A La Carte (9/7)

  • Tim Challies
  • 09/07/07
  • 1
Friday September 7, 2007200 Years of Mission in China
John Piper celebrates God’s goodness at the 200th anniversary of the first missionary landing in China.
Ikea Hacking
The NY Times has an article about an interesting form of entertainment I had never heard of: Ikea hacking. People buy Ikea furniture and “hack” it into more interesting forms.
Competition
At Boundless, Alex Chediak looks at the idea of competition and its ramifications for Christians.

Comments (1)

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Anonymous's picture
a comment from MrPages • 09/07 @ 12:24pm
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Alex Chediak’s article has some interesting assumptions built in to it, and his list of “benefits” shows them off.

Benefit 1) “When we’re the consumer, we want the most for our money. “Actually, when I’m the consumer, I want everyone involved to get fair value. I avoid Walmart because their form of “competition” results in the best value for me but suppliers and workers get stiffed. I usually end up paying more at local stores, but I feel that everyone gets a good deal. “Give me the most for my money” strikes me as a rather predatory attitude. We are called to justice.

Benefit 2) “When I got cut from the school choir […] I was able to put more time and effort into activities I preferred.”What does this have to do with competition? It sounds more like “Well, I didn’t want to do that anyway” sour grapes. If you look at something like this as self-evaluation, then it’s a matter of “Well, I guess I need to improve if I want to do this.” It has nothing to do with the other people in the choir, it’s about you and your ability/gift/work ethic. If you look at everything as win/lose then you’ll see everything that way. Always looking to beat other people is a stressful and not-very-humble way to see the world.

Benefit 3) “If you are a better tennis player than I am, I can become better just by playing (and losing) to you.”This is very similar to #2. It has nothing to so with losing to the person, it has to do with learning from a better player. Do you compete with a mentor? Do you compete with a teacher or pastor or elder? Again, if you look for win/lose in everything, then you’ll see it everywhere and it consumes you.

I believe there is far too much justification of “I like to win, so what?” in the Christian world. We are called to be last, to be humble and to put others before us. Joking about how you hate to lose at board games should be seen as a pride issue that needs to be defeated, not just “part of who you are” that is accepted and even celebrated. I’m not saying we need to lose every game and give up every job, but making how we do at these things ego issues is plain and simply wrong.