How Do I Fight Pride When Competing in School, Business, and Sports?

00:00:04.000 | Grading on a curve in the classroom and competing in the marketplace for a job

00:00:08.000 | against others of similar skill sets and abilities, sports team tryouts.

00:00:13.000 | In so many areas of life, we get compared and graded based on the performance of our peers.

00:00:18.000 | And we benefit from their failures.

00:00:22.000 | This dynamic can feed in us a toxic pride when those failures of others will advance us.

00:00:28.000 | So how do we seek the good of others when others are our rivals?

00:00:32.000 | It's a very good question today from an international high school student named Clara.

00:00:36.000 | Dear Pastor John, thank you for your ministry. I'm writing because of a problem that disturbs my following of Christ.

00:00:41.000 | I'm a high school student living in South Korea.

00:00:44.000 | I read in scripture about the self-conceit and pride that is really sinful,

00:00:49.000 | especially looking down on others and trying to be better than someone out of pride.

00:00:53.000 | However, the high school grading system in South Korea is based on comparative evaluation,

00:00:58.000 | where I get better grades when others fail.

00:01:02.000 | So how do I love my neighbor in this atmosphere of comparative evaluation,

00:01:07.000 | where I benefit from the failures of my neighbor?

00:01:11.000 | Even though Clara doesn't ask my opinion about this grading system,

00:01:16.000 | I'm going to make a comment about it before I answer her more important question

00:01:21.000 | about how to love people.

00:01:24.000 | A system of student evaluation that only communicates a person's competencies in relation to other students

00:01:35.000 | is not useful, it's not helpful in preparing a student for life in the real world.

00:01:43.000 | And the reason is that such a system of evaluation doesn't communicate to the student or the parents

00:01:51.000 | or the future employers what the student's competencies really are.

00:01:57.000 | There may be a class of 50 math students, all of which are weak in math,

00:02:04.000 | some more weak than others.

00:02:06.000 | If grades are given out only in relation to the other members of the class,

00:02:13.000 | then weak students in math, the least weak but still weak, will be given As.

00:02:22.000 | That's not a way to communicate anything clear or helpful to the student or the family or their employer

00:02:30.000 | because it does not communicate the truth about the student's weakness in math.

00:02:36.000 | On the other hand, there may be a class of 50 students, all of which are very bright in math,

00:02:42.000 | just some a little brighter than others.

00:02:46.000 | And in that system, the slightly less bright students will be given low, low grades,

00:02:54.000 | which will communicate nothing true to the student or the parents or the employer

00:02:59.000 | because they're really very, very bright in math.

00:03:03.000 | But that's my opinion about that.

00:03:05.000 | I just that's the way I feel about grading.

00:03:08.000 | She wants to know how to love her neighbor who is less competent than she is in a specific field

00:03:18.000 | and whose lower competence accents her superior competence.

00:03:24.000 | Now, that question is a real life question because that's the situation in which all of us live all of the time.

00:03:32.000 | We we will always be relating to people who are inferior to us in some skills and competencies

00:03:43.000 | and who are superior to us in other ways.

00:03:47.000 | Now, how are we supposed to love people in real life?

00:03:51.000 | So I just want to commend to Clara four passages of Scripture to think about on her way to humility and love.

00:04:04.000 | Number one, 1 Corinthians 4, 6 and 7.

00:04:08.000 | "I have applied all these things," Paul says, "to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers,

00:04:14.000 | that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another.

00:04:19.000 | For who sees anything different in you?

00:04:22.000 | What do you have that you did not receive?

00:04:25.000 | And if you received it, why are you boasting as though it were not a gift?"

00:04:29.000 | In other words, if we're going to love others, we must be done with pride, self-exaltation, boasting.

00:04:38.000 | And Paul says one key to that self-humbling is to realize that absolutely everything we have,

00:04:46.000 | every competency we have, every advantage we have is a free gift of God.

00:04:53.000 | It is a gracious gift of God, which we do not deserve.

00:04:58.000 | If we are better in some subject than someone else, God made us better,

00:05:05.000 | and his reasons for doing so are not pride and boasting and elitism.

00:05:12.000 | His reason for doing so is that we might use our competencies for the good of others.

00:05:20.000 | That's the point of 1 Corinthians 12 through 14, where the differentiation of the gifts is made crystal clear

00:05:31.000 | for the sake of the building up of the body of Christ, not exalting over other members in the body,

00:05:38.000 | but building other members up with our distinct gifting.

00:05:43.000 | Number two, Jeremiah 9, 23, "Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom.

00:05:49.000 | Let not the mighty man boast in his might.

00:05:52.000 | Let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this,

00:05:56.000 | that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practiced steadfast love,

00:06:03.000 | justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight," declares the Lord.

