Can you win at losing?
It used to be that the label “sore loser” was a designation to be avoided. Grace in defeat was assumed to be part of life, a skill that was taught by parents, fostered by schools, and expected by the general culture in adulthood.
But in recent years, this attitude toward losing seems to have changed to a point where the idea of being a good loser has been de-emphasized, if not abandoned. Examples of this can be found in the political arena, in sports, and in the sphere of personal interactions. In what is quite frequently described as our “winner-take-all” society, it seems to have become more difficult for many to manage the experience of losing.
So the question arises: Is it possible to win at losing? Is it possible to overcome the sting of loss so that grace, progress, and spiritual victory are experienced after a defeat?
There’s an example of that given by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, in relation to life itself. She wrote: “Do human hopes deceive? is joy a trembler? Then, weary pilgrim, unloose the latchet of thy sandals; for the place whereon thou standest is sacred. By that, you may know you are parting with a material sense of life and happiness to win the spiritual sense of good. O learn to lose with God! and you find Life eternal: you gain all” (“Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896,” p. 341).
This exemplifies a scientifically spiritual approach to losing, which emphasizes that a God-centered view of a loss may actually result in the gain of much good. A similar conviction enabled Mrs. Eddy to make the radical statement, “Loss is gain,” in the following verse from her poem “Mother’s Evening Prayer”:
O make me glad for every scalding tear,
For hope deferred, ingratitude, disdain!
Wait, and love more for every hate, and fear
No ill, – since God is good, and loss is gain.
(“Poems,” p. 4)
From her own journey as a spiritual pilgrim, Mrs. Eddy had learned that, for spiritual thinkers, the temporal experience of loss provides the opportunity to emerge from a material sense of life, with its inherent disappointments and woes, into a God-centered sense of existence that includes joy, stability, and peace.
The greatest ever demonstration of “loss is gain” was by Christ Jesus when what seemed to be the crushing defeat of the crucifixion actually turned out to be the very circumstance that enabled him to reveal the eternality of life through his resurrection and ascension. The prophesied victory of the resurrection infinitely outshone what seemed to be the defeat of the crucifixion.
In accord with Christ Jesus’ words “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21), Mrs. Eddy discerned that God’s kingdom of good is ever present and available to spiritual sense, the divinely derived capacity to understand God, divine Love. Exercising spiritual sense while in the midst of an experience of loss brings us closer to the “demonstration of life eternal” (Mary Baker Eddy, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 214), a supreme goal, which far outshines any amount of material trophies or other human achievements.
So, spiritually approached, can what seems to be a loss be a win? It certainly can. In a small way, I experienced this when my family lost out on the opportunity to own what we had felt would be our dream home. As our search continued for the right home for our family, daily prayer and spiritual study enabled me to respond to the sting of losing with a sense of authority over it.
At the time, I was serving as a Reader in my branch Church of Christ, Scientist. One Sunday during the church service, an insight came to my thought regarding the true, spiritual concept of home – that we make our real home or “habitation” in Spirit, God (see Psalms 91:9). The very next day the right house became evident to us and we were, in due course, able to purchase it. We have loved living in it, and I learned that what had seemed to be a loss actually proved to be evidence of God’s guiding us toward the right house.
When we are endeavoring to turn from material sense to spiritual sense to guide us through what seems to be a defeat, we can win at losing, because the ultimate result of exercising our spiritual sense is satisfying and good – not loss, but victory.
