The Compulsion to Compare

Comparison is a trap. It can cause us to think poorly of ourselves, or as Shannon Popkin points out, it can also lead to self-righteousness. In the church especially, we have this habit of looking at others with this sense of disgust. I'm so disgusted with my son for this, or I'm so disgusted. Like, look, that is so—and we have this tone when we look at other people. And we cannot communicate disgust without also communicating something about ourselves, without communicating a sense of superiority.

This me first, me elevating myself, and this is so opposite of what Jesus calls us to, isn't it? This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine.

You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. Are you someone who is prone to comparing yourself to others? And do you recognize the dangerous potential of that? We'll talk more about it today with Shannon Popkin. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. You guys are on social media. I follow you on some stuff, so you're on Twitter. We're all over it, Bob, aren't we? You're on Twitter.

We're on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. You're not posting a whole lot. Oh, come on.

Oh, thanks, Bob. Like, how many times a week do you think you put something on Instagram? Three or four times a day. No, you don't. No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

No, a little bit. Yeah, so maybe— Maybe a few times a week. Honestly, we never did this, and then when Zondervan— You wrote a book. They said you have to.

Your publisher said you've got to be on social media. Don't you feel the same way every time? Like, who really cares what I'm doing right now? Well, but you know what? There are people— They do care.

Oh, they do care. And in fact, the thing about Instagram— I know where you're going, Bob. It ties exactly into what we're going to talk about today. Last week, we talked with Shannon Popkin about the issue of control and how that can be an issue for men and women, but particularly for wives and for moms. There's a second issue, and Instagram is fueling it in our day. Oh, boy.

And that's the issue of comparison. So, are you on Instagram? Do you check Instagram once a day, at least?

Yes, at least. And when you're looking at all these other pictures, what are you thinking? I can tell you what she's thinking. She's thinking, I wish my husband would do that to our kitchen. Hey, honey, look what Joe did to his wife. I don't even know who Joe is in this room, but look at that kitchen, and he did all that. You can't look at it without comparing.

Everything, whether it's your house, your home, your kids, your husband, all of those things. And recently, back last fall, I think it was, that Instagram said, we're going to hide from your followers how many likes you got. Which I think is smart.

Because they were recognizing that this was a drug. And it's to the whole issue of comparison, which we're going to talk about this week. Shannon Popkin is joining us again. Welcome back.

Thank you. Shannon wrote the book Control Girl, which we talked about last week. She's got a brand new book out called Comparison Girl. And it wasn't Instagram that drove you to this book, but you know what we're talking about here. Absolutely.

Are you on Instagram? Yes. And when you look at it, does that same comparison thing open you? Oh, yeah.

Absolutely. So when did you realize that you were a comparison girl? You know, I think I've always struggled with comparison. I have, my earliest childhood memory has little threads of comparison in it. They say that your first memory kind of says something about you, you know, if that's what sticks out. And my first memory is being in church, and I was sitting in the row ahead of my parents.

So that may say something too, I wanted that independence. And I was standing tall, and I was holding my hymn book, and I was singing out really loud. And then there was this woman who kind of leaned forward from the row behind me, and she took my hymn book and she flipped it right side up. You had it upside down. Yes, but I did not like that, that she pointed out, you know, that I was doing something wrong. And so I took my hymn book and I flipped it back the other way, like, this is the way I like it.

Thank you very much. And so I think, you know, why would a four-year-old be concerned about being exposed as illiterate, right? What is it in me that I don't want anyone to point out any way that I am ever inadequate? You know, my heart is just bent on this perfectionism. I want everyone to see me as perfect.

And that, the threads of what was in my little four-year-old self are still in me today. You know, why is it that I feel so exposed that someone would think that my house isn't perfect or that my marriage isn't perfect? Or, you know, I'm a middle-aged woman who I struggle with my weight, but I don't want anyone to know that. I mean, isn't that kind of normal? Like, isn't that, I mean, these things that I struggle with, aren't they just kind of the normal things of life?

And yet I'm bent on perfectionism and being seen in the eyes of other people as having no flaws. I identify with everything you're saying. And here's the crazy part, is that all of us as women have usually struggled with this in some form or another. And what it does is it alienates us from one another. And it's so sad because I look at women and I think, look at the power and the strength that we have if we could lock arms with one another. And yet we're hiding from each other and really hiding who we are.

