Worldview Wednesday: Who do you compare yourself to?

Sitting quietly in the church pew, you casually glance around, taking note of the families and individuals sitting all around you. I'm doing pretty good you think. That family has a discipline issue. Well, our children would never spill their cheerios all over the floor and throw a fit in the middle of the sermon. Our children are trained better than that! The Smiths are having marriage issues. Whew, you should have heard what she said to him when they came in this morning. And she said it in front of everyone! I would never do that. I do bible study EVERYDAY. I bet no one else here can say that. They all have business issues. Yep, we are doing pretty good. Oh of course I didn't mean to say that we were perfect but we are doing well.

Just down the pew sits another lady who is also glancing around and taking her own mental notes. The conversation in her head sounds nothing like the previous one. She in fact is feeling worthless, tired, and a little stressed. She had arrived at church only to realize that she has forgotten to comb her sons hair and he is definitely sporting a severe case of bed head. No one else has unkept children. Her family had barely gotten breakfast eaten this morning and there sits her daughter with a smudge of jelly from her toast on her little cheek. Her husband is not happy with her because she fell behind on the laundry this week and the pants he wanted for church did not get cleaned. She knows she should read her bible and pray everyday but it seems like there is never time and everyone else she knows does this effortlessly for thirty minutes a day! No, she's not doing very well at all she thinks miserably.

The problem with both of these scenarios is that we are not supposed to be becoming more Sally or Jane or whoever you feel is the perfect family. We are each of supposed to be becoming more like Christ. We are supposed to be Christ's disciples! Comparing ourselves to others only leaves us inflated with pride which blinds us to the areas of sin in our own lives or leaves us under condemnation. Neither of these situations help us to grow to be Christlike, to become mature in the faith. We should be comparing ourselves to scripture! In order do that, we have to read it! Not what does someone else think about us or how to apply scripture but what does scripture say!

1 Corinthians 12: 14-19 says, "For in fact the body is not one member but many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body, "is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear should say, "because I am not an eye, I am not of the body", is it therefor not of the body? If the whole body were an eye where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling? But now God has sent the members, each one of them, in the body JUST AS HE PLEASED. And if they were all one member, where would the body be?" We are not created all alike. Everyone of us has gifts, talents and struggles just as God wills it. Diana Johnson in her book When Home Schooling Gets Tough said, "Contentment lies in accepting that God in His wisdom has made our family who we are. It means accepting ourselves, our teaching style and our husband's level of involvement in our home school, our children's accomplishments. It means recognizing our worth in Christ."


We must also recognize our sin. If we are comparing ourselves to other people we will never truly understand our sin. How do I know if my words are sinful if I can not hold them up to the light of scripture and the words of God describing to me what my speech should be? It is a rare and true friend who might correct the speech of a fellow sister in Christ. Most likely you will be allowed to continue in your sin with no correction. But if you are in the Word, the Word will convict you! Acts 5: 29 tells us that we are to strive to please God. We will not know how to please God if we are not in the word. We can not depend on sermons, books, speakers, or conferences to reveal God to us. Those things are always filtered through a human perspective.