If there’s one thing I can’t stand, one thing that makes me cringe in sympathy, one thing that makes me nauseous with foreboding or dread — it’s hype. Anyone who follows sports knows what hype can do to a kid and has likely seen dozens of bright young prospects in any major sport chewed up and spit out onto the ash heap of history. If those once can’t-miss prospects are still remembered at all, it is only for the potential that went unfulfilled. That forever defines them in the public’s eye. But it even haunts the great ones too. Hype is a toxic friend to have.

In basketball, my preferred sport, big prospects often start running into the maelstrom of hype and brand sponsorship before they even reach high school, and it only intensifies as they progress through puberty. Over the past 30 years, some Hall-of-Fame-caliber players have been drafted into the pros right out of high school — Lebron, Kobe, McGrady, Kevin Garnett. They all more-or-less lived up to the hype (eventually), but most big prospects don’t. Many are crushed by it. Anyone remember Lebron’s contemporary Sebastian Telfair?

Many other five-star recruits get to college and then flounder, or they do well in college, get picked high in the draft, and then go belly-up in the NBA. The pressure of being picked high makes things worse. Famous draft busts include Greg Oden (No. 1, 2007), Michael Olowokandi (No. 1, 1998), Anthony Bennett (No. 1, 2013), Kwame Brown (No. 1, 2001) and of course, poor old Sam Bowie (No. 2, 1984)—drafted in between Hakeem Olajuwon and Michael Jordan.

I still feel so sorry for these guys. It didn’t have to be that way! They were wounded for life by outrageously high expectations. We demanded too much and then punished them and laughed at them when they couldn’t deliver. It pains my soul every time I watch it happen — and it’s not just in basketball. In fact, despite the stated spirit of the Olympic games, it often seems to me like it happens in the Olympics even more than elsewhere. There’s just so, so much hype, it’s almost bound to happen.

Which brings me to Simone Biles. Let’s be clear: She hasn’t fallen from public grace, exactly. It’s actually been encouraging to see how many commentators have applauded her decision to bow out of most of her Olympic events in order to take care of herself. But there’s still a lot of disappointment out there, and despite her already incredibly storied career, it’s hard not to wonder if all the hype had taken its toll. Biles has basically said as much. Listening to the pre-Olympic chatter over the past six months, I was already worried for her. It seemed like the media coverage was leaving no room for her to just be human. How many times do people have to call you the G.O.A.T before that pressure becomes unbearable, before you start to freeze up or crumple under self-doubt in the quest for perfection?

Writing in the Washington Post, Richard Zoglin argued that NBC may share some blame for Biles’ withdrawal: “it’s hard to ignore the elephant in the room: the orgy of hype, hero worship and home-team hyperventilating that has come to define NBC’s coverage of the Olympics. Somehow, sooner or later, something like this had to happen.” He’s not wrong.

Of course, it’s not just in sports where hype eats people alive. We all know of plenty of child stars in the entertainment biz that have been ruined by early acclaim. But it wrecks the adults as well. I don’t know about you, but if I had to choose between being rich or famous, it would be no contest: Let me be rich and anonymous. Yes, I know all about the soul-corrosive power of wealth. The Bible makes that point ad nauseum. But these days, it seems like it’s fame that most clearly sets people up for a downfall — first, I think, because they start to believe their own hype, and second, because they then have to live up to it, and eventually can’t. It might just be human nature to seek to make people into heroes, but we often destroy them in the process.

That said, hype can also cut both ways. To state the obvious, we demonize people as often as we lionize them. Racism is basically just the result of centuries worth of negative hype. As Chuck D rapped in the classic 1988 Public Enemy song that gave this post its title,

The minute they see me, fear me
I’m the epitome of “public enemy”
Used, abused without clues
I refuse to blow a fuse
They even had it on the news

Positive or negative in its orientation, hype always misrepresents people. It wounds them with outsized expectations. It doesn’t approach humans as humans.

We also do this in religious circles of course — we lionize our celebrity pastors, writers, singers, or even theologians, and demonize nonbelievers or certain kinds of sinners. In the search for inspiration, I think Christians may be even more inclined than most folks to engage in what you might call hagiography with our cultural icons. And it tends not to end well. We forget that saints don’t make themselves, and never stop being sinners.

Both implicitly and explicitly, Jesus always taught people not to believe the hype — to distrust the kind of public appraisals that put some people on moral pedestals and that make others into outcasts. He showed open disdain for the big shots and influencers of his day, for the entire VIP class. He called them every kind of hypocrite, snake, or fool in the book. He was constantly trying to cut them down to size — to both humble the powerful and lift up the lowly.

He even resisted the hype when people tried to hype him up. On several occasions, Jesus instructed people he’d healed to tell no one, and instructed witnesses to the transfiguration to do the same. In another instance, he’s approached by a rich man who asks, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus replies, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” Given what we believe as Christians, that seems like a strange thing for him to say. But if you know Jesus, it actually makes perfect sense. The point he’s making is: The only hype that’s justified is God-hype. Humans are never going to live up to the hype. Humility is the only honest reaction to who we are as human beings, no matter how great our abilities, and it’s the only way to survive if you’re famous.

I never used to like it when athletes would thank God after a victory or a standout performance. Would you blame God when you lose? I assume not. So why would you praise God when you win? Does God really pick sides in sports?

But now I think I better understand the impulse athletes have to thank God or to “give God the glory”. It saves them from completely believing their own hype, from taking too much credit for the things they are able to accomplish, or too much responsibility for the things they fail to accomplish. Faith appropriately deflects full responsibility. It resists the alluring illusion of control. It may be the only thing that can.

When you’re winning—in sports or in life—it’s always tempting to take credit. But eventually we all lose. We all stumble and fall off the beam. We foul things up, get old or sick or crotchety. We all fall short of the mark a lot more than we’d care to admit, and the Good News is that God loves and has forgiven us anyway, gold medals be damned.

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