Winning!?

SUN., OCT. 12, 1997, 5:56 AM
FARM, STUDY

Yesterday afternoon the Saluki team, under its new coach, Jan, came up with a victory in the last few seconds of the game. Instead of going down to a fifth defeat, as it looked like they would, they roared back, on a play that looked like a “loser”, and were winners. Let Me tell you how I feel about winning and losing, since you decided that I must have wakened you for this purpose.

I told you, in a previous Teaching, that I do see value in competition, and that I “allowed” the development of evil in the earth as an odd means of spiritual growth (but an effective one, so I judge). So there is competition for life itself… and more competition for better life than others. Systems of communism, based on cooperation rather than competition, have “worked” in some small, religious groups, at least for a time, but this has not had much success as a national way, at least in “pure form”.

Competition produces apparent winners and losers. Some jobs, like Jan’s, are dependent on winning… at least achieving more wins than losses. In your personal experience you remember a UCLA football season in which you had 10 wins and no losses… a championship. And then came the Rose Bowl game, and you were rather abject losers. You try to remember the victories, but also have to see that these led to the defeat. If your team hadn’t been a winner, you wouldn’t have been chosen to play in the Rose Bowl… to become losers. You also remember, as a coach, being carried off the field on the shoulders of your players, after the victory that made you champions, despite one loss.

The sites were different. The loss was in the Rose Bowl on a New Year’s Day, with national attention. The win was on a public field in Kaimuke, on a weekday afternoon, with very little even local acclaim.

This that We do together… these Teachings… is not competitive. Oh, you can judge that some of these are better than others, but I urge no attempt to “pick a winner”… the best Teaching “ever”. As you read through one of the volumes you find it hard to decide whether “this one is better than that one”… and why should I encourage such? You sometimes consider having a Teaching… and then don’t, with the thought that there is no really obvious reason for it. Yet I have helped you set a goal of hearing Me 3 or 4 times a week. You are aware that this is #4 for this week… or is it #1 for this “new week”, according to the calendar?

In the classroom winning means getting an A. Yet the recommended outcome for any class is a curve, with, by this definition, only 15% winners. Oh, a B grade is a “minor winner”, being better than a C, certainly. Yet you were not declared a loser, as a professor, when all but one student in one of your last classes received an A. There was competition only against self and the tasks, not against one another. Yet it could be said that with this number of A’s there are no real winners… for there are no losers… or was the one B a loser?

Judgment at the end of your earth life is seen, in fundamental Christianity, as the ultimate competition. If you “win” you’re close to Me and the “saints” for eternity. If you “lose” you are apart from Me in hell for eternity. And it isn’t at all clear how you shall be judged or on what you will be judged.