I will dominate you in Mario
Kart. Seriously, I’m awesome and
amazing. I don’t even need blue
shells. I am THAT agile and
fast. I used to love when my
college roommates’ boyfriends would come over. They would play Mario Kart with me. I grew up with brothers. I dominate them, too… mostly. Ok, my middle brother rocks… but only
because he rides a unicycle in real life, and I feel like that gives him a
visual/spatial advantage when it comes to maneuvering weird vehicles…
whatever.
During the time of my life where I
was at my Mario-racing peak, I came across another game that I equally
dominate. In fact, you probably
dominate it, too. I would actually
argue that it is the most widely played game in America, dominated by (almost)
everyone. Now, I know what you are
thinking. No, it is not Phase
10. Btw, I dominate that as
well… my middle brother can’t touch me.
Gets stuck on 7, two sets of four, every time… every time… bwahaha.
And the most widely played game in
America is… the Comparison Game of Life.
I like to think of it as a form of Chutes and Ladders.
You’ve all played it. In fact, you might be playing it right
now, with me. Let me explain the
rules. It goes a little something
like this… Imagine you have a ladder. All of us are born at the bottom of
this ladder. We are equals. We are all the same – human beings,
knit together by God and birthed out of a womb. Gross, yet miraculous, I know. Now, here’s the deal.
Very quickly, as we grow up, an interesting thing begins to happen. We begin to place ourselves (and
others) on different rungs of this imaginary ladder. The Comparison Game of Life! Who is the best, and who is lacking. Who is great, who is good, and who is…
eh.
Any alien from another planet could
catch onto this game by merely turning on that big, flat screen in your living
room called a television. Dancing with the Stars, Real Housewives of
Some Random County, Cribs, Honey Boo Boo, What Not To Wear, Jeopardy, and
yes, even The Bachelor… not hatin’ on
The Bachelor… just sayin’… What do
all of these shows have in common?
There is a winner and there are losers OR there is a ‘right’ way to live
and a ‘lesser’ way. You
either have the “X Factor” or you don’t.
Like I said, this idea starts
young. For instance, you’re in
kindergarten and write the alphabet.
You write the alphabet prettier, or manly-er, than everyone else writes
the alphabet; therefore, your teacher puts YOUR alphabet on the board for all
to see. In your 6-year-old mind,
you are now on THIS rung of the ladder [yeah, I'm gonna need you to picture it], whereas everyone
else is down below. Or, you’re a
fifth grader, in gym class, preparing to play some basketball. The captains pick their teams, and you
and another girl are last to be picked.
Suddenly you hear the captain call HER name, sending you by default to
the other team. In your mind, you
are now on THIS rung of the ladder, whereas everyone else is up there.
And this game continues… in every
area of life. How tall or short
are you? How skinny or not skinny
are you? How good at sports are
you? How good at math are
you? What kind of clothes do you
wear? What kind of phone do you
have? Do you have a phone? Do you have a facebook? How clear is your skin? How big is your house? … And your goal, everyday, is to figure
out where you are on that ladder.
How do you measure up? How
much better are you than some people and how much worse are you than others?
And don’t be deceived. This game never ends. The rungs merely change, or don’t. As adults the rungs are often more
about salaries, job positions, how cute your kids are, how smart your teenagers
are, and how much you have in your 401k.
By the way, if you don’t know what a 401k is, that probably means you
don’t have one. You and I will be
working side-by-side well into our eighties, while our retired friends do
things like garden and play Pinochle… that is pronounced ‘pee-knuckle’... not that it matters, because, again,
you won’t be playing it. So… all
the while, everyday, all of these things outside of ourselves are telling us
who we are… how important we are… how good we are… and whether or not we
actually matter.
Long, long ago in a land far away,
there was this big group of people called the Hebrews. For a long while, these Hebrews were
slaves in a country called Egypt. You
had this guy named Moses, a bush that wouldn’t burn, a song entitled “Pharaoh,
Pharaoh, Oh baby, let my people go”, a sea that defied gravity… you with me
here? [To get all the details, you
can read Exodus in that big, honkin’ book called the Bible.] Long story short, all of these people
are named Israel, and Israel has this habit of forgetting the Lord God and
worshipping all these other little fake gods, gods that they make with their
own hands like cows made out of gold, weird creatures made out of wood or hunks
of metal, etc. And they give all of their attention and focus to these things instead of the Lord God. The Lord allows them to do what they
want. God doesn’t force them to do
anything; however, as a consequence of not paying attention to God, these mean
people called the Midianites start attacking and killing them. After awhile, the Israelites come back
to God and they’re like, “Oh God, we are so sorry. We messed up.
