Disunity in Christ Ch.6+7

Chapters 6 and 7 in Disunity in Christ were very interesting and applicable chapters. We as humans always try to make ourselves look better even if it is at the expense of other groups. The chapter primarily talks about putting others down as our primary means of building ourselves up. I find this to be very true especially with very competitive families. I am very closely involved with a family in the area that is very competitive. They are local farmers who are very good at what they do in terms of not only running the whole operation but running individual equipment. Because of this, I always find myself trying to make myself look better just so that I can feel as if I fit in. This sometimes comes in the form of trying ot make others look bad and make myself look better. I do this so that it seems as if I fit in skills wise with them. Comparing this to Christianity, I would be failing significantly if I did this with issues based on a person's actual worth and especially if it had to do with the ideas of salvation at all. There is no excuse for me putting others down at all because at the end of the day God's view of me should be the only thing I worry about. I think it is important to be competitive in terms of being forced to be better but when we take it to the point of making others look bad we have taken it too far. There is nothing wrong with striving to be the best person we can until it comes at someone else's expense. God clearly commands us to love our neighbors as ourselves and when we put them down we are showing no love to them whatsoever.

Comments

  1. Tara BoerNovember 1, 2019 at 12:56 PM

    I can relate to your competitive spirit and family. Myself and most of my family/extended family have competed at various levels in sports (including the NFL) so I relate well to the natural desire to want to excel and achieve. Someone once told me, "there's a difference in being competitive and a poor loser." I think both our desire to belong to groups and excel in the context of a group is a created design but as you said, if we don't keep our identity in Christ as our focus, we can become easily distracted by the world's view of what is actually good. Thanks for writing.

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