If I hear about a friend with more kids than me and whose husband is a firefighter, I decide her life is harder than mine. In fact, I decide that I shouldn't be upset by my troubles at all. They're nothing compared to hers. So I shame myself. "You ought to be grateful, you pathetic thing! You don't have it that bad! Your troubles aren't troubles at all! You're just a wimp!"
On the other hand, if a single friend complains to me about his coworkers, I'm tempted to patronize him with things like, "But is your office quiet? Do you have kids fighting in the background all day long? Do you get a lunch break? Are your employees defiant and rude when you ask them to do things?"
If I have the self-control to keep my patronizing comments to myself, I brood about it or turn myself into a martyr: "No one else seems to have these troubles. I'm the only one. This is too hard. I can't handle this. God is targeting me. I must be doing something wrong."
These are obviously unhealthy thought patterns. Healthy thoughts after hearing another’s difficulties might be gratitude for what I have, or prayer for another’s difficulties, or even praise that God has put me in a place to grow my faith through trials. I definitely would like to train my brain to participate in these options. But how does anyone do that?
I think it starts by seeing others as being on the same team as us instead of as competitors. And we stop seeing others as competitors when we know we’ve already won. That’s what competitors are. Right? People who are up against us to win something. In life, we’re competing against our fellow man for food, money, rights, love, honor, recognition, and any other number of things. We believe there’s only a limited amount of food or money or love to go around and if we don’t beat the other people to it, we won’t get some. I see my children doing it all the time. They can’t be on the same team so long as they’re both trying to get the last cookie.
It’s the same with adults. We falsely believe there’s only a limited amount of love, grace, and mercy to go around, so we compete with one another for it. We think we deserve the grace and not someone else. We’re afraid we don’t deserve the grace because someone else has it harder. We compete. But God, who owns all the grace in the world has made his resources available to us.
God already knows how difficult it is for us to be good under such circumstances and has forgiven us all the mistakes we’ve ever made or will make. He has valued us equivalent to his son's blood and made us innocent through it. He has given us access to his power and authority and courage. He has given us the promise of never leaving or forsaking us. And he has given us his everlasting love. And he has enough of all this to go around the whole earth fifty times over.
Now we are equals, on the same team taking provision from God’s abundance. As equals we aren’t threatened by the size of one another’s problems, the passion of one another’s opinions, the draw of each other’s popularity, the richness of each other’s wisdom, the consequences of one another’s fool-hearty choices, or the extent of one another’s successes. What another adds to the team is everyone’s gain! And what other’s suffer is mine to suffer too.
The competition is over.
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