An inner war takes place within each of us. For some it is occasional. Yet for others, it's a nearly a daily grind. Whether educated or un, employer or ee, or even a Demo-publican, one thing tends to rule every heart...living by comparison.
I'm a champion knower of this curse. Others...somebody somewhere...are always sharper, smarter, handsomer, richer, and more influential than me. Oh...how about every person out there? So what happens to one so insecure? We tend to live defeated simply by one rule of thumb...judging and comparing self to others. Whether we judge ourselves better than others or inferior to others, we are always on the wrong track....always.
When God calls for the end to living in comparison, He isn't promoting a selfish ego. Nothing of the kind. Rather, He is quickening the gift (His embedded gift) within each of us to arise to a fruitful and productive life. God empowers and we must not stand in His way nor in our own way by the mistaken lie of comparison.
This goes on day in and day out. I watch the most aggressive personalities scramble to keep the conversations within the narrow court of their expertise. The most outgoing of us must note that our tendency to control the topics of our confident zone as the primary focus is a costly mistake. It is here that we tend to hide so that we may be appear to be well-informed, simultaneously, avoiding advancing in our own understanding. Could it be that we are failing to learn because we insist that all others must only be about those things which we feel we have some leverage?
I applaud those who are educated in some portion of information who can risk appearing with lack of substance in the many other fields of knowledge. I thank those many who are terrific in only one dimension of Kingdom life who, simultaneously, live fully aware of their own personal ignorance in a multiplicity of other venues.
What happens when we humble ourselves, open ourselves, to confessing that we are not the expert...even in our unique field of interest? We let people in. We let God in. We discover that we are all alike. Some are brilliant in one tiny speck of a zone while others are clueless. And then, when the topic of discussion changes, we seem to advantageously trade places.
Therefore I say to us, as we tend to hide in what we perceive to be some element of our strengths, to drop the appearance that we are sharp. We are not. Yes, we know some stuff. But every person in the room understands valuable details of which the rest of us know nothing...like in No Thing.
When we quietly, inwardly, believe that we are better than another or lesser, we simply don't get it. Curb the self-elevation or the self-devaluation. Refrain from living by comparison. You are awesome. But remember...so is everyone around you. If we pool our outstandingnesses without the public veil of arrogance, we will become a society that can advance in drastic and effective measure.
For we are not bold to class or compare ourselves with some of those who commend themselves; but when they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are without understanding.
II Cor. 10:12
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