Good as gold, mate, good as gold!

I hate losing. It doesn't matter whether we are talking sport, or a game, or if I am just watching, I hate to lose. I have always been a good winner, gracious and appropriately humble in my triumph (a legacy of my roots being in the UK not USA), but I can't pretend to being a very good loser. I think I've improved, but there's still that bitter taste of defeat.Naturally my sporting interest over the last week or so has been the Olympics. I don't want to get into the whole debate, that isn't the point of this post, but I have a couple of thoughts about our Olympic team. Any medal won at Olympic level is a significant achievement, especially from a country of only twenty-two million (I can hear my Kiwi friends starting up already), and we should salute and celebrate all our medalists. However when we have enjoyed spectacular success for so many games now, of course an expectation builds up. Maybe we have been punching above our weight for years, but we've come to expect that, it's what Aussies do. And when we have world champions who are happy with silver...well I'm sorry, but I don't think Usain Bolt would have been happy if he hadn't brought home gold in the 100m. So I congratulate our medalists for their performances, but let's not forget that some could have been expected to go just that little further.

Anyway, that's my Olympic contribution, I'm sure the AOC has been waiting for it. It's the furore over our performance at the Games that has provoked my thinking this week, what does our - my - obsession with winning say about us?

I remember being told, "It's not whether you win or lose its how you play the game." Rubbish! Winning and losing matters!! I was taught by my father to play hard and play fair and play to win. If you lose, so be it, you gave it your best. Vince Lombardi famously said, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." I wonder how much that philosophy has infiltrated our culture and our minds? I wonder how much of our lives are spent keeping score? Lombardi also said, "If winning doesn't matter, why do they keep score?" Are you, 'they'?

Life isn't like sport. I might be naive, but I don't think I'm competing against other people in the 'Game of Life' (unless I'm playing that board-game, 'Game of Life', and then I'll be competing my heart out). I don't think my attitude makes me a loser, although there would be many who would disagree, I think my attitude makes me human.

Our ancestors may have out performed other species to rise to mastery of the world, but that doesn't mean we have to keep behaving in that way. Humanity achieves more by compassion and co-operation than by a ruthless determination to win and grind our opposition into the dirt. To use the sorting metaphor again, winning or losing certainly matters, but how you play the game reflects the type of person you are.

My wife and I have encouraged our children to seek to achieve success in their lives and to do their very best. We want our kids to enjoy life and to realize the great potential they have. But this enjoyment, success and realized potential comes as we navigate life with others, helping, encouraging and caring for them as well. The Christian faith has a rich tradition seeking to make the most of the times and talents we have been given and of caring for those are find life more difficult. The example of Jesus is to forego 'winning' in order to identify with and journey with the very people our culture would consider 'losers.'

"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.....he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness." (Phil. 2:3-6) Some would argue that ultimately Jesus was a winner, and they'd be right, but look at how he got there. He set himself for the cross, and was mindful of the journey along the way.

It occurs to me that our obsession with winning, with success, with a contemporary version of 'survival of the fittest' (with concurrent disdain for those we deem to be weaker and wounded) stems from a basic sense of insecurity. Perhaps our modern world places so much emphasis on the external accoutrements of success that we have forgotten the internal strength of a well-developed sense of self. When I know who I am and am content with who I am I can enjoy winning, but I also understand that success doesn't validate or add to my self-worth. Jesus became human, he identified with us and walked with us in our humanity, and demonstrated that a healthy sense of self is based on knowing who we are and in whose image we are created rather than anything we might achieve along the way.

So who are the gold medal winners? Are they the ones who grace the dais as their flag is raised (assuming they have a flag - nod to Eddie Izzard) and their anthem is played, or are the gold medal winners the ones who got them there and whose names we will never learn? Everyone who is hailed a champion owes that success to people who believed in them and contributed to their journey.

Life isn't a game, there really isn't a way to keep score, life is just life. I believe the only way to actually enjoy the richness of being a human being created in the image of God is to know who you are, be secure in who you are, and contribute to other people achieving the same. That, I think, is gold standard.

 

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