An Underdog God?

The Third Discourseman

‘The British love an underdog’

I don’t know whether this statement is actually true. Has there ever been any data or research (beyond anecdotal) to suggest that the British are more inclined towards the underdog than any other nationality? Is it even true that British people love an underdog more than an ‘overdog’? People love seeing big upsets like Leicester winning the Premier League, but they also love seeing mega-stars like Ronaldo and Messi breaking records and winning again and again. They love the shock of an unexpected result and the excellence of a clinical team/nation/individual operating consistently at the highest level.

Most action/adventure/fantasy films are made under the assumption that it is the underdog we’ll root for – rarely does a film follow a group of heroes so overpowered that they’re the obvious winners from the start. Time and time again we see the weak, or small, or outnumbered, or outmatched face off against the tyrannical over-lord. Hobbits facing off against giant spiders, orcs, armies – foes far greater than they. Wizarding children facing an army of adults led by one of the most powerful wizards of all time. Spies facing another seemingly impossible mission. Plucky rebels facing off against evil empires and emperors. The odds always seem stacked against the good guys.

And in the film industry this makes sense. There’s little excitement, drama or suspense if the baddies are the insignificant minority of insurrectionists, quickly quashed by the more powerful goodies. We feel like the happy ending is only earned if it wasn’t inevitable – if it took struggle, grit, determination. If the protagonist has had to suffer and make sacrifices along the way. If not every good guy lived to see the victory. Here, if anywhere, the saying holds true, that we love an underdog.

My question for this blog is this – what about the Bible? We often make much about the Bible being a grand story, telling the cosmic tale of fall and redemption, the battle between good and evil. But is it an underdog tale? Is God an underdog God?

An ‘Overdog’ God

Your initial answer to this question may well reveal a lot about how you mainly conceive of God, yourself, who/what the Bible is about and who its protagonist(s) is/are. Being a Calvinist (at least for now), I must admit that my initial answer was ‘No!’. My thoughts immediately flew to what I know of God’s sovereignty – his unmatched power in creation, how the whole universe belongs to him and is ordered according to his decrees. How in the book of Revelation the final battle is ultimately very short-lived, with Jesus casting the dragon down into the lake of burning fire with seeming ease. How the Bible does not present some ‘Yin and Yang, Dark side vs Light side’ duality vying for the upper hand, but God alone enthroned in the heavens, who laughs and does whatever he pleases. When we see good ultimately triumph, we are not seeing a Leicester-esque surprise victory. What we are seeing is more like Messi or Ronaldo – a God who is perfect in power, wisdom, justice and goodness, operating in all that he does at the highest level, never losing the upper-hand, never giving ground, never on the ropes. In fact, to compare his skill to that of Messi and Ronaldo (who despite their greatness still get knocked out of competitions, have dips in form, grow old) is to blasphemously undersell his excellency.

In reality, it is the all powerful and totally in-control Emperor of the Universe that is the good guy, and we – sinful humanity and Satan’s armies, the ‘plucky rebels’, the underdogs – are the bad guys. The one with all the power is also the one who is in the right. There is no evil tyranny to overthrow – simply a good God to bow down before. So, to put it bluntly, is the Bible a boring story? Would it fail as a fantasy epic, with an antagonist too powerful, an enemy too pitiful and an ending too predictable? Could our love of the underdog story even be an expression of our sinfulness – our inherent urge to view any authority and power over us as evil, to subvert those who rule us and to rebel against those greater than we?

Perhaps – and yet even as I write it, something feels off. Perhaps you felt the same as you read it. There’s nothing (so far as I’m aware at least) theologically wrong with what I’ve said about God thus far. And yet the picture I’ve painted fails to do justice to the Bible’s story.

An Underdog Church

Perhaps the most obvious reason for this is that God’s people do consistently fit into an ‘underdog’ category. It seems right to start with Abraham. This is the man from whom Israel, God’s people, will be born. And he’s an underdog. It is highly significant that God’s chosen recipient of a promise of many descendants is an 80+ year old man with no children and a barren wife. This is as unlikely a candidate for procreational success as you could go for.

And from then on the examples keep coming. You could think of Israel, a nation formed from a group of slaves in Egypt, suffering under that era’s evil empire, facing a concerted effort to eradicate their family from the face of the earth via the murdering of infant males. As Moses gives his pep talk, preparing them to enter the land of Canaan, he reminds them that they’re facing ‘seven nations more numerous and mightier than yourselves’ (Deuteronomy 7:1), how ‘it was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples’ (Deuteronomy 7:7), and so on.

You could think of the book of Ruth, and how Israel’s future king, David, is descended from a widowed Moabite (who also has a widowed mother-in-law and sister-in-law). Or how in 1-2 Samuel, David himself is the youngest son of Jesse, spends basically all of his time in 1 Samuel on the run, hanging out with the marginalised and oppressed (1 Samuel 22:2). Hannah’s song, which is typically considered to tee up many key themes of 1-2 Samuel, is all about the reversal of fortunes as the mighty are broken and the poor, lowly and humble are exalted by the LORD. Even David’s most famous victory, his defeat of Goliath, is such a prototypical underdog story that people still talk about ‘David vs Goliath’ moments today when referring to underdog victories.

