The Win/Lose Trap
The negative side of the 6th head of Leviathan is empowered by our buying into win/lose situations. Consider these two seemingly opposite scenarios.
Pastor A has the ultimate shepherd’s heart. He is there for his congregation around the clock and invests in them deeply. Everyone has his cell phone number and they use it, even at 2:00 a.m.
Pastor B is a visionary builder. He pushes his people to give their time and their money to advance the vision of the church. He has several layers of gatekeepers between him and the congregation so that he can stay focused on the vision.
Ironically, both men, equally, empower the negative 6th head. In each case there is a win/lose dynamic to the church culture. In the first case, the pastor (and his family) lost while the congregation won. In the second case, the pastor won and the congregation lost.
The issue is not what is won or lost but the fact that someone has a worldview that assumes or accepts that there is a shortage of resources, and the win/lose is the necessary dynamic.
In some situations, it is forced on you. The alcoholic abusive husband with the victimized wife has a certain involuntary flavor to it. The win/lose is quite obvious and is generally seen as socially unacceptable.
In other cases it is socially accepted, such as the win/lose dynamic at many work situations where the employee creates more value than he is paid for, while the boss does the opposite.
In many cases it is religiously endorsed but that does not make it right.
The bottom line is that whether the win/lose is long-standing or recent, socially acceptable or not, it empowers the negative head. When you buy into it, the spiritual power of this head causes the environment around you to begin to squeeze you into even smaller and smaller boxes.
So look at your life over the last ten years. Set aside all of the natural explanations such as the economy, your school pressures, the kids or the mandatory job transfer (husband deployed in the military). The question simply put is this: are you in a wider place, with more choices before you today than ten years ago, or do you find yourself with fewer and fewer choices?
If your answer is the later, then you need to be sure and check back for tomorrow’s blog. There are things you can do on the soul level and the spirit level to change what appears to be an unchangeable win/lose situation into the kind of win/win which begins to position you with authority for the positive manifestation of the 6th head.
When we have learned the art of finding the unobvious angle of what appears to be a win/lose situation, and leveraging it, we see the outside world around us start to change. The ultimate picture of the positive 6th head is when God makes a way where there is no way!
But in addition to those grandiose moments when God does the big thing, there is the cumulative effect on your life of being able to make good progress across the board in your life, because every day you are presented with a range of options, and you can choose between the good and the great options, instead of being stuck between a rock and a hard place.
It is an art form to learn to see the hidden options, but it can be learned, and the power of 100,000 little choices in daily life is immense.
More to the point, the joy of walking out a life where there are an abundance of good choices is what God has designed us for!
So tomorrow, first steps.
Copyright October 2010 by Arthur Burk
Airborne over the Heartland
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