Do men struggle with this? Oh, I was going to say, of course we do. I mean, think about this. As a preacher, and both of us preach at our churches, I mean, we're old enough to know back in the day when we would preach, nobody compared us to very few other people. They didn't hear anybody else, you know, unless they went to another church and they came back and said, hey, this guy's really good.

Now, they're looking at me like, dude, we've got to listen to him and we could listen to Piper and, you know, they can go through a list. And you're competing with that every day. You talk about comparison.

You never measure up. Here's the thing that I've found for myself. I'm comparison aware in areas that I really value. In areas that I don't value, it's like no big deal. So, I look at it and I go, if somebody is a better ping pong player than I am, right? I go, well, that's nice, right? And that's cool, and I can cheer him on.

But if I aspire to be a really good ping pong player, that's where, yeah, I do get down to the minutia. I had a situation not long ago where I was hearing about a guy who had been invited to be an emcee at an event. And I was thinking, well, why didn't they ask me to be the emcee? Because you are a really good emcee. It's kind of what I do, you know?

I didn't ask you either. But the point is, yeah, in those situations where you do aspire to be good at something, the comparison monster shows up. It's true for both men and women. I think, though, again, for women, we talked about this with control last week. I think there's something about a woman's psyche where she may be more bent and more prone toward this comparison issue. And, Shannon, you say it's like a drug.

The more you taste it, the more competitive, the more you want it, and you can get sucked in real easily. And now you're reading Martha Stewart magazine and going, why doesn't my kitchen look like this? And you're getting the magazines that got pictures of women, and you go, why don't I look like this? And it's all of these things coming together, and it just puts you under the pile.

Yeah, and it can last throughout your whole lifetime. You know, you start comparing as a young mom with a new baby, and then you grow into a mom of teenagers or a mom of a grandma, and even grandmas are comparing their kids. Or you start in a new position, and you're comparing yourself with all the other new hires. And then by the retirement party, you're still comparing yourself with the others who are retiring. It's this problem that the more we compare, the more we want to compare, and it is not producing anything remotely healthy or happy in our hearts. It's interesting. One of the things I've noticed, and you mention this in the book, is when you get stuck in the comparison trap, and again, it could be women, it could be men, it causes you not to be thankful. Or content.

Or content. I can remember, it's a long time ago, but I remember walking up to a Detroit Lions player in the locker room right after the newspaper had said he'd signed a new deal. You were chaplain for the Lions for 33 years. Yeah, chaplain for the Lions all these years, and he's a good friend. And that's the interesting thing about pro athletes, we know their salaries.

Which is sort of strange, but we do. And so I had just read this, so I walk up to him. He's a strong believer, like the leader of our ministry in the locker room. I said, dude, man, aren't you just thankful to God for your deal? You just got a signing bonus. And I didn't use the number, but I was like, look how God's blessed you. And he looked at me and he goes, yeah, but did you see what this guy got on another team? And I'm like, really? He goes, I was happy for like an hour.

And then I read what, and he said the guy, same position, different team. And he goes, I'm struggling to be grateful. And he goes, I should be the most thankful guy in the world.

He goes, and what happened? Compare. I was great until I saw what somebody else got until you lose gratitude. So talk about that a little bit. I mean, how does that work for women? Because I know it works that way for a man, but do you find the same thing in a woman's life When I'm in the trap of comparison, I lose perspective. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, tunnel vision.

And you know, there's an irony. Like, it's easy for me to see these football players, you know, comparing. Like, why can't you just be grateful? But it's really hard for me to see myself falling into the same trap of comparing and sideways glancing and not just being grateful. Like, good grief, God has given me so much.

Why can't I just be thankful for all that he has gifted me with? In your book, you outline a number of areas where comparison shows up in your life and in the life of a lot of women. You talk about comparing sins. It's comparing sins, but comparing righteousness at the same time. It's looking at others and thinking, well, your sin is worse than mine, or I'm holier than you, or I wish I was as holy as you.

It's that whole comparison. It's evaluating our spiritual lives by looking at other people. Yeah, I spoke for a women's group recently, and I asked them to raise their hand on their favorite chapter in the book. And I was kind of worried about this comparing sin chapter. I didn't know if everybody else did it as much as I did.

And that was the one that most of the women were interested in looking at and reading. Especially, I think, as Christians, we tend to compare our righteousness or our sin with others. And, you know, in the church especially, we have this habit of looking at others with this sense of disgust.