00:06:08.000 | In other words, if you are wise or strong or rich, you will only be pleasing to God and useful to people

00:06:20.000 | if you cease to boast in the wisdom and the strength and the riches,

00:06:24.000 | but instead value God more than you value your superiority in any particular competency.

00:06:33.000 | So let's fix our focus on the all-satisfying superiorities of God and not ourselves

00:06:42.000 | or any vaunted skills we think we have that are better than others.

00:06:48.000 | They come from God, and God is infinitely superior to all of them.

00:06:52.000 | Number three, Galatians 6, 2-5.

00:06:56.000 | Here's a paradox in this text.

00:06:58.000 | It often has baffled me what this text means, but I think I've got it now, so let me try it out.

00:07:05.000 | On the one hand, it says, "Bear one another's burdens," and on the other hand, it says, "Bear your own burdens."

00:07:10.000 | Listen, this is Galatians 2-2.

00:07:13.000 | "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

00:07:18.000 | For if anyone thinks he has something when he has nothing, he deceives himself.

00:07:23.000 | But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor,

00:07:32.000 | for each will have to bear his own load."

00:07:35.000 | Now, I think the point is this.

00:07:37.000 | If you're going to really be a person who bears the burdens of others by serving them and helping them,

00:07:45.000 | you must stop puffing yourself up by comparing yourself with them, looking for your superiorities.

00:07:55.000 | You will give an account of yourself to the Lord, just yourself.

00:08:02.000 | The Lord has given you your distinctives.

00:08:07.000 | You don't boast in the way you compare to another.

00:08:12.000 | If you boast, you boast that God made you the way you are, just for you.

00:08:17.000 | So stop comparing.

00:08:19.000 | Bear your own load.

00:08:21.000 | That is, own who you are for yourself as God made you, not who you are in superiority or inferiority to other people.

00:08:32.000 | Then you can be about the business of loving others, which we are to do.

00:08:39.000 | Number four, finally, Philippians 2, 3-4.

00:08:42.000 | This may be the most immediately relevant text.

00:08:46.000 | It's so powerful.

00:08:48.000 | "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves."

00:08:56.000 | There's the key phrase.

00:08:57.000 | "Count others more significant than yourselves.

00:09:00.000 | Let each of you look not only to his own interest, but also to the interests of others."

00:09:05.000 | I used to really stumble over this text, thinking with the old King James translation, "Count others better than yourselves,"

00:09:12.000 | that if I'm an A student in math and my sister's a C student in math, then I have to look at my sister and think, "She's a better math student than me."

00:09:23.000 | Well, that's just plain self-deception.

00:09:27.000 | That's not what the text means.

00:09:29.000 | That's not a very helpful translation.

00:09:31.000 | The newer translations are right to say, "Count others more significant than yourselves," which I think means this.

00:09:40.000 | When Clara looks on the students in her classes in high school and finds that she is making some better grades than they are,

00:09:49.000 | she is supposed to look at them as worthy of her service, because that's the context.

00:09:58.000 | Jesus emptied himself, didn't count equality with God a thing to be grasped.

00:10:02.000 | He came and he served us, even though we didn't deserve it at all.

00:10:07.000 | He counted us as more significant than himself, and he got under us and put on a towel and served us.

00:10:15.000 | So, Clara, the pathway to loving those who are less competent than you in one subject or another is,

00:10:22.000 | number one, gladly acknowledge that all your competencies are free gifts of God.

00:10:28.000 | You don't deserve them.

00:10:30.000 | Number two, delight yourself in the Lord above all your competencies and superiorities.

00:10:39.000 | Number three, be done with measuring your worth by your superiority or inferiority to others.

00:10:47.000 | And number four, use all of your competencies to serve other people.

00:10:54.000 | Take the very things that elevate you above them and use them to go down under them and lift them up.

00:11:04.000 | Amen. And these principles carry over into so many comparative scenarios in life, not just academics.

00:11:10.000 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:11:12.000 | And Clara, thank you for the question, and thank you for listening and supporting this podcast.

00:11:16.000 | You can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our past episodes in our archive and send us an email of your own,

00:11:21.000 | even questions related to the comparison pressures that you face at work and at school.

00:11:27.000 | You can do all that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:11:33.000 | Well, if our faith was stronger, would we be healthier?

00:11:37.000 | Would we be more financially secure?

00:11:39.000 | Would we be made more happy?

00:11:41.000 | Does Jesus say that our sorrow is traced back to a lack of faith on our part?

00:11:46.000 | That's the question up next when we return on Monday.

00:11:49.000 | Until then, I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:11:51.000 | Have a great weekend. We'll see you then.

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How Do I Fight Pride When Competing in School, Business, and Sports?

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