You could think of the disciples and apostles, how throughout their ministries we see them facing imprisonment, rioting, shipwrecks, execution, poverty, rejection and more. Throughout the Bible, God’s people are consistently in the minority numerically, surrounded by more powerful enemy nations or outnumbered in exile. They face threats from stronger nations and kings. Sometimes it is even the faithful minority within Israel facing suffering and death from the apostate majority. When they do succeed on earth (which isn’t a given, as numerous lost battles, martyrdoms and more in both Testaments testify to), it is normally by relying on God’s strength, rather than it being down to their own.

And the pattern has repeated throughout Church history, in the many years we’ve had since. Countless many have lived and died for the gospel. The portrait we get in the New Testament of the Christian life is that of a battle, a race, hard work. It is of being exiles in foreign land, outnumbered and regularly slandered, maligned and mocked – at best. At worst, as is described in the book of Revelation, God’s people can face the full force of hostile rulers, Satan’s ‘front-men’, using the religious and political power of the state to turn them away from worshipping the LORD, whether by carrot or by stick. This cosmic reality has seen many manifestations over time – Christians imprisoned, executed, targeted economically as they’re refused rights to work/buy/sell, lulled into compromise by the extravagant and indulgent affluence of ‘Babylon’, and so on. Whatever we might think about whether the Church, or a truly (i.e. not nominally) Christian state, might be able to hold the upper hand on earth as well as in heaven, there are certainly enough examples in the Bible and in history since to prove that this is not guaranteed (and, in my opinion, not the norm).

An Underdog Christ

And of course, what the Church suffers, Christ suffers as her head (or perhaps what Christ suffers, the Church suffers as his body). Describing the Lord Jesus as an ‘underdog’ feels more dubious – while I think the Church indisputably earns the title, here more nuance is required. After all, throughout the Gospels Jesus shows the same mastery over nature – conquering diseases, demons, natural disasters and death – as the LORD does in the Old Testament. He is the one through whom God created the world, and as a man he displays his power over creation time and time again. He also regularly seems to have the upper hand, confounding his adversaries, whether through his wit, his popularity, his power or his favour with God (see Matthew 21:22-27, 46; Luke 4:29-30, John 18:4-8 for a few examples of this).

Thus, when his time comes to suffer, it is unambiguously his choice in a way that it’s not for God’s people. Abraham didn’t choose to be old with a barren wife, David didn’t choose to be the youngest son, and so forth. But Jesus knows that he will die before he does so (Mark 8:31, 9:30-31, 10:32-34) and chooses to lay down his life (John 10:18). The power he demonstrates throughout the gospels is clearly enough to prevent his arrest and execution, were he to use it in self-defence.

And yet Christ does suffer along with the rest of God’s people. He becomes genuinely human, genuinely mortal. He really is abandoned and forsaken, left alone by his friends to die. He really does face the agony – psychological, physical and spiritual – of being mocked, slandered, humiliated, spat on, flogged, crucified, wrongly executed, cursed by God.

To quote myself, ‘We feel like the happy ending is only earned if it wasn’t inevitable- if it took struggle, grit, determination. If the protagonist has had to suffer and make sacrifices along the way. If not every good guy lived to see the victory. Here, if anywhere, the saying holds true, that we love an underdog.’ Jesus’ victory certainly took struggle, grit, determination. He had to suffer and make sacrifices. He even died to see this victory through.

On the one hand, God is no underdog. He has all power, might, wisdom, control. No-one can thwart him. His victory is certain. And yet his people, and even his Son, while on earth, so often look weak, rejected, despised, punished, defeated. So is the Bible an underdog story? I claimed earlier that ‘Your initial answer to this question may well reveal a lot about how you mainly conceive of God, yourself, who/what the Bible is about and who its protagonist(s) is/are’. Here’s why.

If you think that it isn’t, maybe you’ve (importantly) grasped that it is God, not us, who is the Bible’s hero. That the Bible’s main character is not us in our feeble and frail state, but the almighty creator God who is judge and king of all the world. That first and foremost we are the underdogs and the bad guys. That God’s victory is certain and secure. And that if by his grace we are moved from darkness into light, to become part of his people, so is ours.

If you think that it isn’t, maybe you’ve (importantly) grasped just how shocking it is that the Word became flesh, that the Christ had to suffer and die, that Jesus became human, mortal, feeble and frail. And just how difficult life is now for those who follow him – that even though our victory is secure, it is one that we wait for in faith and hope, one that we do not yet see. That for now we live as a remnant, outnumbered and outgunned in the world.

We need both of these perspectives. To return to an earlier analogy, as much as we love a Leicester-esque surprise victory, you wouldn’t want your eternal life resting on one. You’d much rather have your life depend on a team like Manchester City. If God really was an underdog, we’d be in big trouble- without hope, without assurance, without certainty. Our salvation would be up in the air, depending on a shock result or major upset rather than anything solid or reliable.

But if we expect this to correspond to unbridled success for us on earth now, we’ll soon be disappointed. Our faith will quickly falter, perhaps even fail, if we’re not expecting to look weak now, to feel defeated. And if we only think in terms of God’s sovereignty, we don’t want to miss the wonder of the incarnation and crucifixion. It is vital to always emphasise Jesus’ lordship, but we must never do so in a way that minimises the shock that the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve. That he was obedient to death, even death on a cross. That the last shall be first, whoever wants to be greatest must be least of all and a servant of all, that to save your life you must lose it.