Article

Character

Creed

Identity

Sport

17 April 2024

4 min read

Scheffler’s secure identity

At the top of the game, win at all costs doesn't cut it.

Jonny Reid

Jonny Reid leads the communications team at Christians in Sport.

A golfer cups his face as he realises he has won.

Scottie Scheffler realises he has won The Masters.

Augusta National.

Scottie Scheffler is very good at golf. Insanely good. He’s the world Number One and now the reigning Masters Champion. He’s also incredibly competitive. So much so it makes him feel sick.

"I was sitting around with my buddies this morning, I was a bit overwhelmed," Scheffler said Sunday evening. "I told them, 'I wish I didn't want to win as badly as did I or as badly as I do.' I think it would make the mornings easier.

"I love winning. I hate losing. I really do. And when you're here in the biggest moments, when I'm sitting there with the lead on Sunday, I really, really want to win badly.”

It is striking to then read that Scheffler says his golf is soon to be the fourth most important thing in his life. It is his job. It has been his whole mission for decades to be the best golfer in the world and yet in his press conference he went to speak about how his faith, his wife and his soon to be born child, are all more important to him than winning golf tournaments.

This feels very counter-cultural in the culture we swim in. One where winning is the only currency. Especially so at a tournament like the Masters, steeped in such tradition and cult-like folklore.

His faith is what he says makes the biggest difference to his outlook. Before we speak more on that, we need to say again, Scottie Scheffler has been blessed with incredible hand eye co-ordination, the right physical attributes, and opportunities at a young age, to practice and develop. And he has worked incredibly hard to become the best player in the game.

But his faith does seem to enhance his performance and especially his ability to deal with pressure. This runs counter to a caricature which might say that becoming a Christian diminishes your competitive edge.

As golf journalist Kyle Porter articulately says:

While Scheffler is not devoted to his faith for the purpose of winning golf tournaments -- quite the opposite, in fact -- in listening to him speak about it, one would find it difficult for a golfer to have a better mind space. He holds the line between "cares a lot" and "identity not tethered to outcome" perfectly.

Only by separating our self-worth from our achievements (or potential ones) can we find satisfaction and security – not slavery.

In his press conference after winning the Masters, Scheffler explained more about how his faith impacts his golf. Having narrated how much he wants to win he said:

"My buddies told me this morning my victory was secure on the cross. And that's a pretty special feeling to know that I'm secure for forever and it doesn't matter if I win this tournament or lose this tournament. My identity is secure for forever."

What does Scheffler mean?

He is speaking about how he believes his standing before God is unchangeable because Jesus died in his place on the cross. Scheffler believes he is “secure for forever” because of it. The Bible describes the new identity Christians have as been formerly slaves, but now “dearly loved children.”

St Paul once described the new identity Christians have as been formerly slaves, but now “dearly loved children.” Scottie Scheffler feels safe. There are many ways to live as a slave. Being a slave to achievement is one. Your happiness and security is based on your success. Being a slave to approval is another. Your joy is rooted in your approval from others. It is not hard to see how easy it is for sportspeople to live in this kind of slavery.

Today’s culture encourages us to look within ourselves to find ourselves. Sport is a very easy way to do this. It is natural to base our identity on our skills and our successes—to fashion for ourselves an achieved identity. And that is a shaky place to find worth and value.

Rory McIlroy, one of Scheffler’s great rivals, seems to struggle with pressure of the Masters more than most. It’s not surprising, the former world N umber Oneis waiting to complete the career grand slam at Augusta and has been trying since his last major victory in 2014. McIlroy longs to be known and respected for his performance, recently reflecting:

“It’s hard for me not to define myself as one of the best golfers in the world, so when you struggle [like that], you feel a little lost.”

Only by separating our self-worth from our achievements (or potential ones) can we find satisfaction and security – not slavery. Ashley Null has worked as a chaplain in five Olympic Villages and knows this only too well:

Only love has the power to make human beings feel truly significant, not achievement. Only knowing that they are loved regardless of their current performance has the power to make Olympians feel emotionally whole.

Scottie Scheffler seems to know he is loved regardless of his golfing performance, and this enhances his ability to deal with pressure. This freedom and security his faith provides seems to allow him to know that all he can do is control what he can, doing the best he can any given week.

Scottie Scheffler will not win every week. He’s said himself that “professional golf is an endlessly not satisfying career” with its grind and the variables at play each week.

He will face periods in his golfing career, as he already has, when his form fails, or picks up injuries and drops down the rankings. It is at those moments, as well as on the morning of potential major victories, that he also needs his friends to remind him his identity is secure forever.

Essay

Belief

Culture

Weirdness

28 March 2023

5 min read

The cost of selling spirituality

A $3.7 trillion industry ‘market’ for spiritual consciousness and wellness says something about today. Daniel Kim explores what’s driving this commodification and its market failure.

Daniel Kim

Daniel is an advertising strategist turned vicar-in-training.

A white neon sign against a brick wall reads: 'This is the sign you have been looking for.

Sign o' the times.

Austin Chan via Unsplash.

Apparently, Scorpio women from Gen Z are the most passionate about astrology, while Taurus Gen X men are the most skeptical. At least, that’s according to a delightfully insightful consumer report put together by the Peoplestrology website after surveying 2,800 people. I’m a Taurus 1995 MillZennial man so I’m not sure where that puts me. I’m also a trainee Anglican vicar which may contribute more to my demographic features, but that’s beside the point.

