2025-04-04 A Meditation on Staring Down Defeat

“3 And as he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, 4 “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?” 5 And Jesus began to say to them, “See that no one leads you astray. 6 Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. 7 And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. This must take place, but the end is not yet. 8 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. These are but the beginning of the birth pains. 9 “But be on your guard. For they will deliver you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues, and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them. 10 And the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations. 11 And when they bring you to trial and deliver you over, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. 12 And brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death. 13 And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.” (Mark 13:3-13 ESV)

To stare down defeat: on some level our victory comes with a grand central station of opposition, memes, discouraging news, flawed and confused mentalities: things so basic, banal, as to be easily overlooked, the news, then, that we have a prescribed Attitude and prescribed Formula of intake is in itself a false remedy: our remedy lies in pushing to the limit Defeat, that we may weirdly and strangely Rise Up. The prescription that says, your inner voices are of more paramount importance than any more calm reassurance we are, after all, the Good Guys in this equation.

Good guys we may be, but an enemy is just as smart, is just as tactical, is heralded in meme and what Food we intake: our remedy, then, is decidedly Christian, going full hog, and all in. We are innately Built Up and Standing Tall, because of the fast that focuses on areas compromised, defeated, whisked away principles and compromising to the winds of the age. Therefore it is a personal war. It is a heroic last stand, on the back of our peers and associates, colleagues in arms who went before us and returned with the news: the albatross is Large; the men and women, they stand ten feet tall (Numbers 13:32ff); their muscles are like forges of steel. But in the end, all that—even the likelihood of Defeat—is a moot point: what matters is that Spiritually we are game for the journey. We even relish the Encounter, not as some beggarly victim, but because there is Camaraderie to share: there is occasion to Manifest as Soldiers gladsome, gregarious, loving life and in love with the fight. So as to that prognosis: defeat, and this no welcome fact but really a pained no-go-zone, that defeat becomes a Victory because Something—like Christ’s messages from the Cross—something murmurs forth from our beleaguered, compromised souls. Something we have already the victory, to stand there and joyously Celebrate that One has died for all, and therefore All have died. The Logic of war is beyond our ken. It is back to the drawing board, infinitely-many times. It is principles and ideas whisked away in a moment by some hazardous sojourn, through the valley of shadow and death. Already, we had made our bargain with the devil, until it turned out the Devil was Absent the Son’s footprint and Presence. The Son stood up and with Him the light of day shook out, dismissed, made invisible, all devilish pranks or lets face it propaganda and whispers of weakness.

Our weakness is our Cause to mine deep, because weakness becomes Strength. Each of us is able to Thrive under the spell of Magically-Made-Over, Magically-Right-for-the-Job. We must not think in terms only of black and white, but of a vicious Encounter with our better halves, prior to any Enemy, howsoever doglike and unprincipled they may be. They are clever; they are wise; they are even like little children in their father’s hold; but all this is moot for us, it is a Best-Man-Wins fight for the ages, a fight that we do not veer away from rather we hold strong to the Belief that some Doctrine, a mish-mash of ours and theirs, a mish-mash of things we aren’t ourselves even consciously aware of, that Survives: God was with the meek. God was with the Principled and Moral. God was with the self-giving, and Earned a victory on the other side of much bloodshed and loss of so much. There, we wish to be found, in the liminal Souls who have journeyed across the Rubicon and can look down from the heavens on a world now made Better.