I want to be a loser.

I really do.

I was thinking this morning how caught up everyone is in winning and losing. Me, too. Caught up in assessing my own performance, comparing myself to others, etc. Even in spiritual things. Perhaps especially in spiritual things.

Being "spiritual" can sometimes mean transferring our lifelong obsessive concern for coming out on top over to matters of the spirit. Winning the game of being "a good Christian." Or, if you're charismatic, being "anointed." Someone somewhere designed the game (I think I know who!), and we play it to win and call that "being spiritual."

The thing about this game is, it leads to various bipolar syndromes. At any given time we're either winning or losing, and thus either happy or dejected. Either proud (oh, how proud we can be of "spiritual" accomplishments), or dispirited.

Another thing: why is it we so like to observe people winning and losing at various games? How much energy and emotion (not to mention cash) do we pore into the observation of people winning and losing? It fascinates us. We get a vicarious thrill. Afterward we discuss "the game" among our friends, pronouncing who is great and who sucks. It feels very good to do that. We posture as "authorities" in the game. It helps us feel like winners ourselves, this judging and assessing. Ah, the game around the game. The great game surrounding the little game. Even the Soccer World Cup is not so big a tournament as this game that goes on among its "fans" before and after.

But of course Jesus would have us know that all this gamesmanship is based on a false conception of winning and losing. Nevertheless, it's one we imbibed with our mother's milk, a habit that's hard to kick. We apply the winner/loser template to nearly everything we do. It's our mental grid, our "worldview."

In the ninth chapter of Luke Jesus says, "Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men." Hmmm, that's interesting. Jesus seems to be telling them that he is about to lose. Big time. It's so beyond the mental worldview of the apostles, that they simply disregard it. It doesn't "fit," therefore they do not let it sink into their ears. Instead, just moments afterward, verse 46 tells us,

An argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest.

What the apostles are going to have to learn, and will learn (all but Judas, I suppose), is that the world's categories of winning and losing are complete lies. Forget about them. Jesus actually spends quite a bit if time on this lesson, driving it home in many different ways. But it was a hard, hard lesson to learn.

I believe that the twin curses of our age, pride and depression, are merely psychological responses to "the game." And although the last thing we want is to be taken out of the game, dismissed from the field as one who cannot win, what we really need to do is, yes, just walk away.

Paul played the game quite well for a while. As a Pharisee, he was a real master. But later in life, recalling those days, he said this:

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law [I would like to insert here, "the rules of the game"], but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

In fact, there are actually countless passages that emphasize this same point. The game is rigged. Just walk away.

Musing on the Word: Matthew 5:3

I’ve been wondering what it means to be “poor in spirit.” I keep looking for such a spirit, but they’re not easy to find. I look to the mega-church pastors, who seem to set themselves up as exemplary of the attitude the rest of us should emulate. They don’t seem poor in spirit; in fact, the furthest thing from it.

What does it mean to have nothing, spiritually speaking. Does it simply mean that I can’t save myself? Is that it? Does it mean that I’m utterly dependent on the mercy of God? That seems close to the mark. Mercy. I need mercy.

Which reminds me of the tax collector in the parable. He went up to the temple to pray and said, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” There’s that word again. mercy. This man was a child of God, not a pagan, not a stranger to the worship of the One. If he needed saving, it was not simply that he needed to “accept Jesus into his heart.” If saving is what he needed, we need to expand our definition of “save” from that of a decision we make, or the instance of our being transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light. It must mean something that goes on from there, a continuous need on our part, and a continuous action on God's part. All of which has to do with that other word the tax collector's used: sinner.

Well, he was “poor in spirit,” that’s for sure. I think what’s clear here, what I’m getting at, is that this poverty of spirit is not some necessary condition we must have prior to our salvation, after which by God’s grace we are rich in spirit. That’s the proposition I’m testing. I know there is a way we can say in truth that yes, we who believe are rich in spirit. We have the gifts of the Spirit, we have riches stored up in heaven, etc. But this may be one of those “both/and” cases, not “either/or.”

Was Jesus rich in spirit, or poor? I seem to recall that Luke says in several places that Jesus did this or that “in the power of the Spirit.” And when Paul prays that the Ephesian Christians would be filled with all the fullness of God, is that not spiritual wealth, spiritual abundance? Not poverty. Not emptiness.

