ONE SUMMER HOLIDAY, when I was around nine years old, another family visited our home. As we barbecued burgers in the backyard that afternoon, the father of the other family began to wrestle with his sons in the grass. The boys climbed on his back and held on to his legs as he fought them off like an embattled bear. Then he picked them up and spun them around like airplanes. My father was busy with something at the time, and as I watched the other family I felt left out. My father doesn’t wrestle with me like that, I thought. And in a rush of deep sadness I childishly concluded that those boys had a better father than I did. I went sulking to my room, and then later tearfully told my mother and father how I felt.
The truth was, my father and I did many great things together. He took me to White Sox, Bears, and Bulls games. We played baseball together, and he attended many of my Little League games. He never spoke a critical word to me, but rather affirmed me often. He provided a comfortable suburban life for our family of eight. Nevertheless, at that moment of narrow comparison, I overlooked all his virtues and the good things he did for me and focused on the one thing I wanted at the time. I drank the poison of envy.
Comparisons are deceptively skewed, and in this case, tragically so. Perhaps a year or so after the holiday we shared with this family, the father I had so admired committed suicide. My father and I continue to be the greatest of friends to this day.
Not all comparisons are foolish but they can be destructive. They have plagued me in my position as a pastor no less than they do the ambitious corporate executive who compares his office with a co-worker’s down the hall. In fact, in my judgment, one of the most besetting sins in my life has been my tendency to irrationally compare myself with others.
No doubt the most raging struggles came during my first pastorate in Chicago, when I was young, out to prove myself, and apparently falling short of my peers. A medical chart would have shown a monthly spike in my blood pressure on the day of the denominational fellowship meeting, when I frequently compared myself with the other pastors. Typically, I began feeling depressed during my drive to the suburban meeting as I became aware of the immaculate surroundings and compared them to my church location. Over coffee, when my peers reported good success in their churches, I felt like a failure. When they talked about vacations, I thought about how I could not afford to take one. When they expressed gratitude for strong leaders or contributors in their churches, I felt sorry for myself as a pastor in a poor Chicago neighborhood. When another rookie pastor was asked to read Scripture, I wondered why I was not selected. In my mind, I was always on the short end of things.
This state of mind lingered as I drove home from these fellowship meetings. I would suffer abysmal despair and depression and languish for the rest of the day and often into the next, wishing I could either succeed or move. Only when I turned my thoughts away from my peers and focused them on what God had given me to do would my faith and determination recover.
In short, I have the dubious honor of being an expert on relentless comparison. Here are seven things I have learned.
1. Comparisons make even the most advantaged persons feel dissatisfied. Comparisons lead to dissatisfaction because they are relative; no matter how well off we are, someone else always has more. Professional athletes have taken this to obscene limits. The average guy can only shake his head at the professional athlete with a $20 million contract who threatens to go elsewhere next season because a player on another team makes $22 million. “It’s not about money,” the grim-faced athlete says to the news camera, “it’s about respect.”
What scares me is that I have the same sinful nature as these guys do. In their sneakers, I would have the same inclinations. As a pastor I do similar things on a smaller scale. Just as a greedy person can never have enough money, a pastor who compares himself to other pastors can never have enough of whatever it is he longs for.
2. Inappropriate comparisons focus on what we don’t have rather than on what we have. Ahab, king of Samaria, had a lot: money, power, land, and more. One day, though, he realized that the vineyard of his neighbor, Naboth, would make a nice royal garden. He set his heart on it and made an offer: “Let me have your vineyard to use for a vegetable garden,” said Ahab, “since it is close to my palace. In exchange I will give you a better vineyard or, if you prefer, I will pay you whatever it is worth.”
That sounds fair, doesn’t it? Perhaps, to we moderns, but we have little or no grasp of the significance of an inheritance to an Israelite. To Naboth, this was not merely property; this was his family’s inheritance from Yahweh, going back generations. This land represented their security, their heritage. A noble Israelite did not offhandedly sell a few acres of his inheritance and buy something else.
Thus with shuddering revulsion, Naboth replied, “The Lord forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers.”
Ahab went home sullen and angry, like a spoiled rich child whose mother had refused him a candy bar in the checkout line. Ahab lay on his bed feeling sorry for himself. He was oblivious to his vast holdings and was fixated on a little patch of potential garden.
