The New Math

The New Math--July 10, 2017

"Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep."  [Romans 12:15]

I think, if we are really honest with ourselves, this is one of the scariest verses in the whole Bible for us.  At least if we are doing our math the old way.

See, for a lot of us--or maybe to be fair, for all of us at one time or another--we operate and see the world as though life is a zero-sum game.  And in a zero-sum game, every "plus" somewhere in the closed system is a "minus" for someone else.  Your win is my loss, and vice-versa. 

Some things in life, of course, really are like that--a baseball game has one winning team and by definition one losing team.  The election for senior class president that you lost back in your high school days might have been your defeat, but it was a victory for Susie Heffernen, who put it on her college applications and got into a good school on account of the win. A childhood chess match against your uncle.  The lone popsicle left in the box on a hot summer afternoon, and there you are, scowling at your brother as you realize there is only one treat and two people who want it--it seems like one of you is destined to be the winner, refreshed with artificial cherry flavoring dribbling down your chin, and the other will be the loser, parched, envious, and left with nothing.  That's zero-sum: one person's win is simultaneously someone else's loss.

When we are children, that tends to be how we see everything.  And accordingly, we have a hard time being happy when someone else has good fortune, because we instantly see their positive as a loss to us.  I see this with my kids all the time--and at the ages of four and five, it is perhaps excusable, maybe even inevitable.  One gets their bowl of cereal first at breakfast--not because I am trying to show favoritism, but because I only have two hands and can only carry so much to the table at once.  And even though the other will be getting their cereal in a matter of mere moments, the one who is left waiting stares daggers into the eyes of the sibling with Cocoa Krispies, because to a child, it looks like a zero-sum game. 

At some point, you hope you grow out of that kind of thinking, maybe because after enough breakfasts, you see that sometimes you get the bowl of cereal first and sometimes the other person does... and the world doesn't end.  Maybe because eventually you see that the bottom line is that everybody gets to eat, even if some start thirty seconds ahead of the other.  Maybe even you come to see that when you care about someone, like a brother or a sister, you come to want their wellness and happiness more than your own, and you would actually rather they get the good thing first.

But in the mean time, for as long as you are stuck seeing the world as a zero-sum game, it is virtually impossible to be happy for someone else's good fortune, and just as hard not to indulge in a little schadenfreude when something bad happens to them.  As long as we are stuck seeing the world from that childish vantage point, we will find it impossible to be happy for someone else's happiness, and it will be hard, too, to share in someone's sorrow. 

And the reason?  Fear.

For as long as I see the world as a colossal zero-sum system where my loss is your win, I will always be afraid of losing. As long as I am assuming that the mathematics of one person's gains must be counterbalanced with an equal and opposite amount of loss for someone else, I will always be afraid of losing out, of losing status, of losing my comfortable position, of losing my privileges, of losing my place on top.  And so anybody else having something that looks even remotely like success is going to intimidate me and make me insecure, because I'm afraid that if they are the winners, then I must be the loser, and I don't want that.  Once you accept the picture of the world that says your win is my loss, you are already doomed to be stuck in fear.  It's the tyranny of zero-sum math. And from there, fear kills our ability to rejoice with those who rejoice... and to weep with those who weep.

This is why the only hope for us to become people who can genuinely accompany people--to weep in their weeping and rejoice in their rejoicing--is Mercy.  To see the world through the lens of the grace of God, to see that God runs the universe, not as a zero-sum game, but as a table spread where everybody gets to eat, breaks the old childish view of things.  Once we see that it is possible for someone else's good turn to simply be... good... and not an automatic loss for me, it changes everything about how we see the world, and how we see one another.  Fear no longer makes me feel threatened by your success.

There are still plenty of childish voices around us (and if we are very, very honest, they still bubble up from within us, too), some with far too many decades of life to have gotten stunted that way and who should know better.  There are still plenty of voices that assume that the world is broken up entirely and completely into "winners" and "losers," and that every choice, every action, every decision, will either be good-for-me-and-bad-for-you, or bad-for-me-and-good-for-you.  There are still plenty of voices that see every moment as either me winning out against everybody else, or me losing out to someone else, as though every moment is a monumental clash for the ages.  It is there on the international scene where you get the voice of the powerful who feel threatened when someone else has success.  It is there in that ping of envy in your own heart when someone else gets a promotion at work.  It is there when I get all fussed up about someone else being given a break in life, and it is there when I complain about other people being able to feed their kids or go to school because I have to pay my hard-earned money in taxes.  It is all still the same childish zero-sum thinking that chooses to see the world divided into wins and losses, us and them, good-for-you-equals-bad-for-me.

And into the midst of that childish zero-sum world, there is this minority report we call the Reign of God, the economy of mercy where all are fed without talk of crowning some 'winners' and some 'losers.'  It is the eyes that are aware of Mercy that gain the courage to rejoice over someone else's success and to share tears with someone else in their loss.  Grace makes it possible for me to no longer be threatened or insecure when something good happens to you, and instead to know that good for you can be good for all... and that in the household of God, everybody gets to eat.

Today, the Mercy of God is moving us beyond the country of fear into the realm of genuine compassion, because mercy breaks me from the grip of fear that makes me envious and bitter.  Today, mercy moves us beyond childishly seeing everything as a contest, and into a whole new order of the day.

Today, the mercy of God is teaching us to rethink how we have been doing our math... and to see that in the power of God, the world is not a zero-sum game of winner, losers, and Cocoa Krispies. Everybody gets to eat.

Lord God, move us beyond childish fear so that we can genuinely rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.