human nature
On the phone, the cheery woman from Miracle League Baseball (MLB) asks, “So what do you know about us?”
Given Adam’s particular interest in baseball, I had filled out an online application for him.
I relay to the woman what Josh, having played for years, has told me sometimes half-grumble, that in an MLB game, there are no losers. In my mind, I conjure him, swiping a hand across his eyes, shaking his head. I hear him say, making what to him feels like a logical tangential point, “In other baseball games, there’s always a winner, so why isn’t there a winner in Miracle League?”
If no one loses, no one wins.
The complaint, oft repeated by those who love some friendly competition and have a strong sense of justice, felt familiar to me. During the childhood years our girls played Upward basketball, Zoe, who was a bit of a scrapper on the court, had often fussed about the fact that no one took score during the games, and so, no one ever actually won. Her working understanding was that winning meant playing the better game and scoring the most points, and naturally, she wanted her shots and steals and skills to count for something.
I pause in my thoughts, wondering about that word, ‘naturally.’ We throw it out so casually, like a dismissive wave of the hand, even though we’re like plants growing for years out of toxic waters, garbage clumped at the root. What do we really know of what’s natural?
The first time I visited Special Olympics, I discovered a community of athletes who naturally (supernaturally?) felt inclined to celebrate each other as winners. During a gold medal ceremony, the young man on the top pedestal had opened his arms wide to draw not only the silver and bronze medalists, but as many of the other competitors as possible, over to crowd up onto the top spot. Kids were balancing on the edges of the podium when the gold medalist slipped off his medal and, grin stretching a mile, offered it to someone else. Not for the first time, I thought, now here is a picture of God’s kingdom.
“Well, I prefer to say that there are just a whole lot of winners,” the kind woman from MLB says over the phone now, her voice a wide smile. “We get pretty competitive out there, especially among the adult players, but somehow the game always miraculously turns up a tie.”
Somehow. Miraculously. More like a predetermined plot twist. God is supernaturally famous for those.
In fact, scripture makes clear that God is what no one expected, a we’ve-never-seen-anything-like-this, thorns-for-a-crown, cross-for-a-pedestal, King-as-servant kind of God, the sort who went around repetitively proclaiming that the last shall be first and the first shall be last, and who not only opened up his arms to gather as many people as possible into His glory, but also came down from heavenly glory to lose in our place, to take our defeat, for our horrible performance. He defined winning as exchanging the penalty others have earned for the accolades that rightfully belong to Him.
But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
As it turns out, according to God’s playbook, winning really has nothing at all to do with how well we play the game, but everything to do with the complete excellence of His own self-sacrifice. What’s more, the people God calls ‘winners’ will never be celebrated personalities in the next Nike ad, and so, one day may come, again, as a surprise. In the Old Testament, God constantly circumvented primogeniture to choose the spare instead of the heir, and in the New, He selected a motley crew of uneducated, rebellious, in some cases socially reprehensible young men as disciples. He is, He says, close to the brokenhearted and a champion of the oppressed, and to the modern church, He still urges through Paul, consider what you were when God called you.
Not many of you were wise in the world, not many were powerful, not many were nobles. But God chose what is foolish in the world…what is weak…what is low and despised, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.”
God became the biggest loser—but wait, according to Him that means He won it all, so that in the end, there could just be a whole lot of winners.
This is what some theologians mean when they talk about the upside-down Kingdom, though arguably our ways are the backwards ones, and God’s, by definition, are abundantly natural.
Christ repeatedly reiterated this challenging reality in His teaching tales, too. Think Prodigal Son, about the welcomed and celebrated returning nere-do-well son, or think about Christ’s story of the vineyard workers, wherein the last workers to be hired, the ones who only worked for an hour, got paid the same wage as the ones who worked all day, sweat maybe dripping from their foreheads, their fingers stained the color of grapes. Even as we feel our own heads nodding along when the day-long workers complain, you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden, as we process our chagrin over the owner’s candid response, friend, I have done you no wrong, we hear the storyteller finish again with his tagline.
The last shall be first and the first shall be last.
“You know, I can appreciate that,” I’m saying now to the kind woman on the phone, my own voice a wide smile as I think on these things, as I feel suddenly transported back to awards day at Dynamic Opportunities, where all the teachers gave out thick stacks of ‘idiom awards,’ each one slick and shiny with laminate. The irony of this had made me chuckle at the time, knowing so well that idioms create all kinds of confusion for my autistic literalists. Riley once inspected her shoulder for a chip after I told her it seemed like she had a chip on her shoulder, commenting with some excitement that, in which case, she couldn’t wait to eat it.
When Adam won the heart-to-heart award that day, the other students instantly began shouting and cheering his name, “ADAM, ADAM, ADAM,” and Kevin and I started to cry, our eyes leaking joy. As it turned out, my nephew seemed to be the only one confused. He kept asking, “What are all those awards even supposed to mean?”
I am sure I will have my own turn feeling so naturally (unnaturally?) incredulous, as I have so many times before, but in the moment, I understood that the awards meant only that the givers were generous and kind, and that the recipients were loved and valuable.
Beside me, Kevin had flicked one finger toward the stage, had whispered simply, profoundly, one word, our constant coded comment in the presence of exceptional company. Kingdom.
Yes, here was another picture of God’s kingdom. Just a whole lot of winners—a whole lot of loved and valuable people, joyfully receiving love—the victory itself—from a kind and infinitely generous Giver.
Well, naturally.
Thanks be to God, indeed.
