Comparison

Today is the third Sunday of Lent and to mark the season, we've been offering a series we're calling,"Attitude Adjustment." 

We're looking at a particular attitude adjustment that every single one of us needs to make. Everyone.  The attitude that we're talking about is actually a virtue. A virtue is an habitual and firm disposition to do the good.

What we're talking about can be called the most important virtue because it stands before, it lies beneath the practice of all the other virtues. We're talking about humility, which is  critically important and often misunderstood. Many people think of humility as weakness, low self-esteem, the conscious effort to minimize or downplay one's accomplishments, a bad opinion of yourself. That's not humility. And it's not virtue either.  Nor is it a mark of spiritual maturity, it's a mark of insecurity.  Humility is not a low opinion of yourself, it's a clear opinion of yourself. Humility is knowledge of you as you really are. And we've said that humility is surprisingly powerful. Because if you can be humble, you can learn and grow. If you can be humble, you can bring peace to relationships. If you can be humble, you can develop patience with the world around you. An incredibly powerful tool.

A few weeks ago, we looked at the basis of humility and we learned that humility is grounded in the reality that everything we have comes from God. Our talents and abilities, all our opportunities come from Him. Think about it. You didn't even decide the major decisions determining your life. You didn't decide where you would be born or who your parents are, or what you look like. God made all those decisions for you. In this series, we've also looked at the key way to grow in humility. Turns out we grow as we listen. Humble people are listeners. We listen first and foremost to God himself because He knows more than we do. He knows more about us than we  know ourselves.

Well, today, we're going to look at a key obstacle to growing in humility. At the same time, we'll learn how this obstacle can also be leveraged into a tool for our own strategic advantage. We're going to look at a passage from the Gospel of Luke. Luke's Gospel contains some of the most famous passages in all of the Bible. But today's passage is not famous, it's obscure and it might seem on the surface to be irrelevant. It is in fact not so.

Luke tells us this. Some people told Jesus about the Galileans, people who live in a place called Galilee whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. We don't know who the people in this episode were or the event they're referring to. But some people apparently question Jesus about some breaking news of their day that was otherwise unrecorded in history. Apparently, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, the same Pilate who later condemned Jesus, for an unknown reason, also killed some Galileans at the temple of Jerusalem.  And then he went on to show further disrespect for that sacred space.

A basic tool of Roman governance at the time was terror tactics on the civilian population. And this apparently was another example of that. But why did these people bring the event to Jesus' attention? Well, Jesus was from Galilee. And so maybe they thought he'd be interested in news about the hometown crowd. Or they might have thought that it would have stirred Jesus to anger toward the hated Roman occupiers. But Jesus' response suggests a different motivation. Unlike us, he can read people's hearts and he sees something in their heart that isn't good.

The Gospel says, "Jesus said to them in reply, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way, they were greater sinners than all the others?  By no means, but I tell you, if you do not repent, you will perish as they did." So he looks into their heart and understands that this isn't just about idol small talk. These people are comparing themselves, and they’re comparing themselves to the people in the story. And they're thinking because bad things happened to those Galileans, they've must have been bad people. And because similar bad things haven't happened to us, we must be, in a certain sense, better people. That's why Jesus tells them don't get all self-righteous just because you currently happen to be in a better circumstance. The reality is you're in the same circumstance, you're just like them and everybody else.

Jesus offers another illustration to further underscore this same point. He says, "Are those 18 people who were killed when the Tower at Siloam fell on them, do you think they were more guilty than everybody else?  By no means. But I tell you, if you do not repent, then you will perish." Jesus is pointing to another current event at Siloam in which people are killed in a tragedy. He knew his listeners would be tempted to think that God was judging the people killed because the common view of the day was bad things happen to bad people. And he tells them again, that's not the way it is before God, before God, we're all equally in need of grace.

Well, the more things change, the more they seem to stay the same. Two thousand years ago, people looked at other people's misfortunes to feel better about themselves. And so do we. There's some thing in us that just wants to make comparisons with others to feel good about ourselves. Go to the grocery store, you see pictures on those magazine covers of people who previously seemed to have it all together, they'd found life and love, they were on top of the world in their careers. They had the perfect home, the perfect skin, the perfect hair, or sure shoo-in for the Academy Awards, and then suddenly, their lives are a wreck, they're deep in debt, their marriage is falling apart, their kids are out of control. And look at the weight he or she has put on. Those magazines aren't prominently displayed in prime checkout areas of grocery stores nationwide because no one is reading them. We buy them, we read them. Okay, sometimes we just read them, but why?

