This week’s new resource, Fear of Failure, is designed to help ministry leaders work through the misconceptions and heart issues that make them insecure about their ministry service and themselves. One way these fears and insecurities are expressed is through comparison: judging our “success” against someone else’s. Below are four reasons why comparison is destructive and a strategy for finding a healthier view.
- Dissatisfaction. Comparisons lead to dissatisfaction because they are relative; no matter how well off we are, someone else always has more. Just as a greedy person can never have enough money, a leader who compares herself to other leaders can never have enough of whatever she is seeking.
- A Negative Focus. Ahab, king of Samaria, had money, power, and land. But one day, he set his heart on the vineyard of his neighbor Naboth: “Let me have your vineyard to use for a vegetable garden,” said Ahab, “and in exchange, I will give you a better vineyard.” Sounds fair, right? But to Naboth, this was not merely property; this was his family’s inheritance from Yahweh. Thus with revulsion, Naboth replied, “The Lord forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers.” Ahab went home feeling sorry for himself. Such is the pathetic sight of an advantaged person who has indulged in irrational comparison.
- Deception. I fool myself when I compare myself with a few desirable aspects of someone else’s life, blissfully ignorant of the undesirable side. Perhaps I would pause to step into that person’s shoes if I knew what was really happening behind the scenes.
- Distraction from God’s will. One question I long to ask the Lord is whether I missed his best when I left my pastorate in inner-city Chicago for a suburban church. Raised in the suburbs, I never fully adjusted to inner-city life. Consequently, I complained to the Lord and envied suburban pastors. I assumed they had it good: money, nice buildings, receptive people. I am fairly certain my relentless comparing, not my concern for God’s will, had something to do with the move.
Overcoming the Comparison Trap
Wrongful comparisons are a spiritual battle. What I long for, and am learning, is a Christ-centered view of ministry based on five convictions:
- By the grace of God we have our ministries (1 Cor. 3:10).
- God gives me the gifts he wants me to have (1 Cor. 12:4-11).
- God opens and closes doors (Col. 4:3).
- When God gives great authority to someone, it does not mean that he approves more of that person or that they are more holy than I am (Dan. 4:17).
- What matters to God is our faithfulness (Matt. 25:14-30).
These beliefs enable me to persevere with contentment in the places God has commissioned me to be. I cannot allow comparisons with others to distract me from the one thing that truly matters: following Jesus.
This article was adapted from Pastoral Grit and appears in our resource Redefining Success.