I'm so disgusted with my son for this, or I'm so disgusted. Like, look at, that is so, and we have this tone when we look at other people. And in his book, Age of Outrage, Ed Stetzer says, we cannot communicate disgust without also communicating something about ourselves, without communicating a sense of superiority. That we can't look down at others with disgust without lifting ourselves up.

This me first, me elevating myself. And this is so opposite of what Jesus calls us to, isn't it? The comparison of my sins and your sins. I mean, my experience is that I tend to minimize what are my sins.

The areas where I'm not as prone to sin or don't have the same temptations, I tend to blow those up as the really bad things that other people do. Without recognizing that what the Bible says is all sin is ultimately rebellion against God and against His goodness and His purposes. So, while we can't say all sins are equal in terms of their damage that they do to us or to others, all sins are equal in terms of what they're saying about who God is and about who we are. They're all rebellion against Him, aren't they?

Yeah. Yeah, in this book I'm looking at, what does Jesus say about comparison? What is He saying to people who are comparing? And there are lots of instances where people are comparing their sin with somebody else's sin in the Gospels. One of those is when Simon is hosting this dinner and there's this sinful woman who comes and she's weeping at Jesus' feet.

And Simon's sort of looking down on her with disgust. And then Jesus says, Simon, I have something to say to you. And Jesus tells this little story. And He tells a story about two people. One of them has a lot of debt, the other one has a little bit of debt.

Both of them, though, are in debt and they can't pay off their debt. And so, in a sense, Jesus is putting Simon and this woman side by side in this story. And He's saying, yeah, this woman, she has a lot more sin than you do. But you both are in exactly the same situation where you have debt that you cannot pay. And so, for Simon to look down on her, he's not recognizing his own.

And that's us so many times. When we look down at somebody else's sin, we're ignoring our own condition. We are men and women who live with this enormous debt of our own sin. Whether it's minimal or a lot of sin, none of us can face God or face eternity based on our own merit.

We are all in a desperate situation. Do you think women tend to look at their sin as, I'm above the other people? Or as for myself, I usually have looked at myself in the past as, oh, I'm way worse than most.

Where do we hit? Well, I think maybe we try to deal with our sense of inadequacy by looking for a way, we try to douse that inadequacy with pride. Like, okay, here's a way that I'm superior. Just intuitively, our hearts look for ways, because we hate those inadequacies and we'd rather think of ourselves just like me as a four-year-old. I don't want anyone to think that I have any flaws.

I want everyone to think of me as perfect. And so, as Christian women, sometimes I think we tend to think, okay, I'm a really good person, so I'm going to focus on that and then it makes me feel better if I look at these other sinners over here. But that's not healthy, that's not producing anything good in our hearts. You talk about what you call sideways disgust.

Explain what that is. Yeah, it's just like constantly looking to the side and looking at other people. I feel like I'm looking at them, but ultimately I'm looking at myself.

And I'm measuring myself against them. You know, I'm so concerned about this disgust factor, I call it, in the church. I think we've really grown comfortable with communicating disgust towards people who are outside the church or even those inside the church. So, I invited some friends to do a disgust factor challenge with me.

So, we went three weeks and we just kind of monitored our faces and our voice tones and our heart attitudes for little signs of disgust. And it was all over the place in our lives. We were so surprised at so many of the things and not just right and wrong, they were just differences, like different preferences. We tend to want to group up with the people who look like us and who live in the same neighborhoods with us or go to the same kind of denomination and we cast the sideways disgust at the people who are not like us.

But you know what? In the church of Jesus Christ, every person is celebrated. The church is the most diverse group of people that ever was to exist. The church spans every ethnic background, every income bracket, every generation. The church is the most diverse and yet unified group. It's not uniform. You know, there would be no need for unity if everyone was uniform in the church.

The church is completely diverse and yet our unity forms as we celebrate our differences. That's what the church is supposed to be like. No place for disgust. Yeah, and where do you think that comes from, this disgust?

I mean, when you say that, we're all shaking our head going, I've done it. I've felt it. But worse than me feeling it from others is I've done it to others. And you mentioned earlier, I think a lot of people that are outside the church, that's one of the reasons they don't come.

