Competition: Making Enemies and Friends

“Comparison is the hidden worm that consumes in secret and does not die at least not until it takes the life out of love” (SK, Works of Love).  

Participating in recent soccer intramurals in seminary has reminded me of something Flannery O’Connor said, “Extreme situations reveal what we are essentially” (my paraphrase). The context of athletic competition was not at all what O’Connor had in mind. However, perhaps it is not too far fetched to connect her statement with soccer intramurals because in the heat of the game we discover much about ourselves and others as tempers flare and voices grow edgier. In some cases new friends are made, and in other cases new enemies are made.

In competition we may discover that we are monsters.  

Over the years I have done a pretty good job of competing poorly in so far as I have frequently let my tongue get the best of me. While I was in junior high and high school, ping-pong was a major area of competition between my dad, my brother, and me. On several particular occasions, I remember my brother and me growing so heated and angry at each other that we had to stop playing. In fact we stopped playing each other all together for a long time. From my childhood, I could provide many similar examples particularly from my years playing soccer.

But of course athletic competition is merely one of many sorts of competition. There is competition in academics, reality TV, employment, and dare I say politics. The upcoming presidential election is a sort of competition. And not least among various sorts of competition is that strange leviathan we call capitalism. I do not intend to broaden our understanding of competition to such a degree that it is a useless word, but I would like to point out the propensity for competition in human relations in general.

Competition is something many people enjoy. However, many other people seek to avoid it because either they simply do not have a taste for it or they see how divisive it can be. Obviously, there are usually winners and losers in competition. Winning can be exhilarating, and even losing can be edifying. Some winners, however, do not merely get some sort of trophy at the end; they usurp the place and even the dignity and potential for life of the loser. To make matters worse, some of these losers were not even aware of the competition until they had already been born into the losing team – let your imagination run wild with regard to global politics. What then shall the winning side do to the losing side?

Perhaps, there are some things about which competition is potentially appropriate and healthy, while there are other things about which competition is simply inappropriate.  

A theology that says something about competition is needed lest we continue walking a vague tightrope between the borders of love and hate, morality and immorality.

When I started to write this blog, I intended it to be focused on particular sorts of competition, namely those which are in controlled environments, but as I reflected a bit more I realized that it was terribly insufficient. My brother and I had a scuffle over ping-pong, but that is quite trivial when compared to global politics.  

What then should be a trajectory-setter for thinking about appropriate competition and appropriate participation?

Could love be the standard for good and bad competition? Oh, but what a lofty standard! How could that ever be practiced in competition? Shall we concede to Ivan Karamazov who says, “It’s possible to love one’s neighbor abstractly, even occasionally from a distance, but hardly ever close up”?

“Love your enemies.” I imagine this probably means something akin to not trampling the other into the ground when such an opportunity arises.   

There are many sides and dimensions to the pervading issue of competition that I have not touched, many of which I have intentionally omitted for lack of space and many of which I have not yet considered. Not least among my omissions is my lack of reference to the canonical witness. Consequently, here I am merely welcoming us to think about competition theologically because there is such a desperate need for us to do so considering we are living in a world so entrenched with competition. It is in the very air we breathe, and we need to be aware of it lest it annihilate any hope of building “ecumenical,” hospitable communities characterized by love.

A few concluding comments are in order to tie together this smattering. First, competition is not inherently good or bad, albeit it may be used for good or ill by those involved. Second, folks who like to think that they have righteously avoided competition should probably reexamine themselves and recognize their potential complicity in bad sorts of competition. Third, something as risky as competition requires a large degree of candid accountability from all sides; no one should be exempt from such accountability.

There is of course much more to say, but this shall suffice for a start, however small a start this may be.

Surprised by Hope: a Review of N.T. Wright’s book

There are innumerable book reviews on the Internet, so forgive me for adding to the mass. I would like merely to highlight a few points in N.T. Wright’s book, Surprised by Hope, which especially struck me as either rather wise or helpful. It should be said also that this particular book is not one of his scholarly works and should be judged accordingly. It seems to be largely pastoral, which I appreciate immensely.

Wright remarks on the rather apparent confusion about Christian hope for the future. We are all going to die, so what is the Christian hope? Christians describe death in all sorts of ways and with wide degrees of reactions. No doubt many Christians consider their hope to be in zipping off to heaven after they die, residing in perpetual bliss for eternity. Wright contends that this belief is due in part to Platonic philosophy infiltrating Christian theology. Furthermore, Wright notes that immaterial immortality was not the early Christians’ hope and that actually early Christians hoped for future resurrection based on Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus’ resurrection adumbrates and is the foundation for the future resurrection of the saints. Physical resurrection is the Christian hope (for as Wright notes in one of his longer works, there is no other kind of resurrection). The Christian hope is not to escape a condemned world but is to resurrect and become part of a redeemed world, a new heaven and a new earth. The future resurrection of the saints is what Wright deems life after life after death. Basically, a loose chronology based on various New Testament texts: people die, people go to be with Christ (life after death), people resurrect (life after life after death). He speaks briefly of hell and arrives to a similar conclusion as C.S. Lewis.

I would suggest that any critique of Wright’s view regarding the physicality and centrality of resurrection should first consider Wright’s longer scholarly work, The Resurrection of the Son of God (a great book by the way!).

New creation began with Jesus’ resurrection, but the present day is riddled with trouble; evil is a reality, but “Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning of new life, the fresh grass growing through the concrete of corruption and decay in the old world” (123). The culmination of new creation will be the marriage of heaven and earth (again, the hope is not to ascend into an immaterial heaven but is for a new heaven and a new earth). With this there will be an eradication of evil, and in the present day Christians may work for the kingdom. Wright aptly distinguishes between Christians building a kingdom themselves and God’s reign in which Christians may participate. He subscribes to the latter, and I think rightly so.

Christians may participate in God’s reign, and what Christians do in the present day has implications for the future. What we do today matters a great deal. All we do now God can use for the future in the new heaven and new earth, a future that is not static but is teeming with new projects and possibilities. “Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness…every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk…every act of care and nurture…every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church…all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation God will one day make” (208). As we stand in an aching world and look to a future filled with hope, there is work to be done with Jesus at the helm. Working for justice in the present is a crucial element of participating in God’s reign today and contributing to the future life after life after death.

I have not, of course, done an adequate job of tying together the elements of Wright’s book, nor have I done an adequate job of reviewing all the major points. But perhaps this will suffice as a start. I highly recommend Wright’s book as a desirable and biblically founded alternative to escapist theologies that are so prevalent in today’s churches.