The Bible's Solution to Stop Comparing and Start Living [Podcast Transcript]

Title: The Bible's Solution to Stop Comparing and Start Living

Podcast Date: November 12, 2024

Listen Here: 

Description

Is comparison dragging you down? Do you feel defeated or deflated because you're always thinking about the "you" that you want to be or how you could "be better if" or "be better when?" If so, comparison is what's really dragging you down. Today, host and author, Heather Creekmore will give you the Bible's best answers around comparison. Scripture actually addresses our battles with comparison at a deeper level than you could ever imagine. These solutions aren't cold and distant like "just stop it," rather they challenge you to think more deeply about these issues, why we compare ourselves to others, and what the truth of the Gospel really has to speak to comparison issues. If you've ever wanted to be free from comparison, this is a great place to start.

Check out Heather's latest release, The Comparison-Free Life (formerly titled The Burden of Better) (Amazon affiliate link, tiny portion of your purchase will go back to this ministry).

Learn more about Heather, the ministry of Compared to Who? and resources to help you improve body image and stop comparing: https://www.improvebodyimage.com

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is AI-generated and has not been edited for accuracy or clarity.

[00:00:02]:

Life audio. Hey, friend. Heather Creekmore here. We're glad you're listening to the Compare Dude Show today. Do you know the cure for comparison? Did you know there was a cure for comparison? And it's not blinding yourself or moving into a cave where you can't see anyone else. It's none of those things. And the good news is, it's actually more attainable, easier than you might expect to cure comparison in your own life. And that's what we're gonna talk about today.

[00:00:38]:

My brand new book, The Comparison Free Life, is available now everywhere books are sold. And if you're tired of comparing, if you are sick of waking up and scrolling Instagram and feeling bad because you don't look like them or you don't go on vacation like them or you don't have a guy like that, and you're weary of going out in public and feeling so bogged down by comparing yourself to other women all the time, this is a book you need to read like today. So I'm excited to share more about that with you in today's episode. I am glad you're here. If you need extra support around body image or comparison issues, I hope you go to improve body image.com. If you're brand new to the show, we've got hundreds of blog posts, hundreds of podcast episodes, and even coaching and courses and programs that can help you find body image and comparison freedom through scripture. We are uniquely and unapologetically centered on the gospel of Jesus Christ. And if you don't know how the gospel can transform the way you think about your body and the way you compare yourself to others, I hope you go to improve body image.com and find out because this is the journey that will change you and you'll never be the same.

[00:01:58]:

Let's get to today's show. Welcome to compare to him, the podcast to help you make peace with your body so you can savor God's rest and feel his love. If you're tired of fighting body image the world's way, Compare to Who is the show for you. You've likely heard lots of talk about loving your body, but my goal is different. Striving to fall in love with stretch marks and cellulite is a little silly to me. Instead, I want to encourage you and remind you with the truth of scripture that you are seen, you are known, and you are loved no matter what your size or shape. Here, the pressure is off. If you're looking for real talk, biblical encouragement, and regular reminders that God loves you and you're not alone, you've come to the right place.

[00:02:44]:

I hope you enjoy today's show, and, hey, tell a friend about it. So I'm so excited. My book, The Comparison Free Life, launches today. Now I do need to tell you a little something. If you've been around the show for a long time, you may have already read this book. Because this is basically a rebrand of my original book, The Burden of Better, which released in 2020. But, honestly, The Burden of Better wasn't inspiring a lot of you to purchase it. And, really, this is a book about comparison and about the cure for comparison.

[00:03:25]:

And so the publisher decided that maybe that title, the burden of better, and the cover was confusing people. And so we gave the book a makeover. Isn't that ironic for what we talk about on this show? The book got a new cover, so you can judge it by its new cover. I think it turned out so pretty. But it also got a new title, and it's called the comparison free life. And really, friend, this book was a labor of love for me because so many of you reached out to me after I wrote compare to who. And you said, okay. I'm getting a handle on my body image issues.

[00:04:04]:

Right? Like, I can kinda get my mind around what I'm doing with, you know, the way I think about my body and how God wants me to think about my body. And I I'm kind of on a track there. But, Heather, I have no idea how to stop comparing myself in every other arena of life because I'm still comparing, like, how my kids are turning out compared to how her kids are turning out. And I'm still comparing what I wear, and I'm still comparing the way my house looks, and the car I drive, and my success, and the number of people who like my post on Instagram. All the things, and it's overwhelming. And so I sat down. Oh goodness, y'all, like, 6 years ago now. I sat down and really through lots of research and prayer, I just asked the Lord to show me what is the cure for comparison.