They don't feel welcome. They feel sort of a judgmental comparison eye. So, where does that come from? I know we talked last week about the control thing being tied back to a curse. Where do you think the comparison gene, because it's human, where does it come from? I think it's the world system that we live in. And there's a ruler of this dark age and he has set up a world system where he invites us to measure ourselves and compare ourselves. You know, we don't have a back story to Satan, but from what we can gather, Satan had authority and prestige in heaven. He was a leader and yet he was not content with that. He said that he wanted to be lifted up, he wanted to be like the Most High.

Do you see that comparison word, like? He had the audacity as a created being to compare himself with God and want to be on par with God. And that was the beginning of his fall.

Jesus said he fell like a streak of lightning to this world. And he didn't land on our planet with some new meekness, right? Satan is a liar and he cannot embrace the truth. And so, he lives out this delusion that somehow he is God's rival. And he tries to compete with God and he throws attacks at God by throwing attacks at us. He comes after us and he tries to lure us into the same behavior of him. Like, he wanted to lift himself up and that's what he tempts us to do the same. He wants us to lift ourselves up to constantly be measuring ourselves. And he invites us to prove that we are enough, that we have enough, that we are better than others. And then when we can't prove that, he shames us, right? And says, you don't measure up. And either way, he just tempts us into this continual trap and bondage of measuring ourselves. It's really like the disgust part of comparison that you just got at is really rooted in the national religion of hell, according to C.S.

Lewis. And so, there's a sense that I'm better. And yet, if I'm completely humble, it's the opposite.

No one would feel disgust from me. They would feel grace and they'd be drawn in. 1 John has a verse that talks about loving the world, the things of the world. And then it goes on to talk about the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life.

You ask where this comes from. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life. It's the comparison with other people. You trace that back to when Satan came to Eve in the garden and showed her the fruit. It says it looked good to her. It was desirable.

She saw this would make me wise. So, it was appealing to her pride, to her vanity. And our comparison is that there's something inside of us that we want to be esteemed. We want people to look at us and think we're better than we are and think we're all that and a bag of chips, right?

We want folks to think highly of us. And we think the way to do that is through self-aggrandizement rather than saying that what Jesus said, if you want to be great in the kingdom, you become the servant of all. And that's when God looks and says, there's a great one right there. And isn't it amazing how people are so drawn to Jesus? Because he was humble and he's God. He's the creator of the universe and yet he drew everyone to him. The sinners, the meek, the broken, the sick.

And he healed them, he loved them, he bent to them. And yet you compare the Pharisees to Jesus, who are the legalists, who are always in comparison. I wonder who we are and who we should become in the church is Jesus. Yeah, this comparison girl book, this subtitle is Lessons from Jesus on Me Free Living in a Measure Up World.

And so, I just studied all of those different places, like you mentioned, Bob, where Jesus gives an upside down version of comparison. So, he came inviting us to be part of his kingdom and he's saying, you know, in this kingdom, it's not like the kingdom of this world. In the kingdom of this world, the ideal is to measure up, to have more, to be more. In my kingdom, it's upside down. The greatest is the servant.

Blessed are the meek. Yes, yes. Right, yeah, those kinds of things, right? One of the areas that you say is a comparison pitfall, in your book, Comparison Girl, we're talking to Shannon Popkin about this. You talk about wealth being a comparison issue. Certainly in our culture, we've all talked about keeping up with the Joneses and being aware of the neighbor gets a new car and instead of going, good for them, we think, when do we get a new car, right? Right. Yeah, Tim Keller says that you don't know you're greedy if you are.

And you know, that was really convicting to me. We always talk about ourselves as being blessed. You know, when we have wealth, we're blessed.

But what if we're just being tested? What if God was saying, you know, as you have opportunity to pad your bank account or pad your purse, are you going to love me with that money or are you going to love yourself? Are you going to use that wealth? Are you going to use it to measure yourself against others and to be seen as superior? Or are you going to give away your wealth? I remember reading that part about the camel and the needle.

And for the first time, I recognized, you know what, a camel is really big and the eye of a needle is really small. And if I have wealth, it means I have that sort of odd stacked against me. My wealth is actually not to my advantage. It puts me at a disadvantage. It keeps pulling me into measuring myself and trying to prove that I'm superior. And the only way to break free from that is to give money away. That's what frees me of this trap of comparison. And then also thinking about the fact that when I take my measuring cup full of money and I tip it out and I pour my wealth out, every little bit is collected in the place where moth and rust cannot destroy.

That's very motivating. Now you've gone to meddling, okay? Because when you said, what if instead of looking at it as blessing, we looked at it as a test? And I thought, I don't know that I've ever thought of that, that God gives you wealth. And it may be to say, okay, let's see what you do with this. Let's see how your godliness is going to manifest itself in this. Is it going to be, well, I'm sure lucky.

I can do things other people can't do. Or is it going to be in generosity and kingdom-focused living? I remember a pastor one time saying, most of us look at our bank account and we say, how much of what we have are we going to share with God? Instead of saying, how much of what God has given to us are we going to keep for ourselves? Now there's a whole different perspective if we say, okay, this is not my money. This is God's money. How much of it do I keep for myself? Because it all belongs to God. How much does he want me to spend on me?

How much does he want me to spend on advancing his kingdom? Yeah, and wouldn't it be radical if instead of comparing our wealth to our neighbor, you know, because we're always like, I hope I have more. What if we compared in a good way and said, I hope I can be the most generous? Yeah, and you know what?

Jesus invites us to compare in that way. Do you remember the story of the widow at the temple and she brought her two little copper coins? And that day the temple would give a widow two coins per day for her bread for the day and so this woman was basically saying, you know what? I'm going to fast today. I'm going to give generously.

I'm going to go without food. I think it's interesting she had two because that means she could have given one and kept one for herself. But she was so generous. And Jesus, in response to that, he calls his disciples over and he says, hey, look at her.

Look at her. She has given more than all the rest of these. And so, you know, it's this interesting thing that Jesus invites us to compare in a way that inspires us. Not to measure ourselves against each other, but let's be inspired by the generosity of this woman. And you know, he lifts her up.

She had humbled herself so drastically and yet he lifts her up. And let's be inspired by the people around us who are generous. And to that point, comparison can be corrosive and toxic or if we're comparing ourselves to what God's called us to, it can be inspiring and it can be something that's motivating to say, my goal is to be like Jesus. Now, there's a comparison that we are always going to fall short of. But when that's our goal, not for our glory, but for God's glory, that's a whole different kind of comparison. And that's why the subtitle of your book is So Right, Learning from Jesus on Me Free Living in a Measure Up World. This is not about how do I look good. It's about how does God look good? How does he look good through me? How do I glorify him?

I'm guessing that maybe more than a few of our listeners wrestle with this issue of comparison. Get a copy of Shannon's book and maybe go through it with some other women. You can order Shannon's book from us online at familylifetoday.com, or you can call to order 1-800-FL-TODAY is the number. Again, our website is familylifetoday.com.

The number to call to order Shannon Popkin's book, Comparison Girl, is 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word TODAY. Now, the next couple of weeks are going to be pretty significant for us here at Family Life. You've heard us maybe mention the fact that we've had some friends of the ministry who have come along and offered to match every donation we received during the month of May, dollar for dollar, up to a total of $345,000.

Honestly, this could not come at a better time because, as you might imagine, for ministries like ours, this is a challenging season. So this matching gift is hopefully an incentive to get those of you who are regular Family Life Today listeners to make a donation so that your donation can be matched dollar for dollar. In fact, if you're a regular listener and you've ever thought about becoming one of our monthly legacy partners, now's a great time to do that. You sign up now as a legacy partner. Every donation you make for the next year is going to be matched dollar for dollar, and you'll receive a certificate so that you and your spouse can attend an upcoming weekend to remember marriage getaway. And we do plan to re-engage with those in the fall.

That's our plan at this point. So that certificate will be yours to use or to pass along to someone else if you'd like when you sign up to become a monthly legacy partner here at Family Life. It's easy to donate. You can go to familylifetoday.com to donate or call 1-800-FL-TODAY. Everybody who makes a donation or who signs up to become a legacy partner, we'd love to send you, as a thank you gift, Barbara Rainey's new book, My Heart Ever His? A wonderful collection of prayers that you will find very encouraging in a variety of challenging times and seasons. That book is our gift to you when you make a donation today, and we so appreciate you, look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks in advance for whatever you're able to do. Now tomorrow we're going to talk more about comparison. We want to talk about how we can fall into the trap of comparing our kids to other people's kids.

We've all done that, right? Shannon Popkin will join us again tomorrow. Hope you can join us as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back tomorrow for another edition of Family Life Today. Music