un·der·dog
- A competitor thought to have little chance of winning a fight or contest.
- A person who has little status in society.
Are you feeling overwhelmed because of your current situation in life? Are you the low man or woman on the corporate ladder at work? The new kid on the block (no, not the boy band), smallest player on your basketball team, too skinny to play football, not smart enough to win the spelling bee, just started a new business selling anything next to a Wal-Mart…then listen up!
I’ve been reading a lot about Paul, the Apostle. Before he had his experience with Jesus on a road to Damascus, he was a mack-daddy. He patrolled the streets for those pesky people who had been calling themselves followers of “The Way” (Christians.) After he was blinded by the light and experienced a life-changing time with Jesus, he LOST his status. He became a bit of a looser in the eyes of his people. He sort of became an UNDERDOG.
I started thinking about what it means to be an underdog. It seems to have a negative connotation. When I was young living in a rough part of Albuquerque, New Mexico, I was an underdog socially and racially. It wasn’t until I grew about a foot and a half over the summer that people stopped picking on me. Today, I love the story of the underdog. Think about it, we actually all love underdogs, here are a few examples:
- Movies: where the underdog wins and gets the girl (or boy) Napoleon Dynamite comes to mind
- Sports: Where the American hockey team creates a miracle and wins the Olympics
- Education: Where the socially and economically challenged person goes on to cure a disease
- Music: Every county song ever written!
- Books: Harry Potter, etc. goofy kid with glasses saves the day.
You get my first point! So now for my second point: Why is it easy to say we love the underdog, but hard to be the underdog?
It’s actually a very simple answer: it’s easy to be on the outside looking in and enjoying the show, but when you’re on the inside looking out sometimes you don’t see the bigger picture!
Now to encourage you (if you are an underdog).
So as I was pondering the fact that Paul was an underdog, I started thinking about other men and women in the Bible. It turns out that 98% of them were all underdogs! Don’t believe me? Check this:
- Noah
- Abraham
- Jacob
- Joseph
- Moses
- David who would become king
- Ruth
- Naomi
- Mary
- Joseph
- Peter, James, John
- Jesus
- (just to name a few)
If you ask me that is some pretty sweet company to be in. So, what do you do now? Accept that you are the underdog. It turns out, you should WANT to be the underdog! Jesus Christ was the underdog. Being the underdog is a really cool place to be because it always takes a miracle or intervention “from a high power” to get you in a position to win. I think that is the whole point of the bible in a sense: showing us that God loves to use underdogs to change the world!
So for all you underdogs…stay under!
