They Will Compare Us Out Loud Again

It will be said out loud, in front of everybody, and it will be meant kindly.

That is what makes it impossible to object to. Nobody in that room is trying to wound you. Somebody will say a warm thing about your sister and then a warm thing about you, and the warm thing about you will be the smaller of the two, and everybody will move on inside four seconds.

And you will smile, and something will go down about two inches inside your chest, and you will not think about anything else for the next hour.

You have never said a word about it. There is nothing to say. Objecting to a compliment is not a move available to an adult.

Let me name the specific thing, because I think you have been describing it to yourself as jealousy and it is not.

You are not envious of her. If she rang tonight in trouble you would be in the car. What is happening is narrower and it is this: in that room, there is one scale, and you have been placed on it, publicly, since you were both children, and the placement is repeated out loud once a year in front of everybody who knows you.

That is not envy. That is being measured by an instrument you never agreed to.

Comparing themselves among themselves

There is a sentence of Paul about comparison that is far blunter than most people expect.

For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise. (2 Corinthians 10:12, King James Version)

Are not wise. That is his verdict, and it is not a gentle one.

But look at what exactly he calls unwise. Not ambition. Not wanting to do well. He names a specific method: measuring themselves by themselves, comparing themselves among themselves. The instrument is the problem. A group of people using each other as the ruler.

That is precisely what happens at that table. There is no external measure in the room. There is only the group, ranking itself against itself, out loud, once a year.

You have been measured by an instrument Scripture calls unwise, and it is written into 2 Corinthians 10:12 as a verdict on the method rather than on the people using it. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a woman see the ruler for what it is, and the written word names the comparing itself as the fault.

And notice that Paul removes himself from it entirely. We dare not make ourselves of the number.

You are able to stand outside a numbering rather than winning inside it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when somebody stops competing in a ranking. 2 Corinthians 10:12 has a man decline to be counted at all, and Scripture puts the whole exercise outside the range of what a wise person does.

What you have been trying instead

Now let me look at what has actually been going on, because it is exhausting and it has never worked.

Some part of this has been an attempt to win it. Not crudely. Nobody would call it competitive. But there is a version of your year kept ready for that room. The good parts are foregrounded. The difficult stretch in the spring is not in it. There is a small emphasis on the thing you did that they would rate.

You do about four minutes of that a year and then feel slightly ill afterward.

And it has never once moved the scale, because the scale is not made of information. It was set a long time ago, when you were both children, by people who had decided what each of you was, and it has been running on that ever since with almost no reference to anything either of you has actually done since.

You have been feeding information into a scale that does not read information, and the written word calls the whole method unwise rather than asking a person to score better on it. The Spirit of God is present with a woman who has been quietly competing for years without ever admitting she was, and 2 Corinthians 10:12 declines the numbering entirely.

And the other thing you have tried is being above it. Deciding not to mind. That fails too, because it is a decision about a feeling, and feelings are not accessible by decision. You end up minding and then minding that you minded.

You were never going to succeed at not minding, and Scripture never once instructs anybody to feel nothing about a comparison. 2 Corinthians 10:12 says the practice is unwise rather than saying the person hurt by it is weak, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a second accusation off somebody who has been failing at an impossible instruction.

One sentence, decided now

So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately small because the four seconds are small.

Decide the one sentence you will say when the comparison is made, and say it out loud once.

Not a correction. Not a case. One short thing that agrees with the good part about her and then closes, and hands the conversation somewhere else.

Something like: she really is, and I have had a good year too, and how is your boy doing. Or: she is very good at that, and I have been busy in a different direction.

Notice what that does. It does not fight. It does not accept the placement in silence either, which is what you have done for twenty years. It puts one true clause about your own life into the room, without argument, and then moves.

You are able to put one true clause into the room without contesting anything, and it has never once required that room to revise a single opinion. 2 Corinthians 10:12 declines the comparison outright, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman saying nine words she decided in November.

And say it out loud once, tonight, so your mouth has made it. On the day it will arrive suddenly, in front of people, and a sentence that has been said once comes back and a sentence that has only been thought about does not.

I am not promising that the comparison stops. It will not. What changes is that you will not spend the following hour in your head, because you will have answered, and answering is what closes a thing.

You are answering rather than absorbing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who steadies a woman in the four seconds after it is said. The written word puts the whole ranking outside of what a wise person will take part in, and 2 Corinthians 10:12 refuses the number rather than trying to raise it.