#Loser: How the Call of Christ Is Antithetical to Trump’s Gospel

Jesus began his work on earth by leaving all the trappings of “success”–the very majesty of heaven, the dominance over creation. Instead of continuing to enjoy this domination, Philippians 2 tells us that he “made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (NIV). Instead of success, glitz, and glory, this most powerful Being in the universe chose servanthood and weakness and ignobility. Consider how Isaiah describes him, and how this description is that of a #loser by this society’s standards.

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.

–Isaiah 53:2-4

He was unattractive, unpopular, suffering–and as a result people concluded that God the Father actually hated him.

He preached–and, yes, he got big crowds, but his ministry ended in the seeming colossal failure of the cross and rejection by his community. It ended in his oppressors, the Romans, dominating him, rather than him stamping them into the dust. Rather than taking his seat on a majestic earthly throne, he wore a crown of thorns, embarrassed and shamed and stripped bare before the crowds.

Being nailed to a cross, naked, bleeding, yielding up the control over his human life to the wicked, this seems the very definition of shame. And yet Hebrews tells us, “For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2). You see, Jesus’s decision to give himself, to serve, to love was so important to him that the shame he had to go through was nothing compared to that. And of course he knew that glory comes not through dominance but through self-giving. The resurrection came after the cross, not before or instead of its shame.

Are Christians Today Willing to Be a #Loser Group?

We must ask ourselves if our politics and even our church polity and personal lives resonate with the kind of #loser Christianity that the Bible teaches. The Bible does not teach us to dominate or that our success as people of faith is seen by worldly markers of power. The Bible does not tell us to avoid shame or being a laughingstock. In fact, if we follow Christ, we may attract those very things! Jesus, after all, said, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me” (Matthew 5:11).

Rather, the Bible shows us example after example of how God is glorified through unlikely, weak, imperfect people:

Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things–and the things that are not–to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God–that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”–1 Corinthians 1:26-31

The Bible shows us what Henri Nouwen called “downward mobility” for the sake of serving our neighbors. In The Selfless Way of Christ, he writes,

The great paradox which Scripture reveals to us is that real and total freedom is only found through downward mobility. The Word of God came down to us and lived among us as a slave. The divine way is indeed the downward way.

It shows us that we are to give our dominance away for the sake of others. But make no mistake: this is not a loss of self. This is a final gaining of self, of who we were created to be.

Martin Luther famously said that sin is that which makes us curved in on ourselves. To curve in on oneself is to compress oneself smaller and smaller and smaller until nothing is left of us. When we are curved in on ourselves, we are obsessed with our press (“the very dishonest media has been very unfair to me” or “what are people saying about me?”), our social media standing, our social hierarchy, our wealth, our position, our power, our image. We are blinded to our neighbor because we are so consumed with how we are being viewed by others. Again, Nouwen writes,

Who am I when nobody pays attention, says thanks, or recognizes my work?

But when Christ comes and works in our lives, he heals us, daily, in such a way that we are relieved and comforted and able to look beyond our own navel-gazing to consider our neighbor. When we are whole in this way, expanding outward instead of inward, steady on our own two feet, we don’t claw for dear life to hang on to dominance. If power comes our way, fine, we can use it for the good of others. But if it doesn’t, all is not lost. The goal of our life is not (or should not be) power, anyway. If we are to walk in the footsteps of our Lord, we must willingly come to embrace the status of #loser.

Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.”–Luke 9:23-24

Photo source: Lenore Edman via Flickr. License.