Spiritual Corner - Jesus Was a Good Loser

We are constantly sizing up each other, rating bodies, hair, intelligence, clothing, talents and achievements. As we rate, we become unhealthily depressed when others outscore us and unhealthily inflated when we appear superior to them.

The enigma separating us from each other becomes ever more difficult to penetrate as we become more and more obsessed with ourselves and our need to be special, to sit above. We live in jealousy, competition and violence. The other is perennially perceived as a threat.

We need to let the mind and heart of Christ exorcise this demon from our lives.

In the mind and heart of Christ we will perceive ways of relating beyond competition, jealousy and violence. In the mind and heart of Christ there is no need to stand out and be special. There the other’s special talents are not seen as a threat but as something which enhances all of life, our life included.

What is the mind and heart of Christ? It is the acceptance of the fact that everyone is special and therefore all are equal. Nobody sits above the rest and nobody has a right to feel that he or she should sit above the rest. This is true for nations as well as for individuals.

If individuals accepted this there would be much less jealousy, competition and violence among us. If nations accepted it, our world would not be poised on the brink of economic and nuclear destruction.

Show me a good loser and I will show you a loser! Jesus was a good loser. In his under-achieving we all achieved salvation. In his mind and heart lie the seeds that can bind us into one heart beyond jealousy, competition and violence.

Yours,
Deacon Matthew Wang
(An excerpt from Forgotten Among the Lilies by Ronald Rolheiser)