Man, he has made us with himself sons of God.
By his own descent to the earth he has prepared our ascent to heaven.
Having received our mortality, he has bestowed on us his immortality.
Having undertaken our weakness, he has made us strong in his strength.
Having submitted to our poverty, he has transferred to us his riches.
Having taken upon himself the burden of unrighteousness with which we were oppressed, he has clothed us with his righteousness.

And tomorrow I am hosting the Everything Conference at Westminster Chapel. It looks as though we will have over 700 people attending, which is very encouraging. Towards the end of the day there will be a Q & A session with a panel formed by the seminar speakers. We are gathering questions via the Everything website, so why not take a look, post a question, or cast your vote for something that has already been asked. You can find the details here.

GLUTTONY AND SELF-CONTROL, 4

Whereas gluttony is a deadly sin, temperance, or self-control, is a great virtue that throughout the bible is encouraged and honored, and a lack of it warned against.

Proverbs 25:28 Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control

Galatians 5:22-23 The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control

1 Thessalonians 5:6-8 Let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled

1 Timothy 3:2 Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled

2 Timothy 1:7 For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline

Titus 2:2-12 Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled…train the younger women to love their husbands and children, and to be self-controlled…similarly encourage the young men to be self-controlled…For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age

1 Peter 1:13 Prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled

1 Peter 4:7 The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray

1 Peter 5:8 Be self-controlled and alert

2 Peter 1:5-6 Make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control

But what is the value of self-control? If all it is about is denying the body and causing ourselves discomfort then there is not very much appealing about it – hedonism looks a more attractive option! But of course, as with all the virtues, self-control is not simply about denying ourselves but about gaining something greater. What we can see from the verses above, and others like them, is that self-control is absolutely central to the Christian message and the Christian way of life.

Self-control is about the power to make decisions. Hedonism does not involve a decision of the will and when hedonism becomes addiction the power to decide is completely removed. In contrast, the virtue of self-control enables us to say ‘Yes’ to what is right, and ‘No’ to what is wrong. And so self-control leads to freedom. A hedonistic lifestyle might look free but it is actually a life enslaved.

GLUTTONY AND SELF-CONTROL, 3

It has been said that hedonism is a natural state of sinful humankind. Hedonism is that state of mind where we do not actively use our wills to decide what is best but instead follow our instincts to the point where they become distorted and sinful.

We need to ask ourselves, “What is our first principle?” That is, what is the thing that we live for and strive for and seek after. For many people the first principle of their lives is seeking pleasure and minimizing pain – and this is hedonism.

The trouble with hedonism is that not only is it damaging to our health, as it is if we drink too much or eat too much or take dodgy substances, but it is also inevitably boring. When we have unlimited opportunity to indulge in pleasure those things soon lose their ability to give us pleasure. This is very obvious in the person addicted to alcohol or drugs – the dose needed to produce pleasure has to keep on being increased to continue producing that sensation of pleasure until the point is reached where no amount of input can produce the original pleasurable feeling.

And it has become almost a cliché that those who should have the most pleasurable lives – the rich and famous – often seem to be the most bored and unhappy. The flash car soon becomes boring and there needs to be a flasher car to take its place; the beautiful wife soon loses her sex appeal and needs to be exchanged for another model; the wardrobe of designer clothes soon go out of fashion and have to be replaced with a new lot of clothes.

We all know this is the case yet so many of us fall into this deadly sin of gluttony, deceiving ourselves that somehow we will not get bored of pleasure if only we could collect a few pleasures more. And this deception of course has its root in the deadly sin of pride that convinces us that we are somehow different, and superior, to others.

GLUTTONY AND SELF-CONTROL, 2

“Gluttony” in its strictest sense is excessive eating or drinking. In the bible we see a number of warnings about this:

Proverbs 23:1-3 When you sit down to dine with a ruler, note well what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to gluttony. Do not crave his delicacies, for that food is deceptive.

Proverbs 23:20-21 Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags.

Proverbs 28:7 He who keeps the law is a discerning son, but a companion of gluttons disgraces his father

Titus 1:12 “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.”

Gluttony is a distortion of the normal bodily need for food and drink. Gluttony is an inordinate craving, a craving that is damaging to our health and to our relationships with one another and with God.

We can see this damaging impact of gluttony very clearly in those people whose desire for food or drink is distorted way beyond the normal. Alcoholism is a terrible affliction, that ruins lives. It costs huge amounts of money to feed; it leads to breakdown in family life; it destroys health; it leads to accidents… We also see the consequences of those with food addictions, which again lead to so much ill health and misery.

