This year, December brought us not only the Advent season but also the World Cup season. For our family, this means our usually quite tight TV restrictions fly out the window and we all are glued to the screen, cheering and discussing and generally acting as if we were all soccer pros. And no, I wasn’t sitting there looking for inspiration for a blog post…
There are at least four types of (soccer) fans. First, the ones who are for “their” team, aka the country they grew up in. Second, the ones who cheer for “the better team”—those are the fans who believe they are expert enough to distinguish between talents completely out of their own league. Third, those who cheer for the underdog—just to support them and because miracles DO happen. And fourth, those who cheer for the winning team because, let’s be honest, it always feels good to be on the winning team.
The one thing all these fans have in common is that they want their team to win. The reasons might differ slightly, but it is out of the question that winning is better than losing. Right?
Enter Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount. The sermon where everything is turned upside down. The poor are blessed. Those who mourn as well. The meek, the hungry, the persecuted –all of them blessed. We read this and agree because we feel compassion toward those unfortunate enough to be in this position. We’re glad Jesus cares about them and gives them hope. And we cheer them on so they also get to be winners one day.
And…we’ve missed the point entirely.
We Christians—maybe specifically in the U.S.—have a problematic love for “successful” versions of faith, and the propensity to portray our lives as “victorious” and ourselves as happy, put together and without major problems. Sanctified and sanitized so that we can now, with a benevolent smile, help clean up those poor souls around us still lost in sin and darkness. In soccer analogy, we try to score just like all the rest of them so many will join team Jesus.
Of course, most people smell the fakeness long before you’ve had a chance to work your convincing magic on them. But even if we could get ourselves together enough to truly appear successful, victorious and happy, the question is whether winning anything is even the goal for a follower of Jesus.
What if Jesus is actually saying that the weak and poor and mourning — the “losers”— are representing discipleship better than the winning Christians? Yes, Jesus also talked about gains for those following him, but those promises have to be held in faith and cannot be cashed in at the believer’s own time. In all his dealings with people, it looks like winning – at least the way we typically understand it – was never in his vocabulary. He talked about enduring. Suffering. Loving. Helping. Trusting. All of them aspects he led with by example.
Eric Warner wrote a post earlier this fall entitled “What if weakness is the goal?”, and I want to share a part of it with you. He writes:
“We are so conditioned by the logic of our earthly world to see power as brute force. The sports team with the bigger, stronger players is powerful. The army with larger numbers and better weapons is powerful. We are drawn to power in every arena of life. We like powerful cars. We want to play for the winning team. We want to work for the winning company. We want to get a good deal when we buy things, which is really a desire to exert our power. We maneuver or even fight for power within our relationships. We have bought into the idea that power, control and autonomy are the pinnacle of existence. We seek to avoid situations where we are not in control. If we have to be on a team we want to be on the winning team. We want to follow a leader who is powerful and in control. My observation is that there is little difference in this regard between Christians and non-Christians.”
What really got me was the desire to get a good deal (writing this shortly after Black Friday…). I believe Eric is exactly right that any area in life where we want to win, we really just want to exert our will and control. We want control. And we find an excuse that there’s nothing wrong – we just saved money or gained comfort or security! Or did we? He goes on:
“But what if Jesus taught and revealed that the Kingdom of God doesn’t run on this underlying principle of power and control? What if power is perfected in weakness? What if weakness is the goal? That almost sounds absurd. We are okay with thinking that we need to experience weakness to learn a lesson or two, but in the end, surely we will be exalted. Weakness is only a temporary condition, right? We are so conditioned to see weakness as bad. You don’t get things done through weakness. However, more and more as I read the gospels I see Jesus revealing that the Kingdom of God does not work like the kingdoms of the world. This is why we need to be born again – born of the spirit. The Kingdom of God is radical – it is not just a cleaned-up kingdom of the world.”
He goes on expounding on this upside-down Kingdom where power is perfected in weakness (2 Cor 12:9) and where God’s weakness is stronger than the world’s strength (1 Cor 1:25). I highly recommend reading his entire post.
His words had a strangely comforting effect on me. If winning isn’t the goal, then maybe perfectionism isn’t either. Nor optimization. Nor my tiring efforts to avoid making mistakes or missing opportunities or being overlooked or misunderstood or … fill in the ways you try to win and stay ahead of the game in your life.
I know we can’t remove ourselves entirely from this world’s game of winning (yes, enjoy that World Cup!). But we can meditate on how to understand our weaknesses as strengths. We can pray to lose this often-automatic desire to win in every area of life, and instead ask for love for the “losers” of this world and for the grace to recognize they might be following Jesus beautifully. It’s like asking for a pair of “right-side-up” glasses that help us see the world the way it already is for those who partake in His Kingdom.
