The Scary Truth About Our Competitive Nature Vis-a-vis Biblical Dictates

Galatians 6:1 – Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out. (Message Bible)

Galatians 6:1 – Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. (NIV)

Some school systems around the world have created a competitive system where people in the same class are rated as either best, average or worst. Consequently, when people find themselves in any group, they instinctively want to emerge as best and avoid being rated as worst. The problem is for you to be the best, someone must come second all the way to last. The said school systems that taught us bad behaviour would not allow a situation where everyone is best. In fact it is considered an abnormality if everyone fails or everyone passes.

Romans 3:23 – for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

All have sinned. The curve doesn’t apply. You cannot spread sin on a curve and say that it is abnormal for all to sin, therefore distribute the sinners from righteousness to sinfulness. The Bible dismisses that curve. All have sinned. All are hell bound. Therefore it is futile for sinners to compete among themselves on who is more sinful than the other. That competitive spirit is not from God. Competing on who is better is wrong.

Such thinking unfortunately significantly contradicts the Biblical thinking. The competitive nature where you seek to be the best by showing how bad others are is based on greed, jealous and being inconsiderate, which are vices according to the Bible. In such systems a student will report to the teacher that a fellow student was marked right yet they had a wrong answer and they demand that the teacher recalls the paper and give a failing mark. This is because the failure of their classmate will mean they are rated the best. After many years in such a school, the outcome will be that a learner will go through life seeking downfall of others in order for them to remain the best. Such a person will go through life feeling threatened by anyone who seems to do well, because someone doing well, for them immediately means they are second or failures.

This competitive spirit is what causes discontent. You have everything you prayed for, but because someone has better and more, you are no longer happy with your answered prayer. You hate the answers to your prayers. You go to God with new demands. Such a person will never know happiness until everyone fails and they are the only ones who have done well.

Matthew 20:1-16 tells of a parable where people were hired at different times, but got the same pay. Some complained because they wanted to be paid more than others, yet they had agreed to the pay they received. Our biggest challenge is the competitive spirit that drives everything we do. We want to be better at the expense of others being bad and failing.

You buy a car and you invite friends to pray for your car. The following week another friend buys a bigger better car and invites you for prayers, and now your car seems small and insignificant. You hate them secretly, because their car makes yours second. You start a process of selling this car to buy a bigger better one, you sink in debt to satisfy your competitive spirit. A spirit that causes us to hate our nice houses, our jobs, our titles, etc.

In such an environment people will go to school even if it will not improve their salaries. The aim is you are not left behind. The aim is to out do each other. The education doesn’t change nor improve the person but it makes the person feel safe in a competitive environment environment.

In a competitive environment people would resolve to criminal activity and dark arts to control competition. If others are getting better and you can’t beat them, you can try to use criminal methods to eliminate them from the competition. That is why witchcraft in such communities even of believers will not end. This is because it helps address competition that can’t be overcome.

Unfortunately, that is not where it stops. When we come to church we are in the same class. Knowingly or unknowingly, we start competing on who is better materially and worst of all spiritually. When one of us sins, we broadcast their sins loud, far and wide because of their spiritual failure, we think we will now be ranked spiritually the best. He abuses drugs and I dont so in this class, he is a failure and i am above average or best.

A competitive church is depressive because goal posts keep changing on what defines the best person in that class aka the church. The goal may be being in a prayer team and against all your abilities, you join a midnight prayer team. The new goal may be using herbs and you strain to be in that class. The new goal may be to be a vegetarian and you strive to eat what you don’t enjoy. The goal may be to understand prophecies and you strive to even understand things that have no direct spiritual value. The race goes on until people with full fledged careers desire to study theology, not for pastoral work and not even to improve Bible knowledge but to emerge the best in the class. Theology programs are not cheap, but the competitive spirit can take you where you cant afford.

That is why it becomes easy to sway university students who belong to such a church. University students are the best in society academically. You give them new material that will make them the best, they read and adopt. They soon discover they know things that local leaders, pastors and members do not know. That is so satisfying in a competitive system. You tell them you become the best spiritually by ignoring studies and focusing on missions, they will gladly fail academically and attend every mission and never go home even when their families need them during holidays. That being different gives satisfaction in a competitive system. If the highest act of being spiritual is abandoning studies and joining itinerant preachers, some will dare and abandon studies. They will be revered for abandoning studies or jobs. They are at the top of the competitive spiritual class.

In such a church, sin cannot be handled privately. The sins of a fellow class member aka church member is an opportunity to demonstrate that they are now at the back of the class and you are at at the top. Their failure has made you excellent. Pastors are considered spiritual and probably perfect. If a pastor commits sin, its like the best student has failed and we have a new best student. In order for ordinary church members who have been number two to now become number one, they will publicise the sin of this pastor and even insinuate that all pastors cant be trusted to be good. By all pastors being rated as bad, these loud church members now rate as the best in this competitive system. Think of how exciting it can be if church leaders in their headquarters make a mistake, all of a sudden there is a frenzy within that church which should be embarrassed. But they are excited because the number ones have been toppled. They dont need enemies to celebrate their failure, they themselves in their competitive spirit will broadcast the failure in order to look good.

In such a church we do not commend good work by church leaders. We do not commend organized worship. We do not commend good singing, teaching and preaching. But the day anything goes wrong, we attack with heretofore unknown ferocity. This is because the good work was placing these people ahead of us and the mistake has given us a chance to be first. Do you find yourself always correcting others and pointing the wrong but almost never appreciating?

Yet the Bible says, we should seek to redeem the sinner. We shouldn’t seek to destroy the sinner.We should forgive the sinner so that they can be reintegrated back to society. In a competitive environment where sun has eliminated the competition, would those in the race want such a person reintegrated back? To ensure the competition doesn’t come back, the sin committed is magnified and broadcast and exaggerated, to make it impossible for the person to return. Anyone who seeks to restore the person is accused of compromising.

It is this spirit that we have sought to elaborate today that affects how we deal with sins committed by fellow church members. We are more tolerant to non-believers than fellow believers. The Bible says handle the person who has sinned gently.

The Bible says today that only those with the spirit can handle a sinner properly. Those with accusatory spirit are full of condemnation. Those with God’s spirit are gentle and seek to restore the sinner. How do you handle the sins of those who seem to be your competitors or fellow church members or relatives and friends? How you handle them determines if you have the Spirit or not.

May God remove the toxic competitive spirit from me and us. May God fill us with the Holy Spirit who will help us handle the sinners gently. May our churches and communities be safe places to restore sinners. May it be safe for prodigals to return. In Jesus’s name, Amen!

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