Winners Without Losers
Tonight is the eve of the release of the new book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived by Rob Bell. Many have already taken their places in the debate. The battle lines have been drawn and shots have already been fired from both sides.
However, both sides have already lost. This is because they are taking one side or the other. It is so engrained in us to be “either/or” thinkers. We automatically think in terms of “win/lose” or “right/wrong.” Is it possible that there is another way? I struggled, and still struggle, with this question. Perhaps it’s my pedigree.
I was recently asked if I was “competitive.” I chuckled. This person obviously does not know me well. I’m half Cuban and half-Irish – some cocktails should never be mixed. I like to fight and I like to tell tall tales. Asking me if I am competitive is like asking the Pope if he is Catholic.
Over the years I have grown to be okay with admitting it and living with it. Thankfully it is less defining of who I am, but make no mistake, I am competitive. I write this knowing that many of you who read this will know where I am coming from, for you too are competitive. We just can’t seem to help it.
And it’s not just winning is it? It’s also wanting the other team, the other side, or the other person to lose. We want to reign victorious and want our opponent suffer humiliating defeat. While this is overstated (only slightly for some), this mentality is nearly everywhere today. We live in a very divided, binary, and defended way toward most everyone and everything. In our minds we cannot have a winner without a loser.
It is high time for us to step back, pause, and consider together if there is another way. Can we move beyond “either/or” and learn how to embrace “both/and” thinking? Is there a third way?
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood the third way. In a 1967 sermon, he spoke of loving those who perpetrated violence against African Americans. He concluded by saying, “… one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”
King knew something that still very few have learned. There does not always have to be a loser for their to be winner. This way of thinking goes to who God is.
In Exodus 3, Moses asked about God’s name. God replied, “I am.” In saying this God was communicating, “I don’t need to be compared or defined by or against anything to be who I am. I simply am who I am.”
Notice he did not say, “I am not like that god of that god …” Nor did he say, “I am because there was this one time when …” He is God. One God. Undivided. He is not a God who lives in an “either/or” kind of way. He does not need anything to be what he is.
Which makes me wonder about how we think and love. We tend to define things by their opposites. We understand light in terms of darkness, and darkness in terms of light. But God does not need dark to be light. He just is light, without need to compare it to anything. God is love. He does not need hate, indifference, or prejudice to contrast his love. He just is love. God does not need the opposite to exist for him to be what he is. God does not need the other so we can better understand him. God does not need there to be a loser if he is the winner.
This reality is quite freeing. If this is true, and I believe it is, we can let go of fear, competition and the incessant need to be right. Instead of building arguments and crafting counterpoints, we can give our mind and hearts over toward knowing God intimately. Instead of preparing fine tuned point-by-point categorical responses to things with which we disagree, we can dedicate ourselves to be being faithful. And shouldn’t intimacy and faithfulness be our truest desire? After all we are talking about our relationship with God.
When it comes to my closest human relationships, I do not sit around trying be the one who is the most right. I am not interested in being the winner, or the one who wins all the arguments. My truest desire is to know those I love, and to be known by them. My deepest longing is to have faithful friends and to be a faithful friend in response.
It is this kind of living that is praised in Hebrews 11. Those who are on the list of “faith heroes” are not praised because they were right. They are not better than those who were wrong. No, they were considered righteous because they were faithful.
Because in the end it’s faithfulness that will lead us to what is right. In the end, it is deep intimacy with God that will lead us to what is true. In the end, we will be caught up into the love of God. Which is good news, for this God, the God who is love, will win.