The Destructive Myth of ‘Better Than Most’

How do you tell how you are doing in God’s estimation?  How can you know if He is in “well done faithful servant” mode or if He is in all-out “get thee behind me” mode?  That is the problem we face when we approach God with the attitude of trying to please Him.  If He would even tell us how we were doing on the cosmic scale – which He probably won’t – we wouldn’t understand it anyhow.  Our thoughts and ways are not His thoughts and ways because His are so much higher than ours.  (Isaiah 55:8-9)  We would probably end up more unsure and confused.  And besides, He has already told us how He feels about us.  It’s called the Bible.  And spoiler alert: He loves us – completely, unconditionally, and without reason.  But when I am wondering if I am being faithful enough and diligent enough and close enough to Him to please Him, I’m thinking it is a good thing that He chooses not to come down and tell me His thoughts! 

I have been fascinated with how God handled Job. 

I can say that because I am deep in a study of a man to whom God did visit and tell exactly who He was and what He thought:  Job.  Since the first time I started to understand what was going in the book of Job, I have been fascinated with how God handled Job.  I marvel at how much He allowed Job to complain.  I marvel at how many times Job called on God to explain and defend Himself, implying that God is unfair and cruel.  And God let him.  I identify with the arrogance and fear and indignation and confusion and self-righteousness and brokenness that is Job.  And when God – the infinite creator of all things, all-knowing and all-powerful – took the time and effort to come down and set Job straight on a few things, I am breathless.  I am at once terrified of what that would be like, and jealous of the special attention and care that are behind that lecture.

It is an indicator that God is just about to reveal a very transformational truth to you. 

But this time, my attention and study got abruptly stopped at Chapter 10 of Job.  All of a sudden, it was no longer Job complaining and calling God out.  It was me.  It sounded just like me!  In fact, in my journal during tough times, I think you could almost read the exact wording of Chapter 10 in my entries.  It is an amazing moment when you are no longer just gazing over scripture to say you did your daily reading, or trying to focus but nothing is really going deep.  All of a sudden you become the scripture.  All of sudden the Bible becomes a living, breathing, personal message from God.  It captivates you with awe, reverence, fear, and wonder.  And it is an indicator that God is just about to reveal a very transformational truth to you.  He is taking the time and effort to personally let you know something about your relationship with Him.  Those moments are the best – and the worst – all at the same time.  Because usually it means there is something I am getting very wrong that is hurting how I relate to Him and He wants to set things straight.  Just like Job.

Job had every right to grieve and lament.

Chapter 10 of Job comes after a lot of very bad things have happened to Job.  He lost all his wealth when his livestock was stolen or killed.  All his children died in one tragic moment.  His wife got angry at him and started tormenting him.  He broke out in excruciating sores from head to toe.  And the friends that came to support him got tired of having to be there for him, and started telling him to repent already so they could all go home.  Is there any pain that Job did not experience at that moment?  I don’t know if I can think of one.  Job had every right to grieve and lament.  His pain was so real and so unbearable.  He wouldn’t have been human if he didn’t complain.  But it is what he complained about that caused the problem.

He fell for the destructive myth of “better than most”. 

Job wasn’t telling God how much the sores or the betrayal or the loss hurt.  He wasn’t asking for relief and comfort in the struggle.  He wasn’t telling God that his faith was struggling and his strength was failing and he didn’t know if he could make it.  In that, as God said earlier in the book, he would have been blameless.  No – Job was saying that he was so good and so righteous and so blameless that God had no right to allow anything bad to happen to him.  He was saying he knew better than God what was fair, and that the way he saw it, he had already reached a good enough level that God should have just been rewarding him.  He listed off a whole explanation of all his righteous and good and pious acts.  He fell for the destructive myth of “better than most”. 

You look at the people around you and you start judging.

That is where Job and I match up so well.  I was raised thinking I had to earn my way.  But even people who are not raised with that thinking still fall for that trap.  Sadly, they don’t realize how destructive it really is.  If you start to believe you have to be enough, then you believe that you can be enough.  And you believe that others can be enough too.  So you start comparing.  You look at the people around you and you start judging.  You decide that you are a more morally upright person than those people over there.  You start thinking that because you have done better and worked harder, you deserve to have something better than them.  And at the same time, you start working harder to be as morally perfect as those other people on the other side seem.  You are afraid that God will start punishing you because you just can’t seem to get it together as well as they can.  So you end up judging how God feels about you by how blessed you are for the ways you are better than some, and how punished you are for the ways you are worse than others.

Sometimes the blessing doesn’t show up.

