Living Through the Losing Streak

At the beginning of May, my beloved St. Louis Cardinals held the best record in baseball’s National League. They then proceeded to hit a reinforced concrete wall, grinding out a dismal 9-18 performance for the month. Whenever the team was hitting well, the pitching imploded; whenever the pitching was solid, the bats were silent. 

What made this protracted slump especially frustrating is that the Cardinals purport themselves to be a competitive team, i.e., one that seriously plans on making the play-offs. Competitive teams (and their fans) expect to win. The 162-game season is a marathon and losing streaks are inevitable, but these are short-lived detours off the path to glory (or so the expectation goes). The appropriate lessons learned, the right adjustments made – and the team should get right back to winning. 

On the other end of the baseball spectrum are “rebuilding” teams, to use a charitable euphemism. For them, the season pretty much is a losing streak. Not even their diehard fans, who generally comprise a modest number, expect to see them playing in October. The hapless Baltimore Orioles, for instance, were projected to lose 105 games this season. At their current pace, that figure looks optimistic. 

ON THE WINNING TEAM
Western Christians (myself included) typically imagine our lives playing out like a competitive team’s season. We expect to win in readily identifiable ways. Our temporal and spiritual endeavors will meet with success: a fulfilling career, a loving family, good health, powerful ministries and triumph over sin and temptation. Every serious Christian acknowledges that there will be times of trial and suffering – but these make the exception rather than the rule, and exist to educate and strengthen us. We will – with God’s help, of course – go on to lead lives marked predominantly by victory.

Then we hit our own walls. The career takes way more than it gives. Friendships and marriages collapse. Children rebel. Church becomes a hotbed of politicking and backbiting of the pettiest sort imaginable. The same temptations that confronted us five years ago confront us still. We find it hard to experience the joy of the Lord. Our personal “losing streaks” can drag on for years. 

HUMAN GLORY VS. GOD'S VICTORY
What’s the disconnect? The great reformer Martin Luther would tell us that our problem isn’t the expectation of victory, but rather the assumption that our idea of victorious living is the same as God’s. In his 1518 Heidelberg Disputations, Luther calls out “theologians of glory” who think that the power and glory of God look a lot like their human counterparts, just cranked up to 11. 

In fact, God has revealed himself in the crucified Christ, an utter failure by any recognizably human standard (1 Cor 1:22-24). In the cross, God displays his mercy in wrath, his strength in weakness and his majesty in the shame of a condemned criminal. Luther recognizes the cross as the paradigm of how God generally works in the world: he reveals his mercy, power and glory underneath their opposites (sub contrario). 

This means that God is at work the most in our defeats; his presence is most real in our suffering; his power is made perfect in our weakness (2 Cor 12:9). Suffering and failure don’t always teach us tidy lessons we can use to get back on track. Sometimes we just lose, a lot, and that’s pretty much it. But, paradoxically, it is at that very point that we find ourselves victorious, because we possess the only ultimately desirable prize: the presence of God revealed through and in Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified and yet lives again.