So What's the Point of Comparing & Competing

NIV

⁷ For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not? ⁸ Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! You have begun to reign—and that without us! How I wish that you really had begun to reign so that we also might reign with you! (1 Corinthians 4:7-8)

But verse 9 in 'The Message' stood out to me this morning.

^7-8For who do you know that really knows you, knows your heart? And even if they did, is there anything they would discover in you that you could take credit for? Isn't everything you have and everything you are sheer gifts from God? So what's the point of all this comparing and competing? You already have all you need. You already have more access to God than you can handle. Without bringing either Apollos or me into it, you're sitting on top of the world—at least God's world—and we're right there, sitting alongside you!

This past Sunday in church, we read the scripture about the workers in the harvest field; the ones who were hired and worked all day were paid the same as those hired at 5 o'clock. This caused some resentment among the workers who were then rebuked. But this is a lesson of the law of grace... which is so radically different... that different realm we were talking about last week.

I think it really is so very difficult for us to understand and live in the law of grace, because it is so countercultural. Our society is set up in a way that comparison and competition is very much the way things work. It's how you get a job, get your proposal accepted, get the fellowship, get ahead in life. Even when we don't think of it as 'competition', there is a sense in which it is competition... prized items, jobs, etc are only for a few... not for all.

This isn't something that's confined solely to academia, but that's the example that comes to mind, perhaps because it's the example that I live. Certainly not everyone (those who send in late applications and abstracts) will be admitted to conferences. I am currently planning on applying to a fellowship that only 20/500 applicants are expected to receive. Nor does everyone's article make its way into the best journals... or any journals at all. Although my program is amiable and lacks the interdepartmental competition that many suggest they feel, I can feel these more subtle forms of competition.

Instead, here Paul emphasizes that despite our bank accounts, our positions and titles, we are not any better than anyone else. The best, most important, most valuable gifts we have are those that have been given to us from Christ Jesus. And we have no right to claim those as our own, except as gifts given to us by the Father.

If we let ourselves live in the law of grace, it may be unsettling at first... because we are so accustomed to 'fairness' in terms of what we 'earn'. But it can also be extremely freeing. God's law of grace frees us from the pressure of comparing and competing.

Imagine a conference where everyone is welcome to present... even if they submitted the abstract late.