But the deadly sin of gluttony is concerned with more than just eating and drinking; it is about hedonism, which is the doctrine that pleasure is the highest form of good and that moral duty is fulfilled through the pursuit of pleasure.

This means that thin people can be gluttons! An example of this would be when a contestant on Masterchef says something like, “I’m passionate about food. I want my whole life to be about food.” What these sentiments can reveal are the creed of the glutton – that for that person food has become God. Even if they are not actually overweight they are worshipping their pleasure and finding their pleasure somewhere other than in the one true God who provides the pleasure, and that is idolatry.

GLUTTONY AND SELF-CONTROL, 1

Well my last couple of posts garnered some interesting responses! I must say I appreciate the humor of some of the comments posted, and have also enjoyed conversations outside the medium of this blog on the subject.

One of my church members was concerned about my penchant for eating lard, so let me assure any anxious readers that the Hosier family has fairly balanced eating habits. I may prefer full-fat milk, but my only milk consumption is in two cups of coffee each day. We only eat roast pork perhaps five or six times a year, and a rib of beef only once or twice. We practice meat thrift – if a chicken is eaten one day, vegetable soup made using stock from the carcass follows the next. We bake all our own bread, using organic, stoneground flour from a Dorset watermill, and a sourdough starter than bubbles away in the kitchen. Since moving to Poole we have eaten a lot more oily fish – this was certainly the case last summer when we were fishing fairly regularly and catching a lot of mackerel. It’s all very Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall really. We also get quite a lot of exercise. I don’t do as much as when I was taking triathlon seriously, nor as much as I would like, but all of us are on our feet and moving around for a good part of each day.

Going by the traditional church calendar we are currently in the season of lent, so it seems an appropriate time to broaden out my previous comments criticizing the anti-fat lobby. God willing, I will put up a post or three about this over the next few days.

Lent is a forty day period leading up to Easter which commemorates the period of forty days during which Jesus was in the desert, fasting and being tempted by the devil. During Lent, Christians of many different traditions – Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox – will enter a Lenten fast. This may be abstinence from food, maybe missing a couple of meals a week, or a simplification of diet, or a cutting out of “luxury” foods like chocolate or coffee, or maybe fasting from something else, such as TV. The point of this is to remember Jesus’ time in the desert and to gain self-control over the desires of the body.

In our church tradition we tend not to follow such things as lent but that does not mean we are either immune to the deadly sin of gluttony or without need of the virtue of temperance. But like lent the terms gluttony and temperance can seem a bit antiquated. If we use the word ‘glutton’ at all it tends to be associated with something like the image of a Roman banquet with people lying on sofas and stuffing themselves with bear in honey and sheep eyes. The word ‘temperance’ if used at all tends to refer to a Victorian image of temperance halls and temperance societies which worked for the abolition of alcohol.

So it may be more helpful to use different terms which carry a similar meaning but which are perhaps a bit more contemporary sounding – hedonism and self-control.

IN DEFENCE OF FAT

OK, I’m going to break my normal blogging rules and respond to a comment. Phil may think my last post was the rantings of a grumpy old man (while I prefer to think of them as the reasonable musings of a concerned middle-aged man!), but as he is a friend and was nice enough to post a link to my post on his own estimable blog I will make a more considered response, which I’m afraid means this post will be unusually long…

Phil comments “You're right to bemoan our society when it calls evil good, but maybe not when it does actually call sin, sin?” Let’s tease that out a bit.

As a starting point, lets try to make a biblical argument for calling being fat a sin. While I think it can be done, I don’t think its that easy. I know – I’ve tried. Long, long ago, before knowing better, I tried to construct a biblical argument to preach against fatness, basically (full disclosure here) because I wanted to take a pop at some of the fatties in the congregation, and highlight the waistline deficiencies of some of my more mature colleagues. This wasn’t all sin on my part as I had a genuine concern for their health, but in reality I was reflecting my culture more than my bible.

‘Gluttony’ only appears in the bible in Proverbs, and there it is in the context of how to behave when in the presence of your boss, in order to keep in his good books. Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins but while this is a helpful concept (which makes a great preaching series) it is not a list the bible provides. The bible does have rather more to say about greed, but this normally appears to be in the context of greed for material goods or power.

