Can I Try to Win Without Treating My Opponent as an Enemy?

The person across the board is still your neighbor

The score is close. You can see a good move, and you want to take it. Then your opponent makes a mistake. There is nothing wrong with noticing the opportunity. The harder question is what you want next: a well earned win, or the pleasure of making another person feel small?

A Christian can try seriously to win a fair game while continuing to seek an opponent’s good. That person has agreed to oppose your moves within an activity you share. They have not agreed to become an object of contempt. The score can distinguish today’s performance without assigning either player a higher place in God’s love. ¹

Erik Thoennes describes competition as something that can deepen the challenge and enjoyment of play. It need not take over the rest of life. We may care keenly about a game while recognizing that its result carries a limited kind of importance. That proportion allows real enthusiasm without granting a score authority over every other good. ²

Ashley Null distinguishes comparing abilities from making performance the measure of a person’s worth. That distinction matters in an ordinary game: one player can be better at it without being a more valuable person. Respect does not require pretending that everyone played equally well. It requires keeping the assessment within its proper bounds. ³

Alfie Kohn raises a stronger objection. He questions arrangements in which one person’s success requires another’s failure. That is a serious challenge to consider, especially when a gathering is meant to welcome people. Cooperative games are a legitimate choice. Christian freedom to enter a fair contest does not create an obligation to make every shared activity competitive. ³³

Discipline directed toward love

Paul’s athletic language deserves careful attention. First Corinthians 9 follows a discussion of food offered to idols and the use of freedom. Paul describes rights he has willingly surrendered for the gospel. After the race and boxing images, chapter 10 returns to the dangers of idolatry and to conduct that serves others. His disciplined running belongs within that larger argument. ¹

Brian Gamel reads the race within Paul’s renunciation of rights. Kent Yinger interprets the bodily discipline in relation to Paul’s whole practice of self restraint, while Eric Barreto emphasizes its gospel purpose. Together these readings help us avoid making the passage an instruction to outrank other Christians. Neither bodily injury nor victory over another believer is the point of faithful discipline. ^{4, 7, 18}

Paul says, “Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others” (Philippians 2:4). Applied to a game, concern for others includes preparing properly, paying attention and giving an opponent a worthwhile contest. It also includes recognizing when another person needs help more than you need an uninterrupted chance to win. ¹

Shirl James Hoffman challenges a Christianity that adds religious language to sporting culture without examining its priorities. Saying a prayer before play cannot settle whether our conduct is honorable. If the prayer is followed by dishonest scoring or contempt for a weaker player, the conduct itself still needs correction. ¹¹

Lincoln Harvey connects play with the freely given character of our life as God’s creatures. His theological proposal invites us to enjoy a meaningful activity without demanding that it prove our productivity. A game need not become another examination in which we must establish our right to be valued before we can receive ordinary gladness. ¹⁵

John White, Andrew Parker and Andrew Meyer describe sporting prayer as acknowledgment of God’s presence and our dependence, rather than an attempt to summon an absent helper. We can thank God for the occasion and ask for faithfulness. Such prayer need not imply that the opposing side has less claim on God’s care. ³⁰

Care about winning within the game you share

C. Thi Nguyen distinguishes striving to win from pursuing victory as the overriding purpose of an occasion. Alfred Archer’s account of sporting integrity emphasizes coherent commitments shared by participants. Taken together, they clarify why respecting agreed constraints can belong to taking a game seriously. An advantage gained by secretly abandoning them does not honor the activity others entered. ^{5, 20}

Thomas Hurka locates value in games’ demanding exercise of skill. Michael Ridge distinguishes achieving something from engaging with a worthwhile challenge: the latter can remain a reason to play even when we fail. These arguments help explain why trying hard need not be wasted effort after a loss. Winning can be an aim within an occasion that has other real goods. ^{35, 36}

Robert Simon and his coauthors question the claim that accepted practice alone settles sporting rightness. Michael Hemmingsen questions whether excellence explains every legitimate winning move. Their arguments favor careful judgment: we can recognize a lawful opportunity to win while still asking whether the practice treats participants fairly. ^{19, 24}

Rules give that judgment some concrete content. The Marylebone Cricket Club’s Spirit of Cricket places hard, fair play alongside respect, self discipline and appreciation of opponents. The need for respect does not begin when the contest ends. It belongs to how we play while a disputed decision or costly mistake is still fresh. ⁹

Respect also permits a proper challenge. The FIDE Laws of Chess prohibit distracting or annoying an opponent while allowing a player to seek explanations of particular rules and, subject to event rules, appeal an arbiter’s decision. Calmly using an agreed process can serve fairness. Courtesy does not require pretending every decision is correct. ¹⁰

Adam Pfleegor distinguishes skillful feints from deceptive conduct that manufactures an unfair official decision. Misleading a defender about an intended move can be an accepted challenge; pretending an opponent committed a foul is different. The question is what kind of participation the other players actually accepted. ³⁷

Mia Consalvo likewise resists simple judgments that ignore a game’s conventions. An action permitted within a fictional or playful setting does not always mean what the same action would mean elsewhere. Yet treating games as distinct activities remains an ethical choice. Calling something a game does not remove the people involved from moral consideration. ²⁹

A competitive setting does not do our moral work for us

Research gives reasons to examine the kind of contest we create. Kou Murayama and Andrew Elliot found no strong overall direct competition advantage in their first performance meta analysis. David Johnson and his coauthors stressed that comparison with solitary effort differs from comparison with cooperation. Neither result supplies a simple promise that competition always improves people or always spoils their work. ^{26, 27}