We didn’t listen to you.
Please save us from these big, mean people.”
Insert Gideon. When we first see this guy named
Gideon, he is threshing wheat – meaning he is separating the wheat from the
chaff. Easiest process of threshing wheat is
to do it… outside... because that’s
where the wheat grows and the wind just blows the chaff away and all that farm
stuff. Blah blah blah. When we first see Gideon, however, he
is threshing wheat inside a wine press – a little room where they would smash
grapes, perhaps with their feet.
(Doesn’t that sound fun AND yummy?! I
know, right!) So… Gideon is hiding, from the
Midianites, in a wine press.
Gideon is a scared-y cat.
Gideon is the opposite of ‘brave warrior’. On the warrior ladder of life, Gideon is down here, hiding,
in a wine press.
The Lord God comes to Gideon and
God says, “Gideon, you’re gonna deliver Israel from the Midianites. You’re gonna fight a battle against
them, and you’re gonna win.”
Really? Um, God, I don’t
know if you saw the ladder, but Gideon is on the bottom rung, you know, the one next to dirt.
We go on to read more about Gideon
in Judges 6. For one, it says that
Gideon’s family is the least in Manasseh, where they live; AND, Gideon is the
youngest in his whole house. So,
not only is he at the bottom of the warrior ladder, but his family is the most
insignificant in the whole town, they live in a shack, and he’s the most
inexperienced, immature person around.
In the Comparison Game of Life, Gideon is not doing well; though, he
sounds like a great candidate for The
Real World! Alas, apparently God doesn’t bother God’s self with ladders…
Now, we can all put our heads
together and assume that who won?
Gideon! Yes, thank you… why
else would I include this random story?
I mean, it’s great to hear stories about overcoming the odds, right? Who doesn’t root for the underdog?! Who doesn't cry at Rudy? Except… what happens when the underdog
is the person you see in the mirror?
The guy, or gal, at the bottom of the totem pole? What do you do if the underdog is YOU?
When I was little, around 6 maybe,
I used to hide in different parts of my house – in one random closet
mostly. Now, this was not “Hide n
Go Seek”, cuz no one else knew I was hiding. This was my own little made-up game that I now entitle “Do I
matter?” It worked like this – I
would hide, and then I would wait.
I would wait and see how long it took for someone to come looking for
me. At the root of this game,
though I didn’t realize it when I was six, was the monumental question, “Am I
easily forgotten? Am I all alone
in this world, or is there someone who loves me that will come looking for
me?”
The Comparison Game of Life, that
ladder you’ve been picturing, makes us feel alone and inadequate. It makes us feel scared, and it makes
us hide – maybe not in some random closet or in a little room filled with wine,
but it makes us hide parts of who we truly are, because what if you're not
accepted? What if you fail? What if you stop worrying about what
other people think of you, start being who you truly are, and no one comes looking
for you? No one picks you? What then?
But then we read this story, it’s
about this man and this woman and they have this ladder, too, but they mess
up. They screw up really bad. In fact, they do the one thing they are
not supposed to do. They’re given
a job, and they suck at it. Yup, bottom
rung… so what do they do? They’re
scared. They’re not good
enough. So they hide, wanting it
all to just go away, feeling totally inadequate... ashamed... and naked.
But they’re not forgotten, cuz
they’re not alone. Someone comes
looking for them. God comes
looking for them. And for the rest
of God’s Holy Word, the Lord says, “I will always come looking for you. You can’t do anything wrong enough for
me to stop looking for you.” All
through that holy book, God says, “You are good.” You know, there’s really no ‘good enough’ about it, cuz you know what? Being ‘good enough’ implies that being
‘good’ isn’t enough, and from the beginning of creation God says it is.
So… may you not get caught up in
the opinions of the world. May you
work to destroy the power this ladder has in your own life. And may you believe God when God says,
“You are good.” Because you
are.
And long live Duck Dynasty. Amen.