What Does the Bible Say About Comparison? A New Tract by David Fox

When did you last close your phone feeling a little smaller than when you opened it? Somebody's kitchen got remodeled. Somebody's kids made the honor roll again. A guy from your old youth group looks like he's got it all together, at least in the picture he posted. Nobody's done a thing to you, and you still walk away feeling behind.

Type "what does the Bible say about comparison" into a search bar and you'll get page after page of answers from Christian sites. The struggle reaches well past church, too. In May, the polling firm Verasight asked 1,000 American adults what usually happens when they compare themselves to other people. About a third, 33.4 percent, said they look at someone doing better and come away disappointed, anxious or frustrated. A slightly larger group, 36 percent, said that same kind of comparison lifts them up. So it doesn't go badly for everyone. Still, one in three is a lot of people, and I'd guess some of them are sitting in our pews on Sunday morning.

A psalm about looking sideways

The clearest picture of this I know is in Psalm 73. Asaph opens by saying God is good to Israel, and then he admits how close he came to losing his footing: "But as for me, my feet almost slipped; my steps nearly went astray. For I envied the arrogant; I saw the prosperity of the wicked" (Psalm 73:2–3).

Notice what set it off. Asaph looked over at how other people's lives were going, and he kept looking. He saw people who seemed comfortable and free of the troubles everybody else had to carry (Psalm 73:4–5). By verse 13 he's wondering whether keeping his heart clean had been for nothing.

That's the part we ought to pay attention to. It started as something he saw, and it turned into a question about whether serving God was worth it. A Christian who spends an hour every night looking at other people's best moments can end up in the same place without ever meaning to.

What turned Asaph around is in the next few verses: "When I tried to understand all this, it seemed hopeless until I entered God's sanctuary. Then I understood their destiny" (Psalm 73:16–17). As far as the psalm tells us, nothing about his circumstances changed. The prosperous people were still prosperous. What changed was where he was standing when he looked at them. Once he was in God's presence, he could see how their story ended, and he could see what he'd nearly thrown away.

Look at how he finishes: "But as for me, God's presence is my good" (Psalm 73:28). Those are the same opening words he used back in verse 2. The first time they came right before his feet slipped. Here they come right before he says what he's actually got.

What this tract does with it

We've just released David Fox's The Comparison Trap, a printed tract that takes on this habit in plain language. David begins with the way we learn to compare as children, when candy is the currency. Later on it's test scores, and after that it's houses and cars. He shows how the habit raises our stress, takes away our peace and pulls our hearts away from God. His starting point is Paul's warning about people who grade themselves against each other: "But in measuring themselves by themselves and comparing themselves to themselves, they lack understanding" (2 Corinthians 10:12).

From there he goes to the Bible's own examples. King Saul hears the women singing David's praises and complains, "They credited tens of thousands to David" (1 Samuel 18:8). The next verse tells us where that led: "So Saul watched David jealously from that day forward" (1 Samuel 18:9). Pilate saw the same sin in the men who brought Jesus to him: "For he knew it was because of envy that they had handed him over" (Matthew 27:18). David also spends time with Asaph in Psalm 73, showing how his comparing turned into complaining.

Then he offers a way out. He reminds the reader that God made each of us unique, from Psalm 139, and he calls us to quit letting the world press us into its mold, from Romans 12:2. The passage that does the heavy lifting is Galatians 6: "Let each person examine his own work, and then he can take pride in himself alone, and not compare himself with someone else. For each person will have to carry his own load" (Galatians 6:4–5). Paul takes the measuring stick out of the neighbor's yard and hands it back to you. The tract closes on a question I think is worth carrying around all week: Does God approve of my life?

About the writer

David Fox has written six tracts for us, and several of them deal with what's going on inside a person who looks fine from the outside. Faith Over Fear takes a biblical approach to anxiety, and Finding Peace in a Worried World works through Jesus's teaching in Matthew 6:25–34. He writes warmly and plainly, the way you'd want someone to talk to a friend who's having a hard time. You can see the rest of his work in David's author collection.

Who it's for

A tract is a small thing, and that's what makes this one useful. You can hand it to a teenager or to a coworker who's stressed out and can't quit measuring himself against everybody around him. It belongs in the tract rack and the welcome center. A teen or young adult class could read it together and spend the rest of the hour in Psalm 73, and it'd serve a small group talking about stress and contentment just as well.

The Comparison Trap is $1.50 a copy. If somebody came to mind while you were reading this, I'd pick up a few and keep them handy.

You probably don't have to think long about the name that fits Psalm 73:3 in your own life. Whose life have you been measuring yours against this week?