“Better is a little that the
righteous person has
than the abundance of many wicked.
For the arms of the wicked shall
be broken,
but the Lord upholds the righteous.”
— Psalm 37:16-17 (NRSV)
We don’t beat competitive people
by competing—which is to play their game on their home turf—but we overcome
them in the gentler, more patient sport of assertive engagement—where the needs
of all are accounted, in fairness, for.
Understanding the Drive in the
Competitive Person
There is an irreconcilable anger
deep beneath the psyche of the innately competitive person who has little
regard for most others. Beneath the anger is sadness.
Whilst there is no recognition of
their unhappiness there is no way back to a better life. They are spiritually
marooned.
This compounds the struggle for
the one fighting God. All who fight God lose.
All who fight those who adhere to
the statutes of the Lord ultimately
lose as well.
The unhappily competitive person
is driven to win at all costs because they can; and what should stop them? Their motive
relies upon only what they see; they live by sight, not by faith.
The drive of the ultracompetitive
is a narcissistic joy they learned first-hand from a parent or crucial role
model. It was sink or swim in the worst possible way; adapt and survive or
capitulate and flounder. Not much of a choice.
They’ve learned anger from the
best of them. And they have no visible reason to turn from what we may see as
folly, but that which they see as the only way. Their worldview has developed
into a dog-eat-dog reality—“If I
don’t eat you, you will eat me. Unless you comply and join my side with me, you
are against me, my enemy.”
Of course, that’s a dead-end
dictatorship there. But some insist on that way.
Wise people will, as much as
possible, not put themselves in the devil’s jaws of such situations. But then
we might find ourselves in that very place. What do we do?
Contending with the Ultracompetitive
Person
We cannot beat them or we would
actually join them. That’s no winning answer.
Contending with the
ultracompetitive person is just as much about reminding ourselves of the
upside-down justice within Psalm 37. We have no need to compete with them, and
indeed competition will only get us framed with them, and when God’s justice
rains down—as it always does on the conceited—we would also get that justice.
But the justice of the meek person
(Psalm 37:11) is an eventual crown of glory with God.
We beat the competitive person by
playing a different game; by rising up in patience to not envy or fret. Envy
and fretting only causes evil (Psalm 37:8).
***
God’s justice seems slow to us,
but its timing is perfect. ‘Beating’ ultracompetitive, selfish people is more
about patient assertiveness to remain gently steadfast than playing their game
of one-upmanship. We’re not to fret; it only causes evil.
© 2013 S. J.
Wickham.
No comments:
Post a Comment