The meeting was running long – but no one was surprised. It was, after all, a government meeting of NASA engineering staff at the Kennedy Space Center, and these routinely ran overtime. Yet this particular confab was way overdue for someone with any recognizable authority (if they had any feelings left in their legs) to finally stand up and put a merciful end to our collective misery. It was mind-numbingly late in real physiological terms – way, way beyond any normal human’s attention span. And then some attention-seeking supervisor-wannabe stood up and asked something no one should ever, ever inquire at the end of any overdue government collective bilateral lobotomy:
“Are there any questions?”
You could hear a pin drop as prayers flew skyward: “Please, please, O Lord, no questions, please.” But, fervent prayers notwithstanding, everyone just knew what was coming. There had to be at least three other supervisor-wannabees present, competing with one another for even more face time with the boss. These hands popped up, accompanied by faces lined with the requisite solemn, sincere intellectual potential, and breathless aspirations to perhaps become a supervisor someday.
I casually glanced across the room at my good friend, who was obviously feeling the same pain as almost everyone else. Through a mask of rigid control, he discreetly and quickly lifted his right hand and flashed his extended forefinger and thumb at 90 degrees, symbolizing the “loser” sign. And then he amplified the insult by quickly extending his middle finger in a three dimensional hand construct I had seen only once before.
This special sign, simultaneously expressed across the x,y, and z axes, meant “three dimensional loser.” It was designed as the ultimate affront reserved for the most egregious acts of public loserness… like saying something like “Are there any questions?” well after mental euthanasia and deep vein thrombosis had already set in to stay. This meeting had long before exceeded the generally agreed-upon government meeting standards by a magnitude. It no longer had to do with any effort to achieve efficient technical competence as it devolved into a showcase for career climbers. Yet, it was an offense I frequently witnessed, oft repeated in my 42 years of combined government service.
But three dimensional losing extends far beyond mere government meetings. It can cover collegiate athletics as well. For example, my dual alma mater, Oklahoma State University, in 1.23 centuries of skirmishes on the gridiron, has managed a win rate of 52.3%. But to the Oklahoma State hivemind, the ONLY game that actually counts each year is the Oklahoma State vs. Oklahoma University game, of which the OSU Cowboys have only won 17.7% in those 123 years. Due to this single statistic, OSU fans inevitably wear bags over our heads one game per year.
Not to get nasty here, but the loss rate of Army to Navy is also one-sided. In the last 75 years, Army has lost to Navy 63% of the time. How are these game statistics examples of three dimensional losers? Because, after multiple decades, these teams have lost so many times, they actually have a historic expectation of loss on the football field against their traditional opponents. As a matter of fact, Claudia is actually surprised if her branch actually beats mine.
In stark contrast, our Templar forefathers developed a historic reputation that is perhaps one of the most spectacularly flawless and positive as any in the human story of achievement, intellectual prowess, and selflessness. The first thought of Templars in world culture today is generally one that focuses on intrepid fighting knights on the battlefield. Their reputation is framed permanently in the human experience as one of quiet, courageous sacrifice, often in the face of overwhelming battlefield opposition.
Yet in over a decade of membership in SMOTJ, I have never heard anyone discuss the win-loss rate of the Templars on the battlefields that spanned just seven years short of two centuries. Before I researched the question, I was convinced, based on their reputation alone, that their battlefield victories must far outweigh their losses.
After comparatively extensive research, I was able to find statistics on 34 documented Templar battles. Templars and their opposing armies kept very few battlefield records, such that what exists had to be pulled from 48 contemporary sources, based mostly on academic studies.
It revealed that our Templar forefathers won only 47% of these documented conflicts on the battlefield.
Thus, are they to be considered three dimensional losers with a historic expectation of loss after nearly two centuries of battles?
Remember how history actually records them:
“They have one of the most spectacularly flawless and positive reputations as any in the human story of achievement, intellectual prowess, and selflessness.”
With only a 47% win record, how did this happen?
You have to be very careful when freely waving around the three dimensional loser sign. Like a loaded handgun with a hair-trigger, that third middle finger has a way of being inadvertently pointed into the face of the one wielding it.
The answer for the nearly faultless reputation of our forefathers is very simple, beloved Templar. Just look in the nearest mirror! The answer to that question is found in your own life.
Of all the heroes of the Word of God except Jesus, a vast majority of them were certified three dimensional losers. Adam and Eve started out by totally wrecking the Earth and every life that would come from their tainted gene pool – and all of that on their first day, for heaven’s sake! Moses committed murder and hid the body in front of witnesses. The patriarch of the Tribe of Judah found himself embarrassingly out of funds after spending some quality time with a supposed harlot, and then used her for a pawn shop by leaving his ring and staff as a pledge for future payment. Little did he know that the “harlot” was his well-disguised widowed daughter-in-law.
And then there is King David, who sent his army out to war while he hung out at home. He ended up in adultery with the wife of one of his faithful mighty men. She got pregnant, and he covered it up by arranging to have his trusted soldier murdered on the battlefield. As the king, why didn’t he just take her as his own prize? Because the Law demanded that both adulterers be executed on the spot. I could go on and on, but you get the picture.
The ladder-climbing losers in government meetings, the thousands of players on hundreds of teams, Biblical examples of failures after failures, Templar soldiers coming up short battle after battle after giving it their all, and the one looking back at you in the mirror – all of them – are three dimensional losers. All of them.
Except…
There is a total 100% cure rate for every three dimensional loser infected with all their epic signature loserness. Each three dimensional loser who has received the antidote can wake up every morning of our lives well known among the host of Heaven. Not known as three dimensional losers, but instead we are all known as “ones with the most spectacularly flawless and positive reputations as any in the human story of achievement, intellectual prowess, and selflessness.”
How can that be? Each of us has been there: blood on our hands, and lives characterized by some degree of selfishness that led to brokenness, wreckage, and loss after loss as the permanent trail we have each left in our wakes. So, how can our serial losses be redeemed? God tells us in His Word:
“And these whom God predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He Who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one Who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He Who died, yes, rather Who was raised, Who is at the right hand of God, Who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, ‘For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him Who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:30-39)
By this, beloved Templar family, we have all been supernaturally transformed by God’s grace into multidimensional, eternal sons and daughters of the Most High God. For He has transformed each of us and our lives into the most spectacularly flawless and positive reputations as any in the human story of achievement, intellectual prowess, and selflessness.
It is not “who we are,” but instead it is “how He has transformed us.”