Another exegetical line of attack might be over the frequent biblical exhortations to be self-controlled. This indeed is a reasonable line to pursue, but it doesn’t do very much to help us in deciding when someone is too fat, due to an absence of self-control, or merely pleasantly chubby, for some other good reason.

Our culture regards fat as ugly and sinful, but many other cultures – including biblical ones – have perceived it as attractive and a sign of blessing. So we need to be careful not to allow our cultural norms to condition our exegesis.

Prove to me from the bible that to be fat is to sin and I’ll swallow it hook, line and sinker. Not sure you’re going to be able to do it though…

Turning from biblical exegesis to the cultural sort, I would suggest that we are living in a society that has a quasi-Gnostic attitude to the body.

Firstly, we view the body as evil, because ultimately it is going to kill us! Therefore the body needs to be controlled, and to an extent rejected. Our problem – we are told – is our bodies. So fat becomes sinful because it is a sign of our problem, and hence the exaggerated claims (I would argue) as to the impact of obesity upon health. It is this rejection of the body that is also reflected in self-harm, and gender disorder (check out this story for an interesting example of this).

And then, secondly, the body is at the same time worshipped, as the only thing that has potential to save us: “If I only looked like Angelina/Brad / lost 20 pounds / was six inches taller / had a bigger/smaller chest / Etc. then my life would be complete. Therefore I must spend far more on primping and toning myself than I give away to help the poor.” Where’s the sin problem in that equation?

The problem with Gnosticism is that it is idolatry. However it manifests itself, the body becomes the overwhelming object of our attention – it becomes our god. And that, indisputably, is sin.

In calling fat “sin” there are also a considerable number of pastoral pitfalls to avoid. Again, how do we define when fat is too fat? Do we have scales at the front of church buildings and test peoples body mass index, condemning as “sinful” any who measure over a certain point?

And how do we determine when someone is a sinful glutton rather than their weight simply being the result of some other issue? I have limited truck with those who claim their fat is just down to a slow metabolism – after all, no-one came out of Belsen overweight – but the reality is that post age thirty you are going to gain a pound in weight every year due to slowing metabolism unless you deliberately eat less or exercise more than you did in your twenties. So is a 55-year-old who is 25 pounds too heavy sinfully fat, or simply revealing their age?

Here’s another one – in my experience very few seriously overweight people are happy with how they look, so is calling them a sinner going to help? The question really is as to why they are the size they are. Again, in my experience its rarely due to gluttony, but more often reflects some other underlying issue – her husband doesn’t show sufficient love and leadership; he’s terribly insecure; she’s bored to death – which results in too much eating and not enough exercising. In these kind of circumstances it is difficult to claim the fat is sin, more that there is a need for redemption in other areas of their life.

Then there is the question of Christian freedom. For example, in my household we choose to eat butter rather than margarine, and have full fat milk rather than the water people call semi-skimmed. Give me a decent bit of meat and it’s the fat I want to eat – the crackling from a piece of pork, or the meltingly soft fat from a rib of beef. Why? Because the fat tastes good, and good taste is important to me. Also, I’d rather eat – say – butter, which the human body is designed to be able to digest, than some dreadful trans-fat spread which our metabolisms cannot really handle.

Because ‘fat = sin’ guests sometimes want to judge our eating choices, but that is itself a more sinful action than what I am eating! As a Christian I am free to eat whatever I like, without any sense of condemnation (Rom 8:1). Moreover, I am to do so with thankfulness (1 Cor 10:30).

And a final observation – it tends to be better educated, more affluent people who are thin, and while espousing tolerance as the highest virtue we all really want someone to condemn, in order to feel more righteous about ourselves. So the thin get to be patronising towards the fat, who tend to be poorer and worse educated, and feel good about doing so. Having a decent excuse for us Southern Englanders to look down our noses at Glaswegians might make us feel better, but I’m not sure its what Jesus would do.

What do you say Phil?!

BTW, for those with the stomach for it, I would heartily recommend a series of posts running on the subject of food on Douglas Wilson’s blog – its much stronger meat than anything I produce!

CRAZY WORLD, 2

While at the Newfrontiers Theology Forum a few weeks back I raised some eyebrows by claiming that obesity is one of our cultural unforgivable sins. My esteemed colleagues considered me somewhat reactionary, but it is an observation I would defend.

Because we are sinners from birth, we need identifiable sins which we can pillory and purge. In a society divorced from God (even though “his invisible attributes are plainly perceived”) we have to find reasons to explain our sense of guilt. And the sins we have chosen are obesity, homophobia, and environmental destruction.

