In Line with the Losers

It was mid-afternoon, and I was driving a little too fast down Highway 84 on my way into Lubbock for a job interview at a big church. It rained for the first couple hours of my drive and I’d finally driven past it and out into the sunlight. Out in the high plains, where not even the windmills can block your view of the sky, it sometimes feels like your mind might wander out ahead of you, down the highway, over the horizon, and into New Mexico.

I found myself wondering what I would say to the interviewers I’d be spending the weekend with. I began to strategize about how to impress them — something I do embarrassingly often. I thought about the vibe I wanted to give off, about what kinds of accomplishments and experiences I wanted to highlight. I made a mental list of things I wanted to emphasize (like how intelligent and thoughtful and humble I am), and things I wanted to hide (like how I was intimidated by the size and success of the church). I charted a mental blueprint for how I would go about pretending to be knowledgeable and impressive and cool. After all, I thought, if they knew who I was — the real me — they would never hire me. If they knew what my life is like, they wouldn’t be impressed and they’d pass me over for another candidate.

The last couple years of my life have been those painful mid-twenties years that I heard about in my early twenties but didn’t think would ever come for me. Maybe you’ve had years like these, when it seems like everything is moving away from you, and the optimism of your college years seems to drain out of you, and it’s all you can do to keep it together when people are asking about your life and your plans and your future. Maybe you know what it’s like to feel completely overwhelmed by expectations — yours and everyone else’s — without any idea how to move forward.

Maybe you feel like a disappointment.

All these feelings came together as I drove down that West Texas highway. I was suddenly reminded of all my defects, all the ways I felt (and, to be honest, still feel) inferior to other people. Like a dust storm, a wave of dysphoria swelled up from the ground to cover me. Tears flooded my eyes and blinded me. I pulled over and wept on the side of the highway for what felt like an hour. I felt exhausted, and deficient, and hopelessly alone.

Have you ever felt like you were being crushed beneath the weight of everything you’re supposed to be but aren’t?

We think what we need in these kinds of moments of confusion is a plan — a list of clear, measurable steps we can take in order to move forward. With the right advice from a parent or friend or mentor or life coach or nameless internet blogger we just might have a breakthrough and find the strength we need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and finally impress everyone who’s watching and waiting for us to make something of ourselves. We think this is what we need because in our cultural economy we value strength and grit and success. We don’t applaud losers.

But God doesn’t value our efforts to impress people. God’s economy works like this: the strong and proud will be humbled, while the weak and humble will be exalted. This is why Saint Paul wrote that He was strong when he was weak and instructed his protégé Timothy to find strength in God’s grace.

Grace, not merit, is the defining characteristic of God’s economy. It’s hard for us to make sense of, and often times spiritual people will try to infuse a little “earning” into God’s economy to make it more palatable for those folks who are obsessed with their own spiritual worth and achievement. Robert Capon, as he always does, explains it perfectly:

Grace doesn’t sell; you can hardly even give it away, because it only works for losers and no one wants to stand in their line. The world of winners will buy case lots of moral advice, grosses of guilt-edged prohibitions, skids of self-improvement techniques, and whole truckloads of transcendental hot air. But it will not buy free forgiveness…It will not believe in the name of the only begotten Child whom God raised from the dead — in the Loser of God who, in the fullness of his permitting, forgiving love, goes ahead and lays his hands on a bunch of grubby little kids and says, ‘There! That’s what I have in mind.

One thing is abundantly clear about Jesus — He loved the losers. He loved them so much, in fact, that He became one. So I’m not going to go about pretending to have things together any more than I do. I’m not going to live my life as a slave to the expectations and opinions of others. I’m not going to waste what little time I have on earth trying in vain to please and impress people. I’ll gladly give up my spot in the winners line to go stand with the losers. It’s the line Jesus is standing in, and besides — the losers will get in first while all the “winners” get sent to the back of the line when He checks IDs at the door.

So if you’re tired of trying to measure up; if you’re exhausted and you feel lost; if you’re disappointed in yourself; if you have regrets and baggage; if you’re hurting or alone; if you’re confused or depressed; if you wonder if you’ll ever get it together or if you’ll ever catch a break; if you’re just so tired of pretending all the time, then I want to extend an invitation to the losers’ line, by way of Bob Dylan:

Surrender your crown on this blood-stained ground, take off your mask
He sees your deeds, He knows your needs even before you ask
How long can you falsify and deny what is real?
How long can you hate yourself for the weakness you conceal?

Come on over. I’ll let you cut me.