[00:04:52]:

Because, like, just, you know, brass tacks, friends. Like, comparison is a nice word, but sometimes it's more helpful to use Bible words. And when we use Bible words, we really need to use words like envy and jealousy. Right? Because that's what our comparison is a lot of the time. Right? I want what you have, or I wish I had your body, and I kinda hate you because your body is better than my body in my estimation. And it's not healthy. Right? And then let me even go a little step further than that. It's sin.

[00:05:31]:

Okay? It is. It's just flat sin. And so if you were caught up in constantly comparing yourself to others, there's there's probably a sin problem there. And I see that with so much love because the truth is, unless I point that sin out to you, you're gonna stay stuck in the sin. And comparison oftentimes is about that envy, even maybe pride of, like, I wanna be better than everyone else. And maybe we would never say that out loud, but kind of in our heads, we're in this imaginary I don't know. Maybe it's a beauty contest. Maybe it's an imaginary contest of who's the most successful, who can make the most money, who can have the best family, the best marriage, the best looking kids, like, all the things we do.

[00:06:19]:

And honestly, friends, most of the time, we're not talking about them. We are keeping all of these thoughts secret. We're trying to win these contests in our heads without telling anyone that we're competing with them. And what it does is it drives us apart. It drives a wedge between us and people around us. I mean, oh goodness. How many of y'all have had girlfriend problems? Right? Mean Girls. Maybe not as extreme as Mean Girls.

[00:06:48]:

Maybe it's just a group of women that you just never feel accepted by, and you compare yourself to them. And maybe they're comparing themselves to everyone else. I don't know. My friends, let's start using Bible words. Let's start talking about our envy and our pride and our jealousy, our covetousness in some cases. Right? These are all sins. And so I talk about that in the book, but that's not the cure. Right? I mean, there there's part of that is cure.

[00:07:13]:

Let let me be clear. Right? You do have to take care of your sin problem. It's important. And so if you're listening right now and you're, like, oh, Heather, you got me. It is envy. It is covetousness. It is pride. Okay.

[00:07:26]:

Just do business with the Lord, friend. Don't, like, belabor it. Just do business with the Lord and be like, hey. You know, god help me with this. Let forgive me for my fill in the blank, and help me to turn. Help me to just go a different way. Help me to not be caught up in this envy, jealousy, pride, covetousness. Like, forgive me for that and help me move forward in a different direction.

[00:07:48]:

Right? Just do business. And I do have a chapter in the book that explains that more fully. So if you're like, I don't know if I agree. No. My comparison is really something different. I have a chapter that you can kinda diagnose yourself if you like. We kinda dig into, all the different angles on that. And I also look at comparison from a psychological standpoint.

[00:08:09]:

I do the research because, like, social comparison has been a psychologically studied phenomenon for, I don't know, 80, 90 years. I think, it was the 19 fifties where the the term, social comparison was first coined. I think there was a scientist named Leon Festinger.

[00:08:27]:

But so we look at

[00:08:28]:

it that way too. Right? To some degree, we all are going to compare ourselves to others. We are all looking around to see how we are doing compared to other people. And so figuring out, okay. Where's the line between this natural tendency I have to look around and say, I'm doing well because I'm doing better than her, and I'm doing poorly because I'm doing worse than her. Like, to what line is it like, that's just natural? And then where's the line we cross where it's like, no, my friend. That's sin. So you can read all about that in the first part of this book.

[00:09:04]:

But it's the second part of the book. It's the second part of the book where the hope comes in. It's the second part of the book where I lay out for you the cure for comparison. And, I mean, I'll be honest. I read other Christian books on comparison around the same time that I wrote this. And some of them were, like, there's no cure for comparison. Like, it can't be cured. Because of that, like, psychological social aspect to it, you're just always gonna compare yourself to others.

[00:09:33]:

There was one book even that was, like, what you do is when you wanna compare yourself to someone else, you just stop and you say, no. I'm happy for her. And, eventually, you're gonna believe it. So if you just do that enough, like, you see this woman, she's just lost a tremendous amount of weight, and she just looks really good. And you see her, instead of comparing yourself to her and feeling all the feelings, you just say, no. I'm happy for her. And somehow, the comparison and the thoughts just go away. Like, I don't know about you, friend, but that just never worked for me.