Rivalry also has more than one aspect. Gavin Kilduff’s recall studies found that selected American online participants associated rivals with greater motivation. A later experiment by Kilduff and colleagues found more deceptive payoff messages after students were assigned a rival university affiliation. Feeling driven is not itself evidence that the resulting conduct is good. ^{16, 8}

Nor should we announce that a win inevitably makes someone dishonest. Andrew Colman and colleagues’ university experiment, using assigned winning and losing experiences followed by a private dice task, did not detect the predicted difference in subsequent cheating. The immediate result of a game cannot tell us everything about a player’s character. ¹²

Mina Cikara and colleagues asked a small, strongly selected group of American baseball fans to rate animated plays. They reported pleasure at a rival team’s failure even when their own team was not playing. We can examine that distinction in ourselves: enjoying a good performance differs from making another group’s disappointment an attraction in its own right. ³¹

Lukáš Mareš argues that good sport needs a supportive moral environment as well as good players. His discussion gives hosts, families and organizers responsibility for valuing joy and experience alongside performance. At a church gathering, the adults setting the atmosphere should examine their own expectations, rather than asking only whether younger players behaved politely. ¹⁴

John William Devine draws attention to rules that competitors can violate without detection. Their effectiveness depends on trustworthiness, beyond what officials can enforce. The point reaches an ordinary game when you alone know that you touched the ball or counted a turn incorrectly. Honest acknowledgment protects the shared contest even when silence would leave you ahead. ¹³

Florian Landkammer and colleagues compared individual and team athletes in an information sharing task outside their sport. Responses to a competitive condition differed between the selected groups. Participation in a team does not automatically settle how someone will act in another setting. We still need to examine the actual choice before us. ⁶

David Shields and Christopher Funk’s survey of American college athletes distinguished commitment to sport from respect for opponents. A warlike view of competition could accompany commitment while relating negatively to concern for the other side. Their observed associations give us reason to notice the difference between dedication and hostility. A demanding game does not require an enemy. ³⁸

Choose the occasion with care

A fair contest needs more than a determination to enforce every score. Nicholas Dixon rejects a blanket condemnation of large winning margins, yet distinguishes serious competitive occasions from friendly recreation and teaching. Agree on what you are doing. A beginner’s first lesson and a contest between experienced players can call for different arrangements without making either dishonest. ¹⁷

Colleen English argues that opponents deserve regard as people rather than merely as equipment for our improvement. Even when someone challenges us well, their value exceeds that useful role. A game among friends should leave room to notice their experience, appreciate good play and recognize worthwhile conduct that the score does not record. ²²

Els De Waegeneer’s badminton study asked players to assess hypothetical situations. Their judgments drew on both rules and the spirit of fair play. For an ordinary gathering, stating the rules is a beginning. Discuss also what sort of occasion the players want, especially where experience differs or an informal custom is unfamiliar. ²³

Bernard De Koven puts the community ahead of preserving a game at any cost. Miguel Sicart’s relational account of play also emphasizes negotiation among participants. An agreed change can serve the people playing: shorten the session, explain a confusing rule or choose another game. Secretly changing conditions for your own advantage is a different act. ^{32, 28}

Caleb Althorpe distinguishes friendly contests from competition whose losses threaten basic interests. That distinction helps us keep voluntary games in proportion. Belonging at a church gathering must not become a prize reserved for skilled players. Someone should be free to stop playing, or enjoy a different activity, without losing the community’s welcome. ⁴²

The Vatican document Giving the Best of Yourself distinguishes differences in sporting performance from hierarchies of human value. It also extends solidarity beyond one’s own team. Those are useful Christian principles for a shared occasion. A person’s limitations need consideration, and an opponent’s need for help matters even when helping interrupts our advantage. ³⁹

Finish the game with the person still in view

Winning permits gladness. It does not require a speech about the loser’s inadequacy. Losing permits disappointment. Jesper Juul’s discussion of game boundaries helps explain how a voluntarily accepted challenge can still involve real frustration. We can acknowledge that feeling without treating a game’s result as a verdict on someone’s worth. ³⁴

Spectators share responsibility for the atmosphere. In Andy Rudd’s small college survey, many athletes reported no emotional hurt from abuse. He nevertheless argues that an attempt to humiliate remains a moral concern. We cannot justify contempt by insisting that its target should be tough enough to ignore it. Cheering our side does not require ridiculing another person. ⁴⁰

When you have wronged someone, name the act plainly and repair what you can: correct the score, withdraw a false accusation or stop an insult. Eric Fruchart and Patricia Rulence Paques found varied forgiveness judgments when amateur athletes considered hypothetical aggressive incidents. An apology mattered, but it did not produce one uniform response. An offender cannot dictate another person’s immediate feelings. ⁴¹

Brian Gamel’s theology of winning and losing rejects making Christian faithfulness a technique for securing victory. This also releases us from treating defeat as an automatic sign of God’s displeasure. We can assess preparation and decisions honestly without pretending that every loss reveals a hidden spiritual failure or arrives with an obvious lesson. ²¹

Galatians 5 places freedom within service through love and ends by warning against provocation and envy. Brigitte Kahl emphasizes this relational purpose. Pentecostal concern for the Spirit’s work should reach the ordinary contest: patience when challenged, gentleness toward a struggling player and self control when disappointed. Spiritual enthusiasm does not exempt our conduct from that examination. ^{1, 25}

Paul writes, “Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep” (Romans 12:15). You can congratulate an opponent’s good play while wishing you had won. You can enjoy your own success without requiring another person’s humiliation. Then help put things away, thank the people who made the occasion possible and continue treating the other player as your neighbor. ¹