Winning & Bragging

My freshman year of college I coached a middle school boys basketball team and PE class. I remember that at the time I received a lot of advice about emphasizing a lot of things: equal playing time, enjoying the experience of playing, growing in skill, seeing others succeed, etc. - almost everything except winning. This was when protecting the self-esteem of students and players had come to its climax, or at least was as high a virtue as it had ever been in years past.

This kind of leading never appealed to me, though I didn't contest it often. I merely went about my business trying to win, as well as give equal playing time, emphasize personal improvement, and team-playing whenever appropriate. And then yesterday, while playing kick ball with some friends and my kids, it hit me: it's not that people don't like winning, we just don't like braggers, and the reason (I think) that winning has been demonized in recent decades is that we no longer know how to conceive of winners without also seeing them become braggers.

This distinction between winning and bragging makes a big difference, especially for the Church, for, being God's "own possession", she necessarily participates in his victory at the end of history and his is one in which we all, who are her members, will take great delight and will shout with joy and rejoice with trembling. But this will be no bragging-rights festival: she will have done nothing to effect her own victory over her sin, over her flesh, over her Adversary, and over her finitude - Jesus Christ will have done it all, and will then be seen as the Victor we now by faith claim him to be.

It will be a victory, but not her own, and thus she (we) will have a full and overflowing joy in winning and will simultaneously be kept from the kind of self-aggrandizement that is so destructive to the admiration of spectators. "Salvation is of the Lord," says the prophet, and such a truth will be seen on the Last Day, as will the distinction between winning and bragging, for every saint will explode with joy in the victory of Jesus and none will be found to brag. Till then, let us not throw the baby out with the bath-water. Winning is as much a part of playing the game as are the rules; there's no point without either. But who can say that a winner who exemplifies humility is not one of the greatest joys to behold in all the world?

BHT