[00:10:09]:

Like, to me, that's in the category of Jedi mind tricks. I could never make that work where I convinced myself that that was true. I was like, yeah. I'm happy for her. Not really. I wanna know how she did that, how I can catch up with her, how I can compete with her again because I think she's winning. So I want to do things so I can be winning too. I mean, all of those thoughts, and hopefully, you can relate and don't think I'm I'm way up base here.

[00:10:41]:

I think I've talked to many of you. I think you have had the same thoughts too. So right after the break, I'm gonna talk to you about the second part of this book. And, oh, that's where the encouragement comes in. So what is the cure for comparison? Okay. Track with me here. Don't don't shut me off immediately when I say this. But the cure for comparison is a richer understanding of God's grace.

[00:11:11]:

Now that word grace is something very unfamiliar to most of the women that I coach and work with with body image issues because we're more about, let's say, justice than grace. Like, you get what you deserve. You work hard, and then you get results that you have earned. We don't really like a free lunch. We don't really like to be given anything that we haven't earned. We feel this, let's say, deep sense of obligation and maybe even some pride around being able to earn things ourselves, do it ourselves. I mean, kinda like toddlers, we're like, me do it. Me do it.

[00:11:55]:

Me do it. And, you know, you just have to kinda picture god looking at us like, you really think you're doing that? Like, nah. I got it, friend. But but that's our default. Grace is kind of an uncomfortable topic. And for you, maybe, like me, maybe you're raised in church and you sang songs like amazing grace, how sweet the sound, saved a wretch like me. And you thought about grace as something that really applied to you when you died. Like, okay.

[00:12:30]:

Someday, I'm gonna die, and the choice is gonna be heaven or hell. And I'm gonna say, thank you, Jesus, that you died on the cross for me so I can go to heaven, and that's grace. It's what we might call future grace. Like, it's grace that is fire insurance. It's grace that I need after death to make sure that I can spend eternity in heaven. But, friend, that is a super shallow definition of grace. It's true. That is part of God's grace to us, but we are selling God's grace way short when we believe that's all it is.

[00:13:07]:

Because the truth is, God's grace applies to every little detail, every aspect of our lives. We are products of God's grace, period. Every good thing that has happened to you, and candidly, some of the bad things that have happened to you too, are all a part of God's grace to you. And so we really have to understand the richness and the fullness of God's grace. And so in this book, I go into 4 different types of grace. Now this is something I had to study. Like I said, like, I really you know, I amazing grace, check. I know what grace is.

[00:14:01]:

I can define it. God's unmerited favor. You know, like, I I thought I knew it. But once I started researching it, I realized I didn't know it at all. And there were so much of my life that I believed I was responsible for, that I believed, like, I had again, to the toddler, like, I had done it. Me do it. Me did it. You know? And I was ignoring God's grace in my life in all of these various ways.

[00:14:38]:

And what I found is that the more you understand God's grace and the more you become aware of God's grace in your life, the easier it is for you to stop comparing altogether. Why? Because, friend, if I really believed that it was a tremendous act of God's grace that he brought me together with the husband he brought me together with, that he blessed me with these children, that he blessed me with this job, that he blessed me with this home, you know, that he opened the opportunities for me to, you know, do this or do that or meet this person or go on this trip. Like, if I saw every one of those little aspects of my life as an evidence of god's grace and, let me say, goodness to me, if I approached it as, I'm gonna say, a humble servant. Right? Because Paul says we're supposed to be slaves to Christ. Right? So if, like, if I'm a slave to Jesus, like, I am his servant. And as a servant, I don't have, like, a ton of rights and privileges. Right? Like, that's just kind of part of the servant thing. And yet, we're not just servants.

[00:15:55]:

Right? We're heirs to everything that god has. Right? We're adopted sons and daughters. Like, it's so complex, our relationship with God, and yet so simple at the same time too. Right? But, like, we should be genuinely amazed that the God of the universe who created everything, who breathed man into existence and created dinosaurs and ducks and rhinoceroses and mountains and beaches. Like, he fought up all this stuff, and he created you and me on purpose for his purpose, like we like to say on this show. Right? It wasn't haphazard. You weren't happy accident like a Bob Ross painting. Right now, he decided on purpose your height, the color of your skin, the color of your eyes.

[00:16:50]:

He decided all of that on purpose because of his purpose for you. If you can believe that you have a God who cares about you that much, who knows the details, he knows every single hair on your head, and has that much intentionality abound the not just the way you were created, but the way your life has gone, the way your life is going. And then looping back. Right? Remember, oh, I owe everything to Jesus. Right? Like, I'm nothing without him. