People who live in the Western world tend to see life in terms of "winning" or "losing." We operate in a highly competitive society in which we must constantly win if we are going to be survive or, at least, can feel happy and successful.

A lot of this business of winning or losing plays out at a rather superficial level. Some people appear to be winners. Some are seen as winners because they have won the national lottery or have suddenly inherited wealth for which they never had to work. We consider others winners because they always seem to get the better share of any deal. Some people, we say, often with considerable envy, have all the luck in the world.

Just Lucky?

Many of us are winners because we happen to have been born in a rich country, in the right neighborhood, in a middle-income or high-income family. We have been encouraged to go to college and on to graduate school. We have landed ourselves a good job and have advanced, sometimes because we are good at what we are doing, but often also because we happened to know the right people or happened to be at the right time at the right place. We have always had good food in abundance and enjoyed health. We have found a suitable partner and enjoy our two children and, eventually, our four grandchildren.

Others are losers. They had the misfortune to be born in a third-world country or in a crime-infested low-income housing estate. They have struggled with their health. They have not been able to give their children a good education, and thus the cycle of poverty continues into the next generation. They lost their job when the firm for which they worked decided to employ robots instead of humans. And when others where cashing in on the boom on the stock market, they were desperately trying to pay off their $2,000 credit card debt.

Not all of this is a matter of just good luck or simply bad luck. Many successes are the result of hard work and sheer commitment, and many disasters are the result of laziness, greed, or stupidity. However, on this superficial level, it certainly would appear that chance—or factors outside your control—largely determine whether you are winner or a loser.

My father was a loser: limited formal education, poor health, a first marriage that ended in divorce; a business that went bust in the pre-World War II economic crisis; death at the age of fifty caused by leukaemia. Why was he so unlucky?

I look at myself as a winner. I have completed university education. I have a happy marriage, two successful adult children, and an interesting career, and have done a lot of travel. I am also reasonably healthy at age sixty. Why have I been so lucky?

Reality Check: We Are All Losers

There is more to be said. This side of the Second Coming we are all losers. That is the essence of sin. We cannot do what we should do. We cannot achieve our God-intended potential. We live imperfect lives and, sooner or later, must face death. Some of us lose our memory before death catches up with us. Many lose their health surreptitiously or in a number of rather well-defined stages.

We lose our friends and loved ones. We often lose the struggle against ourselves. We sympathize with the apostle Paul: "I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do—this I keep on doing . . . I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law at work within my members. What a wretched man I am’ Who will rescue me from the body of this death?" (Rom. 7:21–24).

We Can Be Winners

Yet Romans 7:21 is not the end of the story. The answer one might have expected to the dramatic question "Who will rescue me?" is not a gloomy "Nobody," but: "Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord."

We can rise above our experience of loss and become winners.

The Bible contains numerous examples of losers who became winners. Think of Joseph, who lost his family, and then his freedom and reputation. However, through faith and loyalty to his God Joseph received a new lease on life. Remember Moses, the man who could not control his anger, killed an Egyptian, and had to flee for his life? Through the grace of God, he became the leader of the Exodus and the conduit through whom God revealed his will to his people.

Do not forget Samson, who misused his God-given strength on his own little battlefields, yet in the end was heard by God when he made one final plea to be of use in the divine order of things. Consider how the great prophet Elijah had his moments of darkness and despair, but was also able to take his stand in the face of overwhelming opposition.

These Old Testament heroes found that there is a victorious future, if God becomes part of the equation of human life. This was also what the apostles experienced, all of whom had to face martyrdom as a result of their witness. What was also the testimony of Paul. He did not have an easy ride. Comparing his own experience with that of others, he concluded: "I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked,"…and so he goes on (2 Cor. 11:23–27).

Millions of Christians in post-biblical times have suffered in similar ways and have known loss and defeat. What is the message of the Bible for them? The Gospel is clear: At the end of our journey awaits their heavenly mansion (John 14:1–3). At the end of history as we know it, those who have remained loyal to their Master "will be priests of God and of Christ" and will "reign" in the heavenly realm (Rev. 20:6). This life may be tainted by decay and death, but the moment comes "when death has been swallowed up in victory" (1 Cor. 15:54).

More than Conquerors

But do we have to wait for eternity before we can hope to experience victory?

In a profound sense we can be winners in the here and now, even if we are losers in many areas of life. The same Paul who wrote about his beatings and shipwrecks, assures us that these disasters did not make him a loser. "We are hard pressed," he says, "on every side, but we are not crushed.…We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body" (2 Cor. 4:9, 10).

In Romans 8 the same truth is brought home to us in possibly even more straightforward and powerful language: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:35–39).

In the midst of the trials that may come our way, we have "an anchor that holds the soul." Though, seen superficially, we are losing on many fronts, "in Christ" we can be conquerors. For eternity, yes. But also in the here and now. As we live with him through various crises we can become more mature, more balanced, more lovable, better, more Christ-like people.

I cannot state it better than Rabbi Harold S. Kushner has in his latest book, Living a Life that Matters (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001):

Like many people, I live in two worlds. Much of the time I live in the world of work and commerce, eating, working, and paying my bills. It is a world that honors people for being attractive and productive. It reveres winners and scorns losers, as reflected in its treatment of devoted public servants who lose an election or in the billboard displayed at the Atlanta Olympia Games a few years ago: "You don!t win the silver medal, you lose the gold." As in most contests, there are many more losers than winners, so most of the citizens of that world spend a lot of time worrying that they don!t measure up.

But, fortunately, there is another world where, even before I entered it professionally, I have spent some of my time. As a religiously committed person, I live in the world of faith, the world of the spirit. Its heroes are models of compassion rather than competition. In that world, you win through sacrifice and self-restraint. You win by helping your neighbor and sharing with him rather than by finding his weakness and defeating him. And in the world of the spirit, there are many more winners than losers." (3, 4)

This is the world of Christ.

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