We live in a society that deems moral judgments morally unacceptable. Negative comments about someone’s sexual behavior are out of bounds, representing either a repressed prudishness or a prissy conservatism out of sync with the contemporary zeitgeist. However, it is fully acceptable to condemn people for being fat.

We have a cultural aspiration to a kind of imagined Scandinavian utopia where sex is free, and everyone is fit and gorgeous, and where the polar bears float safely on the ice as we gleefully recycle every bottle and packet.

This is a strange horse to ride – moral pronouncements are deemed bad, unless they are moral pronouncements about the state of our health; which means we are riding a horse blinkered to the dangers to our health posed by misdirected sex. Do you smoke? Shame on you, you sinner! Do you like sleeping with a different woman every night? Well done!

As an illustration of what I am arguing, check out the pronouncement of the Chief Medical Office for England that fitness tests should be introduced for schoolchildren. Now, I have no objection to children being fit, but I do have objections to a neo-Stalinist approach to my kids body mass index. And this in a school system where it is also going to become mandatory for five-year-olds to have “relationships” education in which they will be taught that it doesn’t matter who you sleep with so long as you do it with respect.

Consider the news that the Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate for Gravesend is a director of porn films. Imagine the Q&A session in your child’s school the day the MP comes to visit:
“Ms Arrowsmith, how did you get involved in politics?”

“Well children, directing films of people having sex seemed a natural progression to serving in the House of Commons.”

Or take the latest Lady Gaga video, which features lesbian sex and nudity. Here’s the thing – what she is doing might seem very hip and cool, but it is kids, not sophisticated twenty-somethings, who listen to this kind of music, and will then click on YouTube to watch the video.

Sometimes I think that Christians should all take up smoking and eat nothing but Big Macs simply to thumb our noses at the moral demands of our culture, while choosing to reject what our culture accepts and applauds. Smoking and eating too much will reduce your life expectancy by maybe ten years, but what the heck – we’re all living for decades longer than our forebears did anyway, so we can afford to cut a little slack. But what we’re doing to ourselves sexually is truly disastrous.

Being fat isn’t great, but its not going to result in you or your children going to hell. Smoking isn’t a great idea, but one day everything will be tested by fire anyway. But failing to be faithful to your wife? Deserting your kids when you find a new partner? Reducing sex to a mere physical activity little different from going to the gym, or going to the toilet? Turning perversion into ‘art’? In my book, that’s a far more serious matter.

LOW TIDE

We are having massive spring tides this week, when high tides are at their highest, and low tides at their lowest. In fact, Monday saw what was meant to be the lowest tide of the decade.

The Hosier family took advantage of this to don wellies and see how far we could wade across Poole Harbour. I almost made it to the shipping lane.

What a fantastic place it is.

CRASHING GOOD FUN

That’s the Winter Olympics done and dusted then.

I’m a big fan of the Olympics. I hate all the religious claptrap that surrounds it now – the ‘Sport as Salvation’ stuff; the ‘this is how the nations find unity’ stuff – but I love the event. There is something spiritual about perfected athletic performance, because we are embodied beings, and in the new heavens and earth the people of Christ will have perfected bodies, like his. So, in this life, when someone uses their body in a way that defies normal human experience, it is some measure spiritual.

But the thing about the Winter Olympics is that most of the events are pure slapstick. Watching short track speed skating, or ski cross, or the sliding events is an exercise in waiting for someone to crash.

We love to see people fall over.

Of course, when someone really injures themselves, or dies as happened with the Georgian luger before the Olympics, most of us will feel pity and compassion. But the whole appeal of these winter sports is the high possibility of mishap. It is this potential to enjoy other people hurting themselves that makes the thing exciting, and in that regard we are not so different from the Romans with their chariot racing.

It also means that watching the Winter Olympics is not so different from watching Total Wipeout. The main difference is that the competitors in Total Wipeout know that what they are doing is essentially comic.

The International Olympic Committee take their games very seriously indeed, but few of their events are truly sport. Some – like ice-dance – require prodigious athletic skill, but an event that requires competitors to dress in pantomime costume is not really sport at all. And more significantly, no event is really a sport if the result is decided by the subjective opinion of judges awarding points, rather than on the hard objective reality of higher, faster, stronger.

So lots of fun, and occasionally sublime, but not much real sport – just very amusing entertainment.

I’m looking forward to 2014 already!