Is Competition Godly?
This’ll be short because I want to get your feedback/thoughts. Today in class Dr. Blom was talking about unity in marriage, and he was saying that competition within marriage is deadly. Whenever there is a vying for position, attention, power, the marriage is bound to suffer. His overarching thesis was basically that whatever is prescribed in scripture for relationships is really prescribed in Scripture for marriage, since marriage is the most intimate and important human relationship. Therefore, competition has no place in marriage, because competition is of the flesh. Anytime we are competing to be top, to not lose a fight, to get our own way, to be most important, we are acting out of the flesh.
So, the way my mind works is to take things to the nth degree. If one thing is bad in one situation, I always want to know why it’s not bad in every situation. So, I timidly raised my hand and asked the question: Is competition ever godly, or is it always of the flesh? Dr. Blom smiled (I love him!), and asked me what I thought. I said that it’s obvious that our culture celebrates competition, and there are times when it seems harmless…but is it really? Then I reminded him that he was the seminary professor so I wanted to know what he thought. He was hesitant, but said that he supposed there was a sort of harmless competition, like playing basketball, but that there was certainly some competition seeping into the church that was absolutely deadly: competition over who has the best church, over who has the best worship teams, over proving success within ministry. He even brought up how we might challenge kids to compete in Sunday school about who can memorize the most verses…it has a good outcome, right? So does pragmatism allow fleshly competition to fuel our efforts for godliness?
Now I’m the first one to say that I loved sports growing up and I’m so glad that I played sports. I loved the thrill of competition. Although, strangely enough, I have discovered in the last few years of taking a ridiculous amount of counseling classes 🙂 where I was forced to self-introspection and evaluation, that my competitive drive is mainly focused toward myself. I compete with myself. That’s why I like to run alone. I like to set goals and beat them. I like to compete with myself (maybe because I don’t like to lose!) That’s why my goals in school weren’t to beat anyone, they were to meet some measure that I set for myself. I think it’s also important to note that just because 2 people play a game doesn’t mean they are truly competitive. Jeff and I play cards in bed. I could care less who wins, but it’s fun to play because it brings us together. We play games at holidays as a family. It brings us together. We laugh. We cheer each other on. We make memories. So, all this to say that competition has been the source of a lot of fun and “success” in my life. But is competition itself godly? To be more specific, how is the Kingdom of Heaven advanced and God glorified through competition?
Your turn. Tell me what you think.