Insisting on Winners and Losers
Sunday, October 18, 2026
Father Richard Rohr points to the creation of winners and losers as a sure sign that an “empire consciousness” is at work:
There is an overall paradigm that I’ve been calling “empire thinking,” which is a zero-sum game. And in a zero-sum game, one can only win by causing another to lose. Unless that assumption is stated very clearly, we don’t realize how often it’s at work. It will not really be a game where I have a wonderful skill to share or a gift to be highlighted. I just have to defeat the other side. We could also call it the win-lose worldview. I want to say as strongly as I can that the win-lose worldview, the expectations of the zero-sum game, are absolutely dominant in the minds of most people.
This game of winning and losing is a tragic way of defining reality. A zero-sum game demands losers. Surely it isn’t true that the only way we can really “win” in life is to make certain that others lose? It’s amazing how we take some kind of happy delight in this. Just look at the enthusiasm communities have for their sports teams! We like that framing of reality. At this point in our history, we like winners and losers so much that, whereas Descartes said, “I think, therefore, I am,” the American mind now says, “I win, therefore, I am.” That is not an exaggeration. “I win, therefore, I am” is at work in our economics, politics, global policy, social media, religion, and even our personal relationships! We’re not considering the other side of that equation: Whenever we think that way, there have to be losers.
Christianity quickly adopted that interpretation of the gospel, though the four Gospels in no way validated it. After several centuries of persecution by the Roman Empire, most Christians felt quite happy, excited, and even liberated when the Roman emperor Constantine made Christianity the established religion in 313 CE. We moved from the bottom to the top, from the losers to the ultimate winners.
Ascending, top-down religions love a top-down, win-lose worldview. Protect the top, make sure the top is winning, and it just so happens that a lot of other people lose. Unless we’re transformed by grace, we can’t even recognize that we’re doing it. Without grace, we really don’t know how to think in terms of “win-win.”
That type of win-lose thinking is associated with a high degree of Christians today, and it’s not even really our fault. No one ever taught us to think differently. Presenting heaven and hell in the first grade offers a nice, dualistic explanation to keep little children from misbehaving—but does it have much to do with the teachings of Jesus? I don’t think so. But when we frame reality and the whole world that way, that’s the way we frame the gospel.