It is because we compare ourselves to their lives, and feel better in the process about our life. The same happens in politics and sports. There are constantly stories on CNN and ESPN about people who have experienced a reversal of fortunes.  We find ourselves relishing those reversal of fortunes. I think this is the appeal of reality TV and soap operas. We can watch dysfunction, and dumb decisions, and bad behavior, and we think, well, however uneven, however inauthentic my life is, however dysfunctional my family is, we're not that bad.

Unfortunately, it just doesn't happen with celebrity. We compare ourselves to everyone around us all the time, and we all do it. This is especially likely to happen with people proximate to us, in our demographic, in our age range, in our profession, in our neighborhood, in our school, in our class. Moms compare themselves to moms, dads compare themselves to dads, lawyers to lawyers, soccer and basketball players to soccer and basketball players, and believe me, pastors compare themselves to other pastors. This week I asked some random people in our parish to fill me in on the comparisons that they find themselves currently making on a regular daily basis. Dads told me it's about strength, power, prowess, agility, athletic ability, professional success, financial success. Their comparisons include everything from cars, to the corner office, from watches, to vacation destinations.

Moms told me it pretty much comes down to wardrobe and appearance, their husbands and their husbands' careers, whether their kids are in AP advanced classes or regular classes,

whether their kids are in travel soccer or rec league soccer, punctuality in the carpool line, what kind of college their kids get into, and in one I did not see coming, whether or not you've upgraded your kitchen.

For students, it's pretty much a junior version of the same list, maybe minus the kitchen upgrades, but the next generation is teaching us how to do it more effectively and efficiently on social media. Comparisons happen all the time everywhere, with everyone, in every industry and sector of life and corner of society. The problem is comparing ourselves to other people is self-defeating behavior. It's a trap.

It's a trap that we can't win, and it kills humility. Because if we succeed in the comparison, we feel pride. And if we fail in the comparison, we feel jealousy. Either way, we're a long way from humility.

But there is a kind of comparison that can help. It can help us grow in humility. We can actually leverage this comparison in our favor. And I think that's why in the context of this discussion, Jesus goes on to tell a story, as he often did. This story goes like this.

"There was once a man who had a fig tree planted in his garden. When he came in search of fruit, but found none, he said to the gardener, 'For three years now, I've come in search of fruit on this fig tree, but I've found none. So cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?'"

So this is about an owner of an orchard who sees a tree that has not produced fruit for a number of years. He's kept coming back to it, but no progress is seen.

So he tells the gardener to cut it down and get rid of it. In reply, the gardener says, "Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground, it may bear fruit. If not, then you can cut it down."

So the gardener is saying to the owner, "Give the tree some more time to become fruitful, be patient." Be patient. When we start comparing ourselves to others, we need to remember how patient God has already been with us. He gives us time to turn to Him or to turn back to Him to repent, to change, to grow, and he does it over, and over, and over again. Lent is simply a reminder of that.

God is  patient with us, He gives us another chance over, and over, and over again. So the only healthy comparison that we can make is the comparison we can make with ourselves.

And that is an essential act of humility. Humility compares myself, with who God created me to be. Humility acknowledges that the person God wants me to be, the person that is my very best self, is a person that I still need to grow into being.

So let me ask you a question for the week ahead. Who do you, secretly for sure, but who do you hope will fail or fall?  You like it when they get in trouble, you love it when they don't get the deal or the contract or the scholarship, and you secretly celebrate their setbacks. Maybe you would never admit that to another living person, but you know you do.

This week, I want to challenge you to pray for them.

Because that's the only way you're going to get that out of your heart. You've got to pray for them, really pray for their well-being and their success.

It’s okay to say to God, “I really do not like this person but I am going to pray for their success because it is the right thing to do.” God already knows how you feel about this person and He wants your heart to change.

Try it.  It works little by little over time.  Your heart will change. At first, it won't feel good. It might even hurt. But those are growing pains that we've got to experience if we're going to really adjust our attitude, grow past useless comparisons, and develop true humility of heart, the kind of humility of heart in which God's grace can work and grow.

One author put it this way, "There's nothing noble in being superior to your neighbor. True nobility is about being superior to your former self."