For years I have struggled with comparison. The sins that easily entangle me are perfectionism, performancism, and comparison. In short, I have spent most of my life living in a state of "not measuring up." Unfortunately, we do live in a society that aggressively adds to a need for competition. Thankfully, Jesus is greater than the struggles we face. He is doing a huge work in my life, changing my thought processes from slavery to freedom, and reminding me that my longings are good. Our desires are for our home, we are longing for something greater.
C.S. Lewis, in The Weight of Glory, has this spectacular quote about our longings:
C.S. Lewis, in The Weight of Glory, has this spectacular quote about our longings:
“In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”
Practically, I don't know what this means for you. I know from my experience that Jesus is continually leading me to deeper levels of freedom and joy. Notice that I did not say He is leading me to greater levels of "success and happiness," but of freedom and joy. Freedom and joy can come in the midst of pain, trial, suffering, and all manner of human struggle.
For me, one temptation is to turn my longings for heaven into a competition for perfection and the notice of men here on earth ("performancism"). This means that I must constantly take my thoughts captive, giving them to God. Thankfully, He is faithful. "I will say to the Lord, 'my fortress and my refuge, my God in whom I trust.'" (Psalm 91:2). I know that "He who began a good work in me will be faithful to complete it" (Phil. 1:6), so I will trust the God whose "love endures forever" (Psalm 136).
I tried to paint a picture of how this feels in my blog, AdventuringThroughTheGreatWideWorld. Check it out in my post "On Psalm 91."
In the meantime, I have grad school work to do, and a lot to contemplate with the things God is doing in my heart.
I hope this makes sense, and I'll be praying that you experience the same freedom and joy in your life that God has given me in mine (he is not a respecter of persons in his gifts, meaning they are for everyone!).
Blessings!
-A Fellow Adventurer
