Lately there has been this awful train wreck on tv called Charlie Sheen. Over and over he declares that he is “Winning”. He brags of “tiger blood and Adonis dna”,but I don’t think he looks like a winner… but he thinks I’m a troll so what do I know. According to his scorecard he is a winner. He has two hot girls who meet his every want. He has tons of money and cars and a big house and a million followers on twitter. He has beaten his drug addiction by just closing his eyes and declaring it so. He’s a winner and says that if your life doesn’t look like his then you are a troll.
As stupid as all this sounds, I see the same thing taking place in the name of faith. To be a winner is to have success—The Life of Blessing. Winning in some churches means always having health, always having stuff, always being happy. If you struggle with any of these, then something must be wrong with your faith. Jesus is a winner and those who follow him win!
No doubt, Jesus said that “I have come that you might have life and have it to the full”, but what does “having life to the full look like”? To many teachers that means money, success, and health. That is winning. But what if your life doesn’t look like that? Does that make you a “troll” in spiritual “Charlie” speak?
Let me tell you about a “troll” I know. She grew up in a home full of alcohol and dysfunction and as a preteen gave her life to Jesus and every Sunday took her younger brother and sister to church. Her brother became a missionary so I guess that’s “winning”, but her sister died an alcoholic so that would be “losing”. She married straight out of High School and had three kids. Her husband was a mess, but she sought to raise her 3 kids to know the Jesus she knew. “Winning!” She was patient, and loving and persevering in a marriage to a very selfish man. She finally divorced him after 39 years of marriage, “not because he was unfaithful, but because he always lied about it and refused to get help”. “Losing!”
Today she lives alone with a dysfunctional dog (losing) and goes to a little church (losing) where she teaches other seniors and works with children on Sunday nights (winning). Once or twice a year she travels abroad or goes on cruises (winning).
Her life is not the “happy ever after” she dreamed it would be, but she is happy—she would say her “life is to the full”. I know that because she is my mom. Now many books and teachers and churches I hear about wouldn’t label her a winner. She has struggled to survive breast cancer, a failed marriage and her bank account is adequately full only because of the inheritances from her mother and ex-husband. She is a “troll”.
But she’s a tolls troll in the Kingdom of Trolls! Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives. Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity.”
That is winning in the Kingdom of Trolls. To live, you die, to win, you lose. It’s counterintuitive. My mom is one of the most giving trolls I know and there hasn’t been a lot of return on her giving in terms of what some people call blessings, but she is content in the knowledge that she has been a seed planted in the ground that has born much fruit. She has kids and grandkids that have followed her example and sought to be like her. I’m one of them and sometimes I still struggle with wanting success and stuff—I want to be a “winner”. But I also know that to live I have to die. The way of Jesus is difficult, but it’s what I want. I want to be a troll.
