Love Doesn't Need to Win

My only critique on Nooma's famous "Love Wins" bumper sticker (yeah... I got it on my car) is that it isn't so much that "Love Wins" it's really more that life isn't about winning at all. I know what Rob Bell meant when he said it in Bullhorn and of course bumper stickers are really just there to make you think but it really could be misunderstood couldn't it? I could be brought to question, "if I'm not winning, I must not be loving" and then I might go on a search for a kind of love that feels more like winning. The problem there is that love rarely feels like winning. Love might feel amazing sometimes, it might feel right, it might feel wonderful, but not often does it feel like winning. Winning involves someone losing to me, it involves my victory at someone else's expense. But love, true love so unlike that which we find in poetry, is victory at my own expense. Christ's death on the cross was the greatest display of love in history, do you think it felt like winning when Jesus cried out, "why have you forsaken me"? It's true that love wins, Christ's victory came through love and not through military might. Real victory looks and feels much more like losing. But just know that life isn't about winning. When you've let go of the need to win, perhaps then you've found true love. When you don't need to win, you're free--free even to lose miserably. So love... even if it means losing.