Is Comparison a Sin?
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Culture constantly holds our lives up to someone else's. If we open our phones, we are inundated with pictures, messages, and stories of others. Social media not only offers an insider view into the best parts of someone else's story, but so much content now is about how influencers have figured out a particular aspect of life. They urge us to follow their advice so we also can be, look, or live like them.
While there are times we can benefit from receiving the advice and expertise of others, the internet pushes trends on us that create a current of pressure to be and look a certain way based on our algorithm.
As an almost 40-year-old mom who is interested in health and fitness, my feed is post after post of thin influencer moms telling me how I can look like them. Their message invites a false comparison that can become demoralizing for me, and the invitation they make to sell their product or ideas is an unfair one. My life, habits, health, time, genetics, needs, goals, wants, and story are all things they could never know.
They promise a false result because true help and wisdom are born through relationship, not an algorithm. Yet our brains often trick us into believing that we should be able to be as thin as, as patient as, as successful as, and this list goes on, those we see online and in real life too!
Comparison can seem harmless. It’s natural to wonder how our lives measure up to one another. But it's really how that comparison impacts our souls that we have to consider. Not all comparisons are inherently sinful, but they can quickly lead us into a dark place of envy, pride, discontentment, insecurity, and judgment.
As believers, we are invited to live with contentment, humility, gratitude, and faithfulness in our own stories. We have to be careful how comparison impacts our hearts.
Comparison Is Not Always Sinful
The Bible offers us some examples in which believers are invited to examine their own lives and spiritual growth. 2 Corinthians 13:5 states: "Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you — unless, of course, you fail the test?" Believers are to be mindful of how we live our lives. The Bible invites us to live intentionally.
Galatians 6:4-5 states: "Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load." We examine our own work, living sensitively to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but we aren’t to compare ourselves to others. Our focus is to be faithful to the work God has called us to do!
A healthy evaluation asks what we can learn from others. Unhealthy comparison tells us our worth depends on whether we are better than another person. Comparison becomes damaging when another person’s life becomes a measuring stick for our own identity.
Comparison Can Lead to Envy
One of the most obvious dangers of comparison is envy. Envy quickly leads us into evil. Early in the Bible, we read about Cain and Abel (Genesis 4:1-8). Jealousy grew in Cain’s heart, so much so that it led him to kill his brother. God cursed Cain for his sin. Envy has the power to destroy our lives if we are not diligent in guarding our hearts.
Social media often intensifies the temptation to compare ourselves by giving us endless opportunities to observe the highlights of other people's lives. James 3:16 offers this warning, “For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.” Recognizing envy early rather than letting it grow, as Cain did, guards our hearts against sinful behavior.
Comparison Can Feed Pride
Comparing ourselves to others doesn’t always make us feel bad about our lives; sometimes it makes us feel superior. We are tempted to think, at least we are doing better than them, or maybe my kids are better than theirs. We might grow prideful in how our marriage operates or the ways we’ve achieved worldly success in our lives. Pride is sneaky and easily infiltrates our thinking.
Jesus addresses pride in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14). The Pharisee's prayer compared him to the tax collector, believing he was better than others. Jesus explains that this prideful prayer did not please God. The tax collector humbly asks God for help; this is how God wants us to pray.
1 Corinthians 4:7 states, “For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?” A humble heart recognizes that all we have is from the Lord!
Comparison Steals Contentment
Comparison gets in the way of our ability to appreciate all that God has actually given us! Instead of giving thanks for our many blessings, we are preoccupied with the lives of others.
Philippians 4:11-13 states, “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”
Contentment gives thanks for how God is at work in our circumstances. We don’t have to abandon our goals to be content, but we do have to grow focused on what God is doing in us instead of worrying about what he is doing in others! Our mindset asks how we can faithfully use what God has given us. Comparison leads us to ask why we don’t have what others have. Contentment shifts our attention from what we are missing to what God is doing!
God Calls Us to Rejoice with Others
A way to stop comparison from consuming our thoughts is to begin to flip the script. Instead of wishing we had someone else's life, we can begin to celebrate another person’s blessings. Romans 12:15 instructs us, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.”
Love invites us to walk with others, delighting alongside them as they give thanks for the blessings God has given them. When we celebrate God’s goodness towards others, we are not diminishing what he has done in our lives; we are only expanding our gratitude.
Comparison is not necessarily sinful, but we have to be careful of the tendency to grow envious, prideful, or discontent when we spend too much time examining the lives of others around us. The Christian life is not a race against the people who are beside us. We are invited to do life with others and for Jesus.
Our call is to faithfully follow God, trusting that he has a hope and a future for us! We can gain freedom from comparison when we realize that we were never called to be anyone other than ourselves. God has a special plan just for you because he loves you.
Photo credit: ©Getty Images/Boonyachoat