Such is the pathetic sight of an advantaged person who has indulged in irrational comparison. I see myself in that picture and it disgusts me. God has blessed me beyond description, yet somehow I find a way to want what others have. When will I be content? When will I be grateful enough for what God has given me that I can rejoice without envy in the blessings he gives to others? “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
3. Inappropriate comparison is selective and therefore deceptive. I fool myself when I compare myself with a few desirable aspects of someone else’s life, blissfully ignorant of the undesirable side. Do I really want to step into that person’s shoes?
In the initial years of my ministry, I occasionally indulged in the folly of selective comparison with none other than our district superintendent. When I watched him lead district denominational meetings, I sometimes thought it would be great to have his position. He was a respected leader with wide influence; I was a youthful nobody with small influence. His would be the life.
Over the years, however, I have heard enough stories to know what a painful responsibility a district superintendent has. Granted, he yields great influence, and a few times a year he can preach to a thousand or so leaders, but normally he deals with conflict, with the dark side of church leaders. Compare that with the joyful opportunities I have to help lead unbelievers to Christ, to disciple Christians, to open weekly the Word of God and give spiritual food to the same community of faith. I go to a district meeting today and feel sorry for anyone who must leave the joys of frontline pastoral ministry for the position of district superintendent.
4. Inappropriate comparisons divert me from what God wants me to do. One question I long to ask the Lord is whether I missed his best when I left my pastorate in inner-city Chicago for suburban Arlington Heights. I pastored in Chicago eight years, much of the time feeling trapped, even though I loved the people and the church made progress. Raised in the suburbs, I never fully adjusted to inner-city life. Consequently I complained often to the Lord and envied suburban pastors. I assumed they had it good: money, nice buildings, more receptive people (I thought). With my attitude, it is not surprising that when the district superintendent called one day with the opportunity for me to pastor in the suburbs, though the church was a struggling work of thirty-five, I made the move.
At the time, I felt many factors pointed to this as the will of God, but now I wonder. The first three years in Arlington Heights were in my view virtually wasted. People came and went, but I cannot point to many changed lives. In addition, the church I left in Chicago suffered terrible upheaval with my successor, from which it took years to recover. On the surface at least, the move did more harm than good.
Below the surface things did not fare much better. The longer I pastored in Arlington Heights, the more I longed to return to Chicago, where my heart beat with true spiritual passion. From the start I knew I lacked a deep spiritual concern for the people in Arlington Heights, the kind of concern that comes only from God. That is especially evident to me now, as I am back pastoring in Chicago, where I feel a perfect fit in my spirit, a contentment that no matter what happens I am where God wants me to be. And that is what matters. Perhaps God let me go to Arlington Heights to teach me some lessons, but I am fairly certain my relentless comparing had something to do with the move.
5. Not all comparisons are bad. While comparisons harm us in many ways, certainly some are helpful. Pinned to my basement wall is a life-size poster of All-Star Chicago Bear linebacker Mike Singletary. Printed along the length of one side are rule marks so my son could measure his growth compared to his hero. When he stood as straight and tall as he could beside the poster, he enjoyed an inspirational comparison. Comparisons benefit us when we look up to others as good examples, models, or leaders.
Many people do that for me. I listen to Preaching Today sermons monthly, and sometimes when a tape ends I immediately insert one of my own sermons to compare. I have found that if I only critique myself against myself, I can grow accustomed to serious—yet correctable—weaknesses. For example, several months ago another preacher’s message caused me to realize my sense of urgency had diminished. As a result, I intentionally worked on better preparation of my heart before preaching. Though I have outgrown the urge to imitate outstanding preachers, many teach and challenge me by the quality of their ministry.
One difference between beneficial and inappropriate comparison, then, is my attitude toward the other person. Do I respect and admire him, or do I have a sense of competition and envy toward him?
6. To overcome irrational comparisons I must call them what they are. Though not entirely free of envy, I rarely suffer from the feverish form of comparing that I did early in my ministry, and this is largely due to one experience. One day I came home from a minister’s meeting quite depressed, and as I thought about my feelings, for the first time I saw them for what they were. This is envy, I realized. It is hard to imagine this had never occurred to me before, but I had been blinded by self-pity. I had not previously seen my comparing as sinful. When I feel sorry for myself, envy somehow seems justified.
