Compare Yourself to Who You Were Yesterday - Part 1

 This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life. Taking time each day to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord as well. I encourage the use of a devotional, a scripture reading and prayer, then finally some form of artistic mark to tie it all together. 

Today's devotional is taken from: Peterson, Jordan B. 12 Rules for Life: an antidote to chaos. Great Britain: Penguin Random House, 2018. Rule 4: Compare Yourself to Who You Were Yesterday, Not to Who Someone Else Is Today, pp. 85 - 96

Opening Thought: Before diving into the words of Peterson this week, I already find myself pleased by this rule. I know in my own spiritual growth and worldly ambitions I struggle to be satisfied by where I am at. I am, in many ways, an ambitious person, so I often find myself longing for more growth, accomplishment, and development of knowledge and skill. I must often pause and compare who I am now, to who I was to remind myself that I have grown and accomplished, and I should find contentment in that. Of course, I am left longing for more, but not because I am not satisfied with what I have done, rather I have come to realize that I enjoy challenging myself and pushing myself to be my best.

This being a self-help book that I am working through, I imagine that many in the target audience would have the opposite problem. They struggle to move towards their goals in life or find themselves feeling they ‘lack’ especially in contrast to others more accomplished than themselves. I am curious to see this rule plays out.

Now having read the first portion of this rule, I noticed that this rule plays out really close to a concept that we have been reviewing at church lately, the moral law or natural law. When it comes to social and material advancement, we must recognize what we have a 'lacking' of our full potential in ourselves before we can properly pursue our advancement. Similarly, in Christianity we must be humble about ourselves, recognizing our sins before we can call upon God to liberate us from them. In both cases, we look to progress to our great capacities, and in both cases, we need to recognize our shortcomings first. But our shortcomings being made known does not need to be our end. Often people feel vulnerable when looking at their shortcomings, so rather than pursue the challenge of growth, which will take effort and a continuous unveiling of one’s shortcomings during the processes of development, they often avoid trying at all. If stop trying, and you compare yourself to someone who has accomplished their goals that contrast can be rather painful to take in. Often people will get lost in contrast between where they are verse where others are. The wiser thing to do, would be to look at accomplished people's fuller stories, how did they get to where they are now? What kind of lesson did they have to overcome to get there?

Opening Prayer: God, help us dive into these teachings; the ideas of Peterson and welcome any wisdom they could hold for our lives. One of the greatest gifts in the world is the exchange of ideas and thought, when we open ourselves up to the experience of growth and learning we become fuller versions of ourselves. In Christ’s name, Amen.  

Scripture Brought to Mind: Jeremiah 31:33

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

Reflection: It may seem odd, to some, that God would formulate His relationship with people around a law. What do rules have to do with anything? A lot, actually! To be in existence, means you are to some degree social. God’s nature in Trinity is communal and social, and likewise, people are social and communal as we are created in the image of God. Being social requires a mutual understanding of what proper conduct is. If there was only one Being in existence for all eternity, with never a single other "being" to come into existence, law would seem rather odd. But add another person in, and suddenly law keeps the plural functioning as one, more or less – it keeps the peace between multiple wills. So when God gives us the law, God gives us something of his own social nature. Law which binds us together and many in harmony. But when you introduce harmony and law, or any of the other characteristics of God’s perfect will, we also come to know their counterparts. Traits like, unharmoniousness, and lawlessness; are subpar realities compared to their Godly counterparts. Thus, a hierarchy is formed naturally. The Law which God gave to Israel and the moral law written up the hearts of mankind were designed to point us toward the nature of God, and the true nature of humans. Sadly, this true nature of ours, in some senses, has been abandoned in favor of other natures. These subpar natures like lawlessness keep us from being close to the will of God, and in turn, we sin and “miss the mark.”  

The Laws of the Bible were designed to help us navigate this reality. The closer to the ideal of God’s perfect will, the more holy and righteous the behavior, further from the will of God the more unholy, evil, and sinful the behavior. For example, if we saw a young lady lost in the self-obsession of vanity, we will still call it sinful, but her youth may not have given her time to realize the beauty she is after is only skin deep. But if we saw the same girl as a senor woman, many years later, still obsessing over her beauty to a level of vanity and to the extent that it was narcissistic and damaging to the people in her life, we may conclude that she has moved deeper into a life of sin and further away from the ideal of God. However, since we have the moral law upon our hearts and the law, the Law of Moses in history which pointed us towards the law, and the law fulfilled in Christ we can look upon a situation and gage whether it falls short of the ideal of God and to what degree. This is the spiritual struggle Christians must encounter. If the young lady, who had a proper education in the law, may still feel good about the way she looks but would endeavor to present herself humbly, with boasting, nor using her gift of beauty to make others feel bad about themselves. 

In the material world, there are hierarchies as well. Not all people are perfect plumbers, candlestick makers, or musicians. We all have varying talents, skills, and personalities. Now each of these talents, skills, and personalities will too have hierarchies. Not everyone will have the pragmatic mind and dexterity to be a good plumber, not all people will find candle-making an interesting endeavor, and not all people will have the harmonious flair and dedication to be a musician. Similar to the moral law, where some actions may be closer or further away from God’s perfect will, some people will be closer to the ideals of different talents, skills, and the like. A blackbelt sensei will have more skill in fighting than a white belt who has only been developing their skill for a month – though there may be other martial arts masters out there with a more refined skill set than the blackbelt sensei.

One final note I will focus on that I really appreciated from Peterson is that he says, and I am paraphrasing, just because there is someone out there better than you doesn’t mean you should not still try. I am a terrible video game player statistically, I’ve never been good at it, but I still play, and try and enjoy myself. It is easy to do that with video games because, for me, there are no real-life consequences if I’m not perfect. However life is the game we must play, and I don’t think it wise to stop playing the game just because others may be better than you in one aspect or another, rather it is wiser to realize that God has made this game for you to play, so be the best player you can be.

Continual Work: Think about who you were ten years ago, how have you improved yourself in the last ten years, and how have you come closer to God’s will in the process?

What Rev. Jacob is Working On: I often feel like I need to get better at offering kind words to people. Many of my peers have such a strength in pastoral care and compassion, and, with that, being able to share kind and welcoming words with others. I look to their example to help me strengthen my own skills.

Prayer for your week: Lord, be with us. Amen.  

Artistic Close: Sometimes we need to start somewhere, maybe to you, morality is just a concept, but with a concept, we can create so much. So start working with your ideas of morality, the law, God’s will and begin some planning, research, and development, and in time you will see the hierarchy of God’s moral law has really been a step ladder to your best self.