That all works out great for a while.  Or at least you think it does.  You feel confident in the blessings you see around you.  You pat yourself on the back for all the blameless and righteous things you have done that made God so pleased that He blessed you.  And then it all falls apart because at some point, every single one of us will get hurt and betrayed and experience devastating loss that has nothing to do with how good we are.  It is a broken world.  Maybe for a while, you can hold on to your faith because you can convince yourself that God will make it all good soon.  Maybe you tell yourself that this is just a trial to strengthen you, or that you have some lesson He is teaching you.  And when you pass the test with flying colors, you will soon be back to being blessed.  But sometimes the trial doesn’t end – it gets worse.  And sometimes the blessing doesn’t show up – you lose more. 

Job is saying God is unfair. 

That was Job’s experience.  And in Chapter 10, he is at the end of his faith and his patience and his self-righteousness.  He says, among other things, “I say to God: Do not declare me guilty, but tell me what charges you have against me.  Does it please you to oppress me, to spurn the work of your hands, while you smile on the plans of the wicked?” (Job 10:2-3)  Or this: “. . .you must search out my faults and probe after my sin – though you know that I am not guilty and that no one can rescue me from your hand.” (Job 10:6-7)  He is claiming to be sinless, and as such, saying that God has no right to allow him to have any hardship, because he equates hardship with punishment and blessing with good.  He is saying God is unfair.  He even goes on to imply that God might be jealous or threatened by how good and strong Job is:  “If I am guilty – woe to me! Even if I am innocent, I cannot lift my head . . . If I lift my head high, you stalk me like a lion.”  Implying that Job thinks he is sinless and the problem is that God doesn’t like Job recognizing it.  God is threatened by it and will want to destroy him.

Comparison leads to depression and anxiety.

Do you see the emotionally destructive path Job is on?  It is all there: self-righteousness, entitlement, arrogance, judgmentalism.  And underneath all of that is fear – absolute terror that Job really isn’t good enough or loved by God enough or valued and safe enough.  Those are the beliefs that comparison puts in our minds.  Experts have proven that destructive effect with social media.  All those posts that make others seem so much more attractive or rich, living fuller and more blessed lives, happier and better, have led to a marked upswing in depression and anxiety.  That’s what trying to be good enough does for you.  Even when you are doing it to try to please God.

Jesus was saving us from comparison.

There is a reason that Jesus said, “Judge not that ye be not judged.”  (Matthew 7:1)  He wasn’t condemning us.  He was saving us!  He was saving us from a downward spiral of always working and comparing and fearing in an effort to be enough.  He was saying, “Stop worrying about it because I am enough.  Rest in me because my work was enough.  Trust in your salvation through me because my sacrifice makes you enough.”

I too cried out to God, wondering why He hated me so much.

I spent a lot of years like Job.  I compared myself to the things I saw in other people.  I thought I was better than most.  I certainly was trying harder than a lot of people.  And I was not being blessed.  I was not prospering and thriving.  I went through some of the most awful and painful periods of my life while I was trying so hard.  And I too cried out to God, wondering why He hated me so much that He would punish me, even though I didn’t deserve it.  I kept trying to be better than even more people, hoping some day to reach that sweet spot where I finally placed high enough to get the reward.  I was so focused on what other people had and how God seemed to be treating them, that I didn’t recognize that they were struggling to be enough, too.  I still fall into that trap all the time.  And I have to remind myself of a truth:  not a single one of us can begin to come close to being good enough for a completely holy, righteous God.  If even one person – one mortal being in the whole history of earth – could be perfect and sinless enough for God, Jesus wouldn’t have had to die because it would have been possible for us to save ourselves.  The only one who could do it was God, in the form of His Son, Jesus Christ.  We are all sinners, every one.  (Romans 3:23)

Give up judging and comparing and working so hard.

The beauty of this story is in God’s response.  Job committed the same sin that got Lucifer thrown out of heaven and eternally condemned, and Eve thrown out of the Garden of Eden on a path to death  – the belief that they too could be God.  Arrogance, self-righteousness, and the loss of the fear of how big, great, infinite, and perfect God really is.  God, by all rights as Creator, could have allowed Satan to go one step further and take Job’s life.  But He didn’t.  He took the time to come and have a talk with Job that was several chapters long, causing Job to shut his mouth in fear, reverence, and repentance.  Then He restored what Job lost and much more.  He did exactly what Job wanted – He blessed him.  He answered arrogance and rebellion with love and restoration.  And He does that for us too.  He does it through Jesus.  The minute we get on our knees in fear and reverence, humility and repentance, and recognition that we can’t do it, God restores everything that Eve lost for humanity in the Garden of Eden.  He does it when we make Jesus the Lord of our life.  He has already made our place in heaven where we will inherit everything His own Son has – much more even than was lost in the Garden.  And He does it not because of how well we have done, but because how well Jesus did.  Give up judging and comparing and working so hard.  Give your life to Jesus and let Him be enough.

I hope today’s message touched your heart, increased your understanding, and encouraged you.  Praying the peace and comfort of Christ Jesus on your life.