I was recently horrified to hear of a parent telling their child the following: not doing enough devotions at nationals might make God not bless you with winning debate rounds.
This is one of the reasons we don’t like Facing the Giants (a movie). God sometimes had his disciples die and face terrible circumstances because his purpose was bigger. You can’t just pray and expect to win football games, much less debate rounds against other Christians 😛
1. If that were true, then Cameron and Andrew must have been praying the most. So must Josiah and Patrick the year before. I know for a fact that isn’t true in the latter case 😉 There are character lessons learned even through winning at nationals, including how God can use circumstances to show you he IS around and caring for you even when you’re ignoring him.
2. If that were true, Job would be wrong. His friend tells him that all the adverse circumstances he has experienced must be because of some great sin. Not so.
3. Jesus talks about circumstances linked to actions pretty plainly. There was a man blind from birth. The disciples asked if it was the man’s sin or his parents’ sin that caused the blindness. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (see John 9)
4. “Good” and “bad” things happen for reasons we don’t always see or know. Whether winning debate rounds is “good” or “bad” is actually dependent on what happens next–there is no inherent good in winning a debate round.
5. God doesn’t necessarily reward those who are outwardly holy or checking the block. Blessings (cars?) don’t rain down when you read your Bible every day. Even the man who had done all the commandments needed to put his heart in it for salvation, and the people who do everything good without love are clanging gongs and cymbals (which are occasionally good, but not in this case).
When you work hard and don’t win, when you get sick before the big day, and losing when you shouldn’t are all ways God can teach you what he has in mind to teach you.
Only one team can win the national championship. Every other team loses. Much like a war between two countries both praying to the same God, debate is kind of weird because everyone is on the same team even while competing in elimination rounds.
Why am I writing about this? There’s a takeaway: Learning debate is largely about learning character and wisdom. The attitude that God’s blessings = winning debate rounds misunderstands the point of debate (placing the emphasis on winning and not learning, among other things), learns the wrong lessons of character and wisdom, and shows a fundamental skew of the nature of God.
Debate should teach students how God values you no matter how well you perform. Learning to accept criticism, be content in results, and cheer on others are all important lessons one can learn from losing. Praying more is important, but you will be set up for sad life and judge God wrongly if you think it will gain you what you think is “good” for you.
I’d love to hear a couple stories in the comments about things you’ve learned from losing.
I’d like to note: I learned far more by not breaking at regionals India year than I would have had I won the tournament. Looking back, I can not only see very good reasons for not breaking, I’m _glad_ I didn’t.
this year i had the abillity to experience losing multiple times…three losing records and a 3-3. These were after placing in the top three, then top five teams at the first two tournaments. as we got losing record after losing record, discouragement grew and stuff like that. but, thanks to some wonderful parents, we really started to believe (as opposed to just saying and hearing people say) that you learn so much from losing. more so than winning. also, more often than not, you losing means that others can win. sometimes i don’t think about that, but its true.
on a slightly different note, some people think that you should ignore the somewhat depressing feelings that come from losing/not breaking/not qualifying and simply move on. this isn’t true. but don’t remain in the discouragement. burn ballots, yell in a parking lot (haha), do whatever you need to and then go back to work on debate, a few days later and improve.
/end rant.
Not breaking at our first qualifier this year really helped Daniel and I improve.
I think this is a great post, but I have one point of disagreement. Facing the Giants did not have the message that just because you pray, you will win. Its purpose was to convey that we should pray and rely on God for the outcome, positive or not. The fact that they won was secondary. The filmmakers’ purpose was to make a movie that would appeal to a mass audience and the fact that the team won did help reach more people who would never watch a Christian movie (not all movie fans are deep thinkers after all – LOL). Ultimately, Facing the Giants is simplistic, but it was not at all saying that praying = winning.
Still a great post though.