Well crafted (sometimes expensive) shoes outlast cheap $5 on-sale shoes.
High-wattage light bulbs out-shine low-wattage light bulbs.
Most children can out-play most adults.
Most
Kenyans can
out-run most everyone else on the planet.
The roadrunner will always outsmart Wil E Coyote.
This is my confession: I am competitive.
I will try to out-smart a smart person, or out-run another runner, or even out-adventure a fellow adventurer…
It gets worse.
It’s a tricky business. Because some people are really smart. Really great runners. Really adventurous. So I choose my competitors “wisely”. Usually a personal one-on-one relationship is required, but also the odds must NOT be stacked in your favor. I mean, I will not attempt to out smart Paul Allen, or out adventure the Birdmen, or out-craft Martha Stewart.
Sometimes I look around me, find someone who does something that I admire and want to try to do… And I try to out-do them. It is a form of comparison.
It makes me feel good about myself. To impress the crafty person with my own craftiness. To impress the musician with my musicianship. To impress the hipster with my hipness.
Yuck, right?
It gets worse still.
In my competitiveness, my attention recently has turned towards my Jesus-loving, Christian friends.
This verse has been floating around my head; Paul, writing to Timothy about the qualifications for Deacons says “They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. And let them also be tested first; then let them serve as deacons if they prove themselves blameless.”
How else to prove yourself than to stand out in what you do? How else to stand out than to catch someone’s eye? How else to catch someone’s eye than to do something well that they already do well?!
In order to impress my Christian friends, to stand out, to prove myself, I look at what they do (well) and I try to imitate and out-do them!
Woah. What a major mix-up. Not to mention highly illogical.
Trying to out-christian a fabulously Christian, Christian is a bogus competition, not because it is impossible (like out-smarting Einstein), but because it is NOT a competition.
I. will. never. out-christian. you.
Being a Christian – Loving like Jesus… is not a competition.
Being a Christian is about being forgiven. Knowing you need forgiveness. Accepting that you are incapable of DOING anything to achieve forgiveness. And that you can only open your hands, your head, your heart to the mercy of God’s forgiveness through Jesus.
The same Jesus who has forgiven me, continues to forgive me, and will forgive me tomorrow when I forget what I am saying right now – that same Jesus forgives you too.
So we are united in this, not competing.
So this is My personal noncompete clause with my Christian friends.
Writing from Life, for Life. 