I have always had a strange sympathy for the defeated.
I noticed it very early on, as a child watching the war films that were constantly shown on television in the 1980s. I would sometimes feel sorry when German soldiers were killed. Not because I shared their cause, and certainly not because I had any particular sympathy for Nazism. It was simply that, in that moment, that soldier was the man who was losing—the one who was falling while the others were advancing.
The same thing happened with Bluto and Popeye. To my great surprise, I found myself rooting for Bluto.
Perhaps there was something in me even then that I could not explain. I was not necessarily on the side of the “good guy.” I was on the side of the one who was about to lose.
As I grew older, I found the same instinct in history.
I have always felt a certain sympathy for the Marian faction defeated by Sulla—a political world that seemed to have been definitively erased by Sulla's victory, only to return, through different people and different circumstances, and reclaim its place in Roman history. I am fascinated by Caesar, murdered by his enemies precisely when they thought they had finally solved the problem. I am fascinated by Napoleon, who fell from the heights of an empire, returned from Elba, and managed to reclaim power, even if only for a hundred days.
But not every defeated person rises again.
That, perhaps, is the most important part.
History is full of men, peoples, states, and ideas that fell and never got back up. Some defeats are never redeemed. Some doors really do close forever.
And that is precisely why I am fascinated by the possibility of a comeback.
Because it is never guaranteed.
Believing in redemption does not mean believing that every defeated person will eventually return to victory. It means refusing to regard defeat as final before time itself has spoken the last word.
Perhaps that is why I have always distrusted victors who are too certain of themselves.
History has a curious habit: sooner or later, it presents the bill to those who believe they have reached the end of history.
Empires that seemed eternal have disappeared. Regimes that appeared indestructible have collapsed. Ideologies that seemed destined to dominate forever have ended up in history books. And men who believed they had definitively defeated their enemies have discovered that history never completely belongs to anyone.
But there is one image that takes all of this to an entirely different level.
The Crucifix.
Before the Cross, according to Christian faith, we see absolute defeat.
A man abandoned. Humiliated. Tortured. Nailed to a cross. Dead.
There appears to be nothing left to recover.
His disciples themselves may have thought that it was over. Their teacher was dead. Their hope had been shattered. Everything they had believed in seemed to have collapsed.
And yet it was not over.
The Resurrection changes everything.
Perhaps this is the deepest reason why the Crucifix has always fascinated me: because it represents a defeat that appeared definitive, yet was not.
Christ does not simply return to reclaim what He had lost.
According to Christianity, through death He passes into an entirely different kind of victory: victory over death itself.
And so perhaps I understand that child a little better now—the child who rooted for Bluto, who felt sorry when German soldiers died in war films, and who instinctively looked toward the side that was losing.
Perhaps I never loved defeat.
I loved the possibility of redemption.
I loved the idea that history might still have another page to turn when it seemed the book had already been closed.
Of course, that hope can also be misplaced.
We can fall and never get back up. We can lose and never return. We can witness the end of something we believed would last forever.
That is the painful part of existence.
But precisely because redemption is not certain, it is worth believing in.
And perhaps this is one of the most beautiful lessons history can teach us: we should never confuse victory with eternity, or defeat with the end of everything.
Those who are on top today may fall tomorrow.
Those who are on the ground today may rise again.
And those who believe they have conquered the world may one day discover that the world never belonged to anyone.
I still sympathize with the defeated.
Not with every defeated person, of course. Not because every loser deserves to win, nor because every victor is wrong.
But because in the defeated I see a possibility that victors often forget:
the possibility that it is not over yet.
And perhaps that is what the Cross has been whispering to us for two thousand years.
When everything seems lost, when death appears to have spoken the final word, when there seems to be nothing left to hope for, perhaps we have not yet reached the end.
For the Christian, that certainty has a name:
Resurrection.
And perhaps, deep down, my love for the defeated has always been this: an unconscious form of faith in the possibility that defeat does not have the final word.
