The Problem of Better Than

The following video transcript has been lightly edited

 I think that each of us struggle with the challenge of sometimes feeling inferior and other times feeling superior to others. It sneaks up on us. It can show up in the smallest of ways. It's you're pulling into your driveway and you notice that your neighbors got a new white suburban like mine did, and you begin comparing it to your perhaps white Toyota minivan.

And there's some things about it that are comparable. They both hold eight people. They both have leather interior. They're both good family vehicles. There's also some differences. One has a truck engine and one has a car engine. But then. You start to move into this place in which perhaps if you're the owner of the suburban, you pull in and you look to your right and you see your neighbor in the white Toyota Sienna, and you think, eh, that car's nice, but mine's nicer.

Or maybe you're the driver of the minivan and you're driving a minivan and you feel like a SUV would be cooler. And so you look up the road and you think, oh, I'm not as good as they are.

Our world is structured in a way where fame, prestige, wealth, popularity, all kinds of things set us up to always be measuring, to always be thinking, am I superior or am I inferior?

And that, of course, is a dangerous trap. And whenever that happens, it results really in three things. It results in a loss of humanity, it results in a sense of anguish and it causes us to miss God's kingdom. So I wanna dig into each of those ideas a little bit more through the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

So the story Jesus tells is to push back against the Pharisees who we're always trying to justify themselves in the eyes of others. They're caught in that inferior, superior game where they want to be the superior ones. And he tells a story about a rich man who has beautiful clothes and eats all kinds of great meals.

Meanwhile, there's this person, Lazarus, who sits outside his gate. And Lazarus just hopes that he could eat the scraps from this rich man's table. He hopes it because he never quite gets it. He has sores on his body and it's clear from the story that in the ancient world it would be believed that he is cursed.

And so they both die and go to Hades. But in the midst of Hades, there's a role reversal that goes on in which the poor man sitting outside the gate is now in the comfort with Abraham. And the rich man who has ignored Lazarus is in anguish. And he says to Abraham, Abraham, Hey, could you send Lazarus with just a little bit of water on his finger and dip it in my tongue so that I could have some relief because I'm in anguish over here. And as the story goes, he's told, Hey, can't do that. There can't get over there. Meanwhile, he says, Hey, how about you send Lazarus to my brother so that they don't end up just like me? And the point in the story concludes when he says, Hey, they already have scriptures and the prophets, if they can't listen to them, they won't even listen to someone who rises from the dead.

So in this story, the Pharisees or the rich man believe themselves to be superior to others. And in the midst of that, they end up making objects out of others They experience the anguish of the superior inferior trap. And they miss God's kingdom. So when we think about objects and enemies, think about something like the Red Sox and the Yankees.

Many of us who are Yankees fans have friends who are Red Sox fans. And when we're thinking about them as our friends, they're our friends. But they've done studies in which when they think about them either as Red Sox fans or Yankees fans, they become objects. They become enemies, and there's the constant sort of battling over which one's superior to the other.

This happens in small ways in our everyday world, in which we believe that because of the choices we've made and the things we've done, we are either inferior or superior to others. But God's kingdom is radically different. It's radically equal, equal in value, equal in brokenness. It teaches us that there's no slave, free, Greek, or Jew. That each person is created in the divine image of God, and each person is unique. And so in this way, there's no room for inferior and superior because we're all equal.

And so what we see is that when we jump on the inferior superior bandwagon, what we are doing is we're actually not operating at all within our true selves because our true selves are equally loved, equally unique, equally broken compared to everybody else in the world.

And so what we want to do instead is we want to be the kind of people that accept our place, our place as creatures in relationship to God. Meaning we ourselves are not God, but we're created. We're brothers and sisters to our fellow human and have a sense in which we are that here to connect and look after them, and ultimately we're to be stewards of creation.

Not in a sense in which we can be better or worse than, but in a sense that we are all in this together. So what does that look like for you? How are you finding peace in the midst of being a creature, being a brother and sister, and being a steward in the world?

Secondly, we get caught in the anguish of superiority. It shows up in a few different ways. As I said before, we're all created equal. We all have equal brokenness. We have equal value, equal uniqueness, and so anytime we're on the inferior, superior bandwagon, we can't actually operate as our true selves because we're operating on a lie. And so we disconnect from ourselves and that brings a sense of anguish. Additionally, if you're committed to being superior to others, you will always arrive at a place in which you feel inferior.

Think of athletics. You start maybe in middle school and you're one of the better ones, and so you make the team, but then high school gets thinned out a little bit more, and maybe you do, or maybe you don't make varsity, but maybe make varsity and you don't start, so you're beginning to feel inferior, even though all that time you were committed to being the best.

You move on from there to college and now you're with a whole other group of people who are also the best in high school. And so maybe there, that's where you get weeded out. And then maybe, let's say basketball, you get all the way to the NBA and now you're playing with all the people who are the best of the best. Everyone else is better than everyone else, and that's how they got here. But now you're a little bit inferior because you've always been trying to pursue superiority. Then maybe you're good enough to even get in the conversation of the greatest of all time you want to be a GOAT. But here's the problem with that is that you will experience inferiority in two ways.

One, your body will age and you will no longer be the superior player that you once were. Or two, you'll get lost in the barbershop argument over who is the greatest of all time, and you realize that it is subjective. And so if your whole identity is staked on this idea of being superior to others, you'll always end up in a place in which you are inferior.

So anytime we start to drift and allow comparison or competition or observation to move to a better than or worse than we are putting ourselves into anguish of superiority inferiority. So you wanna avoid that trap.

How do we avoid that trap? Well, we avoid that trap by admiration, appreciation, and gratitude. If I see myself as equal a value with others, it'll frees me to admire their uniqueness, the things that they're wonderful at, without impacting my identity at all. If I'm able to seek out contentment and gratitude that I'm not wrestling with inferiority or superiority. If I am able to appreciate others, then I myself am now free from that inferior superior complex.

So don't let yourself get caught in that kind of anguish of inferior or superior, rather, develop contentment, appreciation, admiration.

How's that going for you? Maybe ask yourself, check in. Am I feeling? Appreciation and admiration for others, or is it starting to become something else?

Lastly, what we see is we see that the rich man is blind to the way God's kingdom is working. The Pharisees are blind to the way the kingdom is working, and for you and I, when we are operating in the inferior superior vortex, we too become blind to God's kingdom. We fail to see the wonder, the grace, the mercy, the beauty, the goodness of God's kingdom. And so we want to cultivate our minds to be able to see that.

In Philippians 2, Paul says, to have the same mind as Christ. And that takes intentionality by us to really cultivate that. So what are you doing? What does prayer look like for you? What are the scriptures? Your engagement with scriptures, maybe reading, maybe some counseling, whatever it is- what are you doing to cultivate that mindset to help you stay off of the inferior or superior trap. Don't get caught in the better than or worse than. Rather, experience the freedom of loving and serving with a sense of contentment and admiration and gratitude.

Hey, hope you had a good week and I look forward to wrapping up this series with you next week. Take care.