Winner and Loser.

Friday, July 3, 2009. Often we divide the world into two parts: winners and losers. There are some, who are successful. Some who make it. They are the winners. There are others, who are not successful, who do not make it. They are the losers.

Our society works at least in some of its most important parts with these categories of winners and losers. We have learned that competition is good to increase quality and bring prices down - market economy. Where ever you generate an environment of competition, there will be winners and losers. Here, it appears to be good to have these mechanisms.

We also tend to generalize this market principle to basically every area of life. Where ever you go, there are competitions, there are winners and losers. To some extent that is good, since now you have the chance to win some of the competitions, some will win in one area, others in another area.

But we also need to be concerned about the global strength of this “philosophy of winning”. It brings also some serious problems. We have societies on this planet who do not win at all. And we have people who are not made for ongoing competition every day of their life. We need to ask: is it really adequate that some seem to be the losers? Are they losers? Why do the others have the right to take everything, just because they win some competitions?

In the Bible Jesus tells a story about a beggar (Luke 16: 19-31). He did not have anything. He was ill and he was poor. Yet, Jesus says, after his death he was carried directly to Abraham's side. There, he was comforted and God payed him back for all his suffering. On the other side there was a rich man. After he died he was put into a terrible place and was separated from God and all good things.

It is not the most important thing to be a winner or loser on this earth. To us it might seem to be important. But God sees much deeper. He has a different view. You can win the earth, yet lose everything. You can loose everything on the earth, yet be very rich in the eyes of God. Our categories of winning and loosing are just extremely limited. From a more general perspective they are poor and wrong, they are not adequate for humanity, not adequate to relate to any single human being on this planet. We are much more worth than all riches we could ever gain. Winning all of them will not count one penny. But being rich before God, that will count everything. ... more texts