It’s playoff season again in professional sports of basketball and hockey, and championship season across a plethora of college and high school sports.

At our house last weekend, the Iowa state high school track and field meet played in the background most of Saturday. And on Sunday we attended the NCAA women’s lacrosse finals. (Go Cats!) Felix Rosenqvist won the 110th Indianapolis 500, and Tom Kopke defended his Gloucestershire cheese rolling champion for the third year in a row.

In sports, us against them is what we expect; we cheer for our team, mourn their losses, and disparage our opponents.

These days, however, what is expected on the sports page is now part of virtually every front page. Seems we’re also in the thick of both primary and gerrymander season in the blood sport called politics, winners and losers named by every vote, whether from citizens or lawmakers. Oil futures were down Monday morning—a win for consumers, the headlines announced. Check your stock portfolio yet today—are you winning? There was even a story this week in the “Grey Lady” about the “winning” ketchup.

All of that to say, like it or not, we live in an increasingly win/lose-dominated culture. Maybe we always have, but in these social-media dominated times, star athletes and successful entrepreneurs and internet influencers are the ones who most often capture our imagination and attention. Hot takes cut through the information overload, grabbing attention not simply with decisiveness but divisiveness. We celebrate winners and give a dismissive and sometimes not-so-gentle backhands to those labeled as “losers.” That leadership blog I regularly read: don’t be a loser, it told me last week. Our current president likes that same word and uses it a lot, though I (try to) pay much less attention to that.

Across generations, I see increasing pressure to win at something, sometime, somewhere. There seems little room for anyone who fails, whether in sports, at the office, in the classroom or at home; little tolerance for “lessons learned.” Even in church, it’s bucks and butts we count, and whether that count is increasing (winning) or decreasing (losing). Faithfulness? Too murky. Can’t measure it.

What I wonder if, as a culture, we neglect to count, is the cost of winning—one that begins to show up over time, and in ways increasingly apparent: in our relationships and communities, in trust and authenticity. If you’re in Watertown, Wisconsin, you know that acutely. Or Ottawa County, Michigan. Okay, almost anywhere these days. That’s because the human system is living and everything is connected. Winning — my winning — means someone else is losing, and creates a society where some people matter far more than others.

I don’t tell you this because I have some high-minded lesson I hope to impart to you. We’ve all heard enough life-platitudes over our lifetimes about how it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game, and mostly, it seems, if we have any kind of choice, we don’t believe a word of it. We’ll take the win for us and for our people. 

Even in church.

• Love your enemies. No thanks. I can barely love my neighbors.
  
• Bless those who curse you. I’ll pass. They can have their blessing when they stop their cursing.
  
• Do to others as you would have them do to you. How about doing to others as they have done to me?

Every single day, I understand, I embrace, that my faith, our calling to live the gospel, compels us to stand up against the wrongs that need to be righted, and to do so by speaking of grace, mercy, humanity, and justice. I heard it again Sunday: our moral standing as the church in the world comes through the clarity of the voice given us by the Spirit at Pentecost and a compelling vision to use it, in defending and supporting all God’s children in all their challenges and opportunities. You don’t let evil slide unchallenged. 

But in an age in which our common life is increasing treated as a zero-sum game, do we risk prioritizing winning the argument over pursuing the common good? Is it possible to stand for what is right and true, but in ways that model the inviolable dignity of every human life? To stay grounded in our hope of what could be — and what we want to see our world be — and not be overwhelmed by the waves of issues and policy

Or, said better than I ever could by Pope Leo in his encyclical released Monday:

…recognizing that, precisely from the plurality of voices and visions which, even though they sometimes remind us of the confusion caused by the diversity of spoken languages, a bright possibility emerges. Indeed, this is the possibility of building together, of transforming diversity into a resource and of making listening and dialogue the common ground upon which to cultivate justice and fraternity. Within this shared task, Christians discover their unique role of guiding actions toward God so that, in his light, pluralism does not dissipate into disorder, but instead, it becomes the space in which humanity rediscovers its solid foundations and its final end.

That’s the challenge we all face in this deeply divided world.