Breaking free

This week I want to talk about one of the enemy’s tactics.  One of the ways he tries to disempower us or divide us is by tempting us to compare ourselves unfavourably.  I am constantly bumping up against this phenomenon in my life.  I understand how it sneaks in, but we are told in 2 Corinthians 10:5 to

“take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ”. 

I recently did what has felt like the spiritual equivalent of jumping from nursery to secondary school without the stages in between.  In this new environment, it is easy to be tempted into looking to the right or left (see Proverbs 4:23-27) and then the voice of the accuser starts to whisper in my ear.  His seductive voice tells me that I am ‘less than’ in so many ways and before I know it, I am agreeing with him.  I agree that I have ended up in the “grown-ups’ room” by accident; that “everyone” is better than me; that my relationship with Jesus is shallow in comparison with “everyone else”, and that my ideas and thoughts are foolish and naïve.  Before I know it, I am second guessing every text and overthinking everything from my conversations to my dress sense and how I arrange my house.

Equally toxic are the situations where I have compared myself to others and come up with the impression that I am superior in some way.  Rather like the Pharisees did.  I wonder how many of us have considered our form of church to be superior to the one down the road in some way. Both forms of comparison can be rooted in feelings of insecurity around our identity, they just manifest differently.  I want nothing to do with either of them!

I believe that our culture is wired in such a way that everywhere you turn, it encourages comparison.  It is insidious.  It creeps into everything from advertising to the way our education system is run, with performance tables, Ofsted grading, and pupil targets displayed in classrooms, to the workplace where managers seek to use peer pressure and performance targets to motivate us to work harder, and we are pitted against each other to gain the elusive bonus.  As a primary school teacher, I even used peer pressure to help manage behaviour in the classroom. 

For many of us, comparison is about appearance.  All trying to attain to some image that no-one feels they look like.  It is so easy to be influenced by it.  We don’t even have to get close to someone or have a conversation.  We just look and make judgments about those we are looking at, and about ourselves.  Then there is the school environment.  It amazes me that everything can be a competition from eating lunch, to growing taller (not something we can influence!) to PE kits, school bags, trips to the toilet, and maths tests.  For those of us with the smallest lack of security in our identity, this is fertile ground for the enemy.  For many of us, our identity is attacked early in our development with the message that “you are not enough” and we find ways to compensate.

Many of us can feel at the mercy of the likes on our social media posts and the comments that come or don’t come.  Posting something that gets no likes, no comments and is effectively ignored can feel worse.  I wonder how many of us, aware of this, give “sympathy likes” for the sake of encouraging people that they are not overlooked?  Our children are exposed to this pressure at a young age. I think it is more intense than anything I experienced as a child.  We need to have a very secure hold on the truth to stand firm.

As adults, we may tell ourselves that we aren’t bothered but I have discovered that although I might not check how many likes a post gets on Facebook, this blog feels different because it is new ground for me.  New ground can open us up to our vulnerability.  I have found myself being tempted to check the stats, “just out of interest”.  It feels like I have poked my head over a kind of parapet and there is greater potential for negative comment (which takes me back to the question God asked me in December about whether I was willing to be criticised).  It is always good to check my motives for looking at social media, sometimes they reveal something more destructive or unhelpful than I care to admit.

Comparison steals our joy.  We have a moment of celebration, enjoying something that we are proud of or that we like and then comes that moment where it is exposed to comparison and suddenly, the joy disappears, and we feel small and inadequate.  How often this robs us of delight in our lives.  The outfit that we wore and felt good in until the moment of comparison.  The result that we were proud of until we heard of someone else’s result, and so on.  Satan is a thief!

It is partly fed by what our image of success is.  I wonder what image we are aspiring to.  Is it Jesus who is our model?  Success or perfection, in a Hebraic culture is functioning as you were designed to.  I am designed to be me! So success looks like being fully me.

Comparison robs us of our ability to be able to work together as that picture in Romans 12 or 1 Corinthians 12, of one body with different parts. 

Now you are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it.” (1 Corinthians 12:27). 

It is no good if we all try to look like the hand because it is visible and seems “important”.  It’s equally no good if we feel our part of the body is redundant or unimportant.  We need every part of the body to function as designed or the body won’t work.

Sadly, the celebrity culture has invaded the church too.  Important people sit at the front and the rest of us arrange ourselves in terms of importance towards the back.  We find ourselves surrounded by many people who feel they are not good enough.   The exact opposite of what James wrote of in his second chapter, where he warned us not to have “favourites”, however they are categorised.  (James 2:2-9)

Back in February, I was contacted by someone I consider to be a giant in the world of faith.  That they would even consider messaging “little me” was a shock and shows me just how awry my thinking is. You would think the queen herself had messaged me rather than a sister in Christ.

Hear me right in this.  It is important to honour people, to treat our leaders with respect.  Acknowledging who someone is allows me to receive from the God-given anointing they carry.  I want to be teachable, always.  I want to learn, to grow, and if there are those around me who are further on than me in the journey, I am happy to take whatever gleanings are available but not to unhealthily put them on a pedestal.

As I have processed this, I can hear a friend’s voice saying, “You just need to get over yourself!” and he’s right but I also need know the truth about who I am.  In Romans 12:3, Paul writes, “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.”  Sober judgment implies a balanced viewpoint.  It implies an accurate assessment of how things are.  Absolutely, we should not think too highly of ourselves but equally we should not give in to false humility or inferiority and think of ourselves as smaller than we are.  That got the Israelites into trouble in Numbers 13 and had devastating results on a whole generation.

I may have grown in this area over the years but like the proverbial onion skins, there is another layer to be removed.  Comparison stunts our growth.  Freedom comes as a result of getting God’s perspective on things.  John 8:31-32 says,

“So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

As I understand what God says about me, believe it and choose to live in it, and stay in it; as my mind is renewed by the living, active word of God coming alive in me; I am released into new levels of freedom. 

The truth Jesus talks of us knowing and personally experiencing is reality.  The truth is not just an intellectual understanding of what God says, it is how things really are.  I need to acknowledge that reality.  Not what I think or what I feel, or what other people may say but the true picture which comes from the one who IS Truth.  There is only God’s truth, every other “truth” is not reality, and is part of the father of lies’ web of deceit that he weaves around our lives.  It needs to be dismantled so that we are living in the real world, not some twisted fantasy world where the enemy keeps us divided, in small, locked boxes.

If God has made you to be an apple, be the wonderful apple you are designed to be, and don’t worry about not being an orange!