Judith,
I am humbled that you found my thoughts comforting. I like the way that you expanded my ideas. The following lines have been poking at me since I first read your post a few days ago.
“If winning isn’t the goal, then maybe perfectionism isn’t either. Nor optimization. Nor my tiring efforts to avoid making mistakes or missing opportunities or being overlooked or misunderstood or … fill in the ways you try to win and stay ahead of the game in your life.”
I am a perfectionist. I generally hold myself to an unattainable standard and I tend to do the same for those around me. Yet my heart longs to know and show God’s grace. We truly do need to daily take up our cross and die to follow Jesus. The idea of winning as losing is so foreign to the world that we are immersed in that it is extremely difficult to even see the myriad ways that we have been formed by a culture of winning.
This year I have been reading a book on the parables of Jesus by Robert Farrar Capon titled, “Kingdom, Grace, Judgement.” He repeatedly drives this point home, particularly in the chapter called “Losing as the Mechanism of Grace,” Here are just a few snippets of that chapter that jar me every time I read them.
Jesus’ insistence on unsuccess will always be radically unacceptable to people in their right, success-loving minds]. . . any disciple of Jesus who enlists on the side of the world’s winners will simply have cut himself off from the losers who alone have the keys to the kingdom; worse yet, he himself will inevitably become just another doomed winner.
People simply do not come in droves to anyone who insists that the only way to win is to lose. Nevertheless, Jesus’ teaching is exactly that salty: “The disciple is not above his teacher,” he told his followers (e.g., Matt. 10:24-25); “it is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher.” And he went on to spell out the meaning of that assertion in his very first prediction of his death (e.g., Matt. 16:24-25): “If anyone wants to come with me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For if anyone wants to save his life, he will lose [apolesei] it; and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
But if the salt of the earth becomes insipid – if a disciple of Jesus forgets that only losing wins, and a fortiori, if the apostolic church forgets gets it – where in the wide world of winners drowning in the syrup of their own success will either the disciple or the church be able to recapture the saltiness of victory out of loss? The answer is nowhere. And the sad fact is that the church, both now and at far too many times in its history, has found it easier to act as if it were selling the sugar of moral and spiritual achievement rather than the salt of Jesus’ passion and death. It will preach salvation for the successfully well-behaved, redemption for the triumphantly correct in doctrine, and pie in the sky for all the winners who think they can walk into the final judgment and flash their passing report cards at Jesus. But every last bit of that is now and ever shall be pure baloney because: (a) nobody will ever have that kind of sugar to sweeten the last deal with, and (b) Jesus is going to present us all to the Father in the power of his resurrection and not at all in the power of our own totally inadequate records, either good or bad.
Jesus’ program remains firm. He saves losers and only losers. He raises the dead and only the dead. And he rejoices more over the last, the least, and the little than over all the winners in the world. That alone is what this losing race of ours needs to hear, even though it can’t stand the thought of it. That alone is the salt that can take our perishing insipidity and give it life and flavor forever.
Robert Farrar Capon. Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus (Kindle Locations 2275-2301). Kindle Edition.
Eric, thank you for your thoughts. I so relate to what you’re saying. I’m a perfectionist, too… which can really be a curse and stand in the way of relationships, peace, and becoming more like Jesus! Like you said so well, although we hold ourselves and others to impossible standards, our hearts actually long for something else—for grace and compassion. Those are attributes of the Kingdom of God and we need to learn to let them speak louder than the perfectionism and control the world tells us will make us happy.
From what you write I can tell you’ve already pondered this topic way more than I have. It seems to me that it’s a whole new way to live and I marvel at how long I’ve been a follower of Jesus without hardly having paid any attention to these specific words of Him. We all know Jesus’ words were “rightside up” from what the world thinks, but it’s a different thing when you take it serious enough to actually want to live by it.
I want to read the book you mentioned—it sounds like what I would imagine a modern prophet to sound like!…
You nailed this one as well….
I’m convicted. 🙂
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Liebe Judith
Deine New Post wird immer realistischer, oder besser gesagt, sie entspricht immer mehr dem, was ich voll und ganz nachvollziehen und mit Überzeugung beherzigen will. Vielen Dank für das Mitteilen deiner Gedanken.
Bis sehr bald und liebe Grüsse
Mami
Vielen Dank! Ich freue mich, dass die Gedanken für dich Sinn machen und dir wichtig sind.