As I called these feelings what they were, however, I crossed a great divide. For the first time, I saw what I was doing in the light of Scripture. In Paul’s list of the acts of the sinful nature in Galatians 5:19-21, for example, I saw envy and selfish ambition mentioned in the same breath as orgies, idolatry, and witchcraft! I realized I had a serious problem—sin—that simply had to stop. Selfish comparison with others always leads to sin. If I come up short, I fall to envy; if I come up tall, I sink into arrogance.
“Sin” was not the only word that gave me pause. I also came to the point of calling my bad habit by a word that had an even stronger impact on me: “evil.” I now clearly saw my constant comparing as an expression of doubt: questioning God’s sovereignty and goodness and wisdom. It was a form of spiritual adultery: lusting for advantages God had not granted me. An expression of coveting what God had granted others. I saw the practice as gangrenous; I was hindering the well-being of others and it made me sad. I saw it as ambitious, for I yearned to succeed for my own sake and surpass my brothers.
I saw the whole wretched thing as a disease of the spirit that does great harm to others in the church of Jesus Christ. When the fever hit Corinth, it tore the church apart. When Cain compared himself with Abel, he came up short, wanted more, and committed murder. When Saul compared himself with David, he eventually became subject to evil spirits and tried to murder David. When Satan compared himself with God, he didn’t measure up, wanted to be exalted, and turned into the personification of evil and the bane of humanity. I have no desire to join their company.
The realization of all this gave me an entirely new perspective. Instead of feeling as though God was letting me down, I saw that I was letting him down. My attitudes were foul to him. To label my fever of relentless comparisons with as benign a term as the “greener-grass syndrome” grossly missed the naked truth. My healing came when I called my feelings what they were.
7. I find new ways to compare myself with others. Sin finds a way to mutate and in its new form goes unrecognized for a time. When I had largely gotten my previous practice of comparing under control, it took a new shape. Just as parts of the body can become weak and susceptible to infection, so the fever of envy hits where I feel weakest; and now, in my mid-forties, I increasingly feel it with regard to my appearance. I can tick off a half-dozen things about my looks (progressive baldness, for one) that I feel lessen my winsomeness. I don’t think much about it until I am around someone with obvious physical advantages and I suddenly have visceral feelings that if verbalized would sound something like “You lucky dog.”
Again I am reminded, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Conviction-based ministry
Like lust, wrongful comparisons are a spiritual battle that through Christ I must guard against and defeat, one day at a time. What I long for, and believe I am learning, is a Christ-centered view of ministry based on ten convictions:
1. God is the one who assigns my task (1 Cor. 3:5).
2. God determines the scope of my ministry (2 Cor. 10:13-16).
3. God gives me the gifts he wants me to have (1 Cor. 12:4-11).
4. God is the one who makes me fruitful (1 Cor. 3:6).
5. God opens and closes doors (Col. 4:3).
6. God is the one who lifts people up (Ps. 75:6-7).
7. God bestows positions of high visibility even to the lowliest of people. When God gives great authority to someone, it does not necessarily mean that he approves more of that person or that they are more spiritual or holy than I am (Dan. 4:17).
8. By the grace of God we have our ministries (1 Cor. 3:10).
9. No ministry deserves more credit than another (1 Cor. 3:7).
10. What matters to God is our faithfulness (Matt. 25:14-30).
These beliefs enable me to persevere with contentment in the places God has commissioned me to be.
After a meal of fish on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, when the resurrected Jesus had finished reinstating Peter, he concluded with the simple words “Follow me!” True to form, Peter immediately blundered. He turned to the disciple whom Jesus loved and could not resist comparison.
“Lord, what about him?” Peter asked.
When I have given chores to one of my boys, often the first question out of his mouth is “What about [my brother]?” The motivation for this question is more than a concern for fairness; often I get the strong sense it is merely a diversion, a way of avoiding a command.
I have no patience with that question and usually respond, “Don’t worry about him; you do what I said.”
This is roughly how Jesus responded to Peter: “If I want him to remain alive until I return,” he said, “What is that to you? You must follow me” [italics mine].
In other words, what the Lord does with someone else is none of my business. My concern must be with the command of my Lord to me. I cannot allow comparisons with others to distract me from the one thing that truly matters: following Jesus.
Copyright © 1998 Craig Brian Larson