Yet I also recall that Isaiah said of the coming Messiah, “He had no form or majesty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” And I recall his cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you deserted me?” And Paul said that Jesus, in coming to die for us, “made himself nothing.”

Was Jesus then poor so that we could be rich? That’s what Paul says at 2 Corinthians 8:9. But recall what Paul said mockingly to these same Corinthians in his previous letter: “Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich!” His words drip with sarcasm, because in fact the Corinthian faith has led to spiritual boasting and pride. So Paul is verbally scourging them here. He is reminding them that they have nothing to boast of, since it is all gift.

So then what did Jesus mean when he said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit”? I know a man, a believer, who was once filled with spiritual pride and ambition. Through no one’s fault but his own he has now fallen upon very hard times. He told me recently that he can’t pray anymore, but then he said that the last time he tried to pray, he fell to his knees (and he said he'd never prayed kneeling before then, never in his ambitious years had he done so) and cried out, “God, I’ve got nothing.”

That’s the tax collector’s prayer. My friend once believed that it was he who brought things to God in prayer. He brought a kind of spiritual prowess, an impressive background of spiritual accomplishments and evangelistic fervor, things that would be sure to please God and prompt a generous response. Now in a spasm of despair he prayed, "I’ve got nothing," and I think perhaps it was his finest moment as a believer. "Blessed are those who are poor in spirit."

My pastor, preaching on the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector, said that the point of the parable was that the tax collector had "a yes in his heart." It was in many ways a helpful sermon, but I think he was profoundly and sadly wrong on this matter of the tax collector’s heart. The point of the parable is that he had nothing at all in his heart that pleased God, but that he threw himself on God’s mercy. He was, without a doubt, poor in spirit.

Only the spiritually poverty-stricken know their need for mercy. And they know from whom such mercy flows. It is not to a throne of rewards ("just desserts") that we are to draw near, but to a throne of grace.

Still, I am left with a few questions. Are we poor for a moment–an hour, say, or even a day or two–after which our lives are marked by spiritual riches, overflowing banqueting tables, water into wine celebrations, continuous spiritual foretastes of heaven’s wealth? Do we quickly move from poverty to riches in our spiritual walk? From rags to crowns? Is that the point of Matthew 5:3? That would be "either/or" thinking. I have a hunch that God wants us to hold these two seemingly contradictory truths about our spiritual condition together in our minds and be careful not to let the one nullify the other.

Or, to put it another way, I have a hunch that our riches in Christ, our gifts, our mercies (new every day), our "powerful" and persitent prayer, our stirring exhortations and high wisdom and way with words, our capacity to bless others with comfort and encouragement, none of these must supercede or replace the sense of our own brokenness, our innate condition of absolute need, our helplessness and nakedness, our spiritual poverty. We must appraise ourselves accurately. Like my friend, we've got nothing.

Only the helpless can really accept a gift as gift, pure and simple, thoroughly undeserved, and requiring no repayment (for we have nothing with which to repay, as the Giver well knows). To be in this place is to know and experience very intimately the loving generosity of our God. That is, it is to know God.

Preaching Ambition

My good son, Nate, who resides (for now) in North Carolina, said something yesterday that just about floored me with its simple truth. He said preachers ought to talk about who God is and what he has done for us and what he thinks about us, rather than what we ought to be doing. So the subject of preaching ought to be God, not us.

Sounds simple and obvious, right? Well, didn't George Orwell say that sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is to restate the obvious. Because it is the obvious that so often gets overlooked. We should start with God, says Nate, but instead our messages so often lapse into exhortations to have faith, pray, trust, etc. All these are of course very good things, but when we talk about them with ourselves as the starting point rather than God, I'm sorry, it just leaves me feeling rather sick.

I think the reason these kinds of sermons are superficially effective, though, is that they strike the ambition-chord in each of us. And we are nothing if not ambitious. These messages appeal to our innate desire to excel at something. We all want to be giants in some part of our lives, so why not the spiritual part? I'll strive to be a prayer giant, or a faith giant, etc. How can that be bad? But spiritual pride is lurking at the door.

As for me, I've kind of had it with spiritual ambition. Quote me all the Scripture you want about striving after the prize, etc., but I just want to fall, that's all. If I see myself as I really am, my only ambition will be to "run to Jesus, and live."