Beyond Zero-Sum --July 4, 2024

Beyond Zero-Sum --July 4, 2024

While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader's house to say, 'Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?' But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, 'Do not fear, only believe.'" [Mark 5:35-36]

Let's just say this from the outset: Jesus ain't playing baseball or racing horses.

A baseball game has a winner... and thus necessarily, a loser. Same with just about every football game. Basketball, too. Horse races, track meets, and spelling bees all have one winner and lots of losers. Presidential elections--same thing: one candidate wins, and all the rest lose (although, as a caveat, it is possible to have an election where everyone comes out losing, but that can be a conversation for another day. Drop me a line, and we will talk over coffee or a pint.) In any case, all of those are basically zero-sum games. One person (or horse) is the winner, and that precludes anyone else from getting the victory. In a zero-sum game, there is only one victor's crown (or gold medal or shiny trophy or what-have-you), and thus my win is also necessarily your loss, and vice versa.

There are, to be sure, plenty of things in life that are zero-sum games, even beyond sports or other literal games. The promotion at work is available to one person in your department, and if someone else gets it, you don't. Your company may be making a bid on a potential project, and either your firm gets hired for the job, or someone else does--your win means someone else's loss there, too.

Now, because there are indeed some things that are, in fact, zero-sum games, it is very easy in this life to come to believe that everything is. It's not just that there's only one promotion in your department at work--soon, it becomes envy when your neighbor, who works somewhere completely different, gets a raise. You end up feeling jealous of when your relatives' kids get on the honor roll, as if their success has sucked up good grades from a limited supply of "As" out there. You end up thinking that if someone else gets something good, they must be taking it away from you. You end up suspicious, too, about other families, other communities, other states, and other countries. You end up imagining that if good things are happening for some other group, it must be bad news for you and your group. You end up saying things like, "We have to put ourselves first! We have look out for us, and we can't let good things go to them--or else we'll lose! And we surely don't want to be losers, do we?"

The only trouble with seeing everything in the world as a zero-sum game is, well, aside from that just being factually incorrect (if facts are the sort of things that matter to you), but also that it has a way of poisoning your heart. If everything, every situation, and every person is part of a zero-sum game, from work to family to our civic life and society, you are going to start viewing everybody else around you as competition, rather than as companions. You will grow suspicious, envious, insecure, and before long hateful--bitter over the good that happens to others, because you come to see it as a loss to you. Now, I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty miserable to me.

Even more significant, that's not a Biblical way of seeing things. For the followers of Jesus, we are invited out of the zero-sum-game way of seeing the world, and we no longer have to view everybody else as competition who are sucking away what could be "mine" from a limited pool of scarce resources. And we no longer have to be threatened when we see something good happen for someone else. I no longer have to be afraid of you succeeding, or something good happening in your life--I can rejoice.

Why? Because the followers of Jesus know stories like this one from the Gospels, where Jesus himself is faced with what seems to be an either/or kind of choice. Whom will you help, Jesus? There are two people who need your power to heal, and there is only enough time for one of them. Will it be the 12-year-old daughter of a local wealthy civic leader, who is at death's door, or will it be the anonymous poor woman who has gone broke with doctors' bills and doesn't have a way to pay for anything more and is getting worse by the day? It seems so clearly to be a zero-sum-game with the stakes as life or death. And, of course, as the story goes, it does turn out that when Jesus is delayed attending to the needs of the woman who reached out to touch his robe, Jairus' poor sick daughter does in fact die. At that point, it sure seems like it's too late to help both, and that it was a zero-sum game after all.

Except... there is no such thing as "too late" for someone who raises the dead. Jesus has a habit, in fact, of arriving after it's "too late," and then doing exactly what everyone else thought was impossible. Jesus has a way of taking the either/or situations and making them both-and scenarios. And so, even though it sure looks at first like help from Jesus is just one more thing to fight and claw over in life, there is actually life available for all. Healing is not a zero-sum game, after all. What is good for the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years turns out to be the same good for Jairus' twelve-year-old daughter. Everybody can rejoice at the end of this story, because Jesus has broken open the old assumptions that there is only so much "life" to go around. Not so. Jairus and family don't have to be angry or suspicious about the woman who touched Jesus in the crowd, and she doesn't have to be bitter that Jesus goes and helps Jairus' family, either. There is enough--and more than enough--for everybody, so nobody needs to become bitter.

If we are going to take this story seriously, it will change our view of everything. The point of this story--the reason it was remembered in the way that it was--is not just to say, "Jesus can do miracles. He must be the messiah," but beyond that, that Jesus shows us how the power of God breaks open the "either/or" mentality of a zero-sum game into the "both-and" of God's economy. The way of Jesus, the power of life beyond the grip of death, says that I do not have to be suspicious or bitter or envious of you anymore. Your good does not mean my loss. Your healing does not mean I have missed out. And my healing does not close doors for yours, either. After all, when Jesus was faced with an either/or situation, he refused to accept those terms.

Once we consider what Jesus' actions in this story really mean, it will change the way we see every other relationship, every other dimension, in our lives. Instead of the fearful and insecure, "I must put my own interests first! We must look out for our own or else there won't be enough for us to go around!" mindset, we will no longer feel threatened when good things happen for other people--whether next door, in the next town over, or on the other side of the world. I don't have to be bitter anymore to see good things happen for you, because I no longer have to worry that when God does something good in your life, there won't be "enough" of God's power to go around for me.

To follow Jesus means the end of "My Group First!" thinking, because regardless of who does or doesn't make the cut in your personal list of acceptable folks, everybody is important in Jesus' thinking. My well-being does not come at the expense of yours, nor yours at mine. That is the power of Jesus.

Today, let's begin to try to step out of the zero-sum-game thinking that has infected our heads and our hearts. Let's dare to break out of the lines and rules the world sets out for us, and claim in faith that God is able to provide for me as well as my neighbor, so my neighbor does not need to become my enemy. And instead, let us be free today to rejoice in the both-and.

Lord Jesus, awaken us always to see and believe you are making all things well... for us all.