We are increasingly fascinated by spirituality and religious practices. We are at a point where we can no longer assume that ticking “No Religion” on a survey means you’re an atheist or that you don’t believe in a supernatural realm or a God. In fact, a report by Theos found that only 51% of people in the UK who claimed ‘No religion’ also claimed that ‘they don’t believe in God’. That’s unreal. Another unbelievable insight from the 2022 UK religious data was the ‘Shamanism’ is now the UK’s fastest growing religious movement. Meanwhile, #WitchTok had 18 billion views in 2021, even hitting the mainstream when it got its own BBC article last year. For the uninitiated, these are TikToks that introduce people to witchcraft practices. A quick wander around the Waterstones ‘What We Recommend’ tables is enough to see the huge push to retrieve ‘ancient traditions’ that help people navigate the spiritual wilderness of modern life. Marcus Aurelius’ Stoicism, and the Confucian classics, are making their comeback. It goes beyond self-help.

I used to work in a Soho advertising agency. I remember sitting on a teal coloured mid-century sofa with colleagues discussing star signs and pagan mythology over a coffee break. As the Christian, I was the one feeling like the cynical sceptic. That’s a strange experience and feels like cultural whiplash. Flashback ten years and secondary school in the mid-noughties and early-tens was brutal as a Christian. I watched Richard Dawkins' polemic God Delusion documentary during my religious education classes and my fellow classmates laid into Christianity like it was the most vile and stupid thing in the world. Anyone who believed in a supernatural reality was equally vile and stupid. Today, the New Atheist movement seems like a strange late-twentieth century aberration that has very much given way to a re-spiritualising world. In some cruel corners of Reddit, the New Atheist is even a subject of ridicule.

It’s possible to discern two impulses going on in this re-spiritualisation. On one side of the heart, there are those who are reaching for the spiritual but not the religious - wanting connection with something bigger than themselves to provide meaning and an experience of transcendence. On the other hand, there are those who lean more religious but not spiritual - we want something to provide structure and order to our lives. There’s less of a concern about the spiritual experience but a desire to reign in the chaotic life - I used to have agnostic friends who would pop into a Catholic Mass because they liked the stability of the ritual. These are two ends of a continuum and invariably we are all somewhere in the middle. Both impulses are profoundly important ingredients to a life that is full of meaning.

This, in my opinion, is an exciting and positive move in our society. It turns out that humans really can’t live on ‘bread’ alone - not least live on careers, brunches, or think-piece articles - and we certainly can’t live on ‘content’ alone. There is a spiritual vacuum, and we’re reaching for the oxygen.

But in all of this, there’s a serious concern. Because wherever there’s demand, there is profit to be made - and right now, there is ample spiritual demand.

The ‘market’ for spiritual consciousness and wellness will be a $3.7 trillion industry.

When reflecting on astrology’s role in contemporary society, the Peoplestrology report deems it the ‘perfect solution for our hyper-individualised culture’ and the report ends with an ominous recognition that the ‘market’ for spiritual consciousness and wellness will be a $3.7 trillion industry. The valuation of the ‘spirituality marketplace’ and the emphasis on ‘hyper-individualism’ has me seriously worried. It opens the door to the commodification of religio-spiritual practices and extracting capital value from people’s genuine spiritual search. It can become a product that we use rather than a profound source of ultimate meaning. And it’s already happening.

Sacred Design Labs, for example, is a consultancy that looks to ‘translate ancient wisdom and practices to help organizations develop products, programs, and experiences that uplift social and spiritual lives.’ Their vision is genuinely very positive - it’s to make the workplace a less sterile and meaningless place. Don’t we all want that? However, they are also perfect examples of the trend in capitalising on this burgeoning market. To illustrate the point, one New York Times article recounts where the consultancy was hired to pull together hundreds of religious practices and categorise them by emotional states in order to give them possible uses in different corporate contexts. This exercise made the client ‘realize how many useful tools existed inside something as old-fashioned as his childhood church’. I’m glad that religious practices are getting a hearing in mainstream corporate contexts, but it saddens me to hear words like ‘useful’ being used to describe them. That’s only a hop and a skip away from ‘efficient’ or ‘profitable’.

The inconvenient truth is that this commodification of spirituality is not just something corporations can be guilty of. We as late-modern individuals can be guilty of stripping religious practices out of their religious context and incorporating them into our self-care programmes. Tara Isabella Burton, author of Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World, calls this the ‘bespoke-ification of religion’. As Burton notes - ’We risk seeing spirituality as something we can consume, something for us, something for our brand’. And when we turn spirituality into a product, we turn it into something trivial.

The irony is that this is profoundly counter-productive. Haven’t we agreed that hyper-individualism, and the commodification of everything, were precisely the things that led us to the spiritual vacuum we are now living in? If there was anything that Karl Marx, Aldous Huxley, and Billy Graham could agree on, it’s at least that. Are we doomed to repeat the radically individualistic cycle of dismantling the very thing that we are desperately grasping after - deep connection with our community, with our work, with our bodies, with our universe, and perhaps, just maybe, with our God? Satisfying our spiritual hunger is about more than just increasing our efficiency and decreasing our blood pressure. It’s about answering some of the most important questions any human individual can ask. Who am I? What am I made for? Is there a God or a spiritual dimension to the universe? Am I free or fated? What happens after I die? All these questions require us to look beyond ourselves, and to stare into the wild edges of human experience.

If we are going to embark on a journey of spiritual discovery, whether it’s through astrology, pagan mythology, silent retreats, Tibetan Buddhism, or dare I say, Christianity, we can’t let our spiritual hunger be commodified for profit. Neither can we let it shrink back to the hyper-individualism that will keep us locked away in a prison called “self”. Our spiritual wellness is too important for that; it is worth more, infinitely more, that $3.7 trillion or a subscription service advertised to you on Instagram.