comparing

A wise man once told me that nothing good can ever come from coparing yourself to others. An annoyed man once told me that he worked at a camp where they paid employees differently from week to week depending on who they thought had a good attitude. They also told everyone not to compare paychecks becuase "comparison robs us of our joy."

I will never work at Gull lake Camp. But I agree with them about comparison. It's not a good thing.

I think we compare ourselves to other people because we are insecure, and want affirmation or reassurance that we are doing alright, that we are doing good enough. We compare ourselves to people in every imaginable way, but for this instance (because this is a blog and not a book, and brevity is everything) I would like to only focus on how we tend to compare ourselves in a Christian sense. We might think that another guy is "more spiritual" or a "better person" than us. We might think that he is "accomplishing more" or is really "making a difference." On the other hand, maybe we look around at the people we interact with every day and find that on the measures that matter to us most, we are doing pretty good.

There's a whole lot I could say about this, and I think there is a lot in there worth thinking about when it comes to value, comparison, and our need to measure ourselves. But again, that's too much to go into here. Instead I'm going to skip right to a metaphor.

Lets say two men were trying to jump to the moon. Tom was able to jump two inches higher than Sam. Sam goes home to his family depressed and feeling down on himself. Not because he didn't make it to the moon; but because Tom was two inches closer than he was, and he feels bad that he is doing relatively worse on something that is important to him. At the same time, Tom goes home feeling pretty good about himself because he is a good jumper. It doesn't matter to him that he is never going to make it to the moon, he's just glad that he's getting a little bit closer than the next guy. After all, that's really all you can ask for, since no one could ever actually jump to the moon.

You can see where both of these men are in error, and they are both missing the point. It's not about how high they are jumping compared to each other, it's about getting to the moon.

Now you might say to me "but Steve, if your metaphor is about getting closer to God, or living the way that He would want us to live, I think it's important to "jump" as high as you can, and you should feel good about jumping higher and higher, even if you never get to the moon."

Good point. That's the logic I use all too often. And that's the logic that "Tom" uses. But that's assuming that our relationship with God is measured quantitatively instead of qualitatively. That's assuming that God says "good work, through your effort at being Holy you are 1.2% deserving of my Grace. Sam is only 1.1% worthy." We all know that we'll never be good enough, but we want to be as close to good enough as we can be.

What Tom and Sam should both stop and think about is that they are going about this all wrong. Lets think outside the box* and realize that no matter how high a person can jump, literally; they will never get to the moon. Even assuming that Tom could quantitatively increase his jumping powers a million times over, even if he could jump so high that he could escape the earth's gravity, he will still never get to the moon. He would burn up in the atmosphere or die without oxygen in space. In the end, it's not really about how high you can jump, it's about finding a space ship.

Am I cheating in this metaphor? Maybe you feel a little ripped off but I'm going to stick with it. Because God does not say that any of us are 1.1% or 1.2% worthy of his grace. We are all 0.0000000% worthy and Jesus is 100% worthy because really it's an all or nothing kind of thing.

Does that mean then that we should never try jumping? Can we be jealous of people who are better astronauts? Does that make John Glenn like Jesus? I don't know, it's a metaphor! Don't get too literal. It breaks down eventually.**

The point I want to make though, is that we should not be comparing ourselves to others when it comes down to this kind of thing. We should not be competing because God doesn't measure us that way. We pretend we are measured that way, but pride and insecurity are the only rewards we get for doing well or poorly on made up measures that don't matter. It's not a good competition to enter cause everyone is a loser.

*Which, in this instance, means "not like an idiot"
**As Ben Taylor taught me, it is not to be a "heuristic" metaphor