Losing Down Here

“Should we not consider that an eschatology that teaches ‘we lose down here’ is an eschatology that may have had something to do with why we are, you know, losing down here?”

The quote comes from Doug Wilson’s introductory comments to a recent round table discussion about Christian nationalism. In case it’s insufficiently clear outside of its original context, the point he’s making is that our expectations often determine how much we are able to accomplish.

Putting the Ball in the Net

If you do not make it your explicit aim to put the ball in the other team’s net, you are highly unlikely to embarrass their goalie by happy accident. If you are content to pass the ball back and forth to your own teammates around midfield, and you do it perfectly for a couple of hours, you might succeed in playing to a 0-0 draw, but you will never win the ball game.

Or, to put in in a spiritual context, if we are, say, preaching the gospel and looking to the Lord Jesus to set the nations and institutions of the world to rights upon his return, we are less likely to succeed in reforming the nations and institutions of this world than if we make that our objective.

In short, setting a low bar means we will probably lose, if by “losing” we mean failing to reform the nations and their institutions prior to Christ’s glorious return.

Losing by What Standard?

All that’s well and good, and a predictable riposte from a postmillennialist, for whom the transformation of the secular world by the Church is pretty much the end game on the assumption that Christ will not return until the Church finally accomplishes it. This confident eschatological assertion stands on a historically indefensible interpretation of a solitary Greek phrase in a single verse of scripture (μαθητεύσατε πάντα τὰ ἔθνη, or “make disciples of all nations”). As a finishing twist, the words “have had something to do” may reasonably be taken to imply that some postmillennialists believe their dispensational brothers might be letting down the side. “A little help here, folks!”

That’s okay, let’s play all the same. My challenge for my dispensational premillennialist friends — and also, in aid of a little healthy self-examination, for myself — is simply this: Are we really ‘losing down here’, and if so, by what standard? Where should we really be setting the bar? What does winning or losing actually look like?

In aid of answering these questions, let’s carefully examine a little Bible history.

Always Losing

God always looks like he’s losing until he wins. Often, this is because we don’t understand his purposes and goals. Other times, it’s because his methods are not ours. We need to remember that “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” What does that mean in practice? Well, it means that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise” and “God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.”

We can put this another way: God chooses people and methods that look for all the world like they are losing down here. This is not some novel feature of Church Age living: it’s the overarching strategy the Lord has employed throughout history.

What Losing Looks Like

The first worshiper to get worship right and receive God’s commendation for it almost immediately died by his own brother’s hand. That sure sounds like losing down here.

Noah preached righteousness for as much as a century. Not one soul booked passage on the ark because of it. He was losing down here.

Abraham looked for a city whose designer and builder is God. He never found it during his lifetime. He was a nomad and a tent-dweller instead. Long after his death, Abraham has become the father of many nations. But during his lifetime, any objective third party looking on would have told you Abraham was losing down here.

More Losing

Joseph ended up ruling Egypt and saving his family, but for many years before that happened, he lost every round. Hated by his own brothers. Sold into slavery. Jailed on a false rape accusation. Ignored by people he helped. Joseph lost down here until he won, and nobody but him saw the hand of God in it the entire time.

Moses spent forty years in a civilization whose values he rejected, then forty more tending sheep, then forty more tending people who rebelled against his word at every turn, rejected the command to enter Canaan and perished in the wilderness, after which he too was unable to enter the land to which he’d led God’s people. What a loser! That is, until we see him on the mount of transfiguration in casual, friendly conversation with the Son of God.

David was the son so insignificant that his own father left him tending the sheep when the prophet Samuel came to anoint a new king from his family members. Then Saul chased him around the countryside for eight years or so, after which eleven of twelve tribes rejected his rule for another seven years. He too looked like he was losing down here … until he won.

Even More Losing

When Messiah came to offer the kingdom to Israel, his stepfather couldn’t even find his mother a hotel room in which to give birth. The man who heralded his coming was summarily decapitated. Messiah was despised and rejected by the leaders of his nation, had nowhere to lay his head, was disbelieved by his own family, called demon possessed, betrayed by one of his own, abandoned and denied by his closest friends, and died in shame on a Roman cross. Sure looks like losing down here to me … and it was the biggest victory in human history. As Samuel Whitelock Gandy so eloquently put it:

By weakness and defeat
He won a glorious crown,
trod all our foes beneath His feet
by being trodden down.

Losing in the Early Church

After he ascended to glory, his followers were persecuted and murdered regularly, so much so that they came to joyfully expect it. Church historians tell us all but one were probably martyred. When they wrote letters to those who believed their message, they assured them they ought to expect more of the same as long as they continued to serve Christ.

Oh, and they were also assured that their church-building efforts would be regularly compromised by liars and cheats. Then our Lord wrote letters to seven churches in Asia that strongly suggested most of them would perpetually look like they were losing down here, and that some might not even make it at all.

In Summary

Why would we imagine any of this should change prior to the return of our Lord?

God’s champions are always the worst possible choices by human standards: weak, despised, sometimes emotionally fragile (Elijah, Jeremiah), and even occasionally sinful (Samson, David, Abraham and an almost endless list of others). Hebrews 11 is a litany of losers “down here”. God’s servants suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated … need I really go on?

If we are indeed “losing down here” in the present moment, we stand in a grand and godly tradition established throughout the entirety of holy scripture.

Perhaps we should remind ourselves that God always looks like he’s losing until he wins.