I don’t know about you but I felt great when I woke up this morning. I felt amazing. I just felt so comfortable in my own skin–just being me. I was on top of the world, singing loudly in the shower like I didn’t have a care in the world.
And then I got in my car to drive to work. I pulled up to a red light and looked to my left. There, purring like a kitten tiger was a beautiful and expensive sports car. It was gorgeous–so sleek and shiny. I gazed longingly at all the fancy tech gadgets and luxury through the tinted windows. Then the light turned green and that car flashed away like an angry rocket–screaming along with an intoxicatingly powerful roar.
That’s when I noticed the vastly different sound spilling feebly from my own car. It was more like a death rattle than anything. And then I remembered how my car is about a hundred years old and how one entire panel is rusted, how my window and air conditioning are broken and how I have a tape deck. A tape deck. That’s technology from the 80s. They don’t even make tapes anymore!
And suddenly, I’m not feeling so great about myself. I’m not so comfortable in my own skin. I’m not on top of the world in fact I’m feeling rather under it. I start to feel sort of worthless and disgruntled. I pound on my decrepit steering wheel. Why can’t I have a car like that? Why do I always have to drive around in a piece of junk car? My life sucks.
It’s then that I pull up to the next stop light. I look to my left and I see this car–an absolute disaster of an automobile. A condescending chuckle erupts out of me. Oh my! What a piece of junk. WOW do I feel bad for the person who drives that car. I would hate myself. There is no way I would drive that car. How embarrassing. I wouldn’t be caught dead in that thing.
And suddenly, I feel pretty good about myself. I’m feeling pretty comfortable in my own skin. I’m glad I ‘m not that guy. His life must suck.
Sound familiar? Maybe it isn’t cars but I bet you’ve done the same thing about clothes, your house or grades. I might not be rich but at least I don’t live there!
AM I OK?
What are we doing in these moments of comparison? Why do we do this? I think it’s because lodged deep within each of us is a voice telling us that we aren’t OK. There is a voice, sometimes quiet and sometimes screaming that tells us that we aren’t valuable. And so, we look around at the people around us and ask, “Am I OK?” When I look at his car I feel terrible. When I look at her jeans I feel great! And why, when something bad happens to him do I secretly celebrate? This is when I know there is something horribly wrong with me. There is a part of me deep inside that is broken.
This voice reflects the brokenness inside of us and I believe it reflects a broken relationship between us and our creator. A toxicity pervades our minds and relationships.
This might sound strange but I find this brokenness in all of us to be one of the most compelling arguments for Christianity. I don’t believe that any other worldview explains as clearly why we envy, compare ourselves to other people and why we constantly battle a little voice in our heads that tells us we are terrible people. We’re broken people in need of repair. There’s no self-help or enlightened path that can fix this.
image credited to Dan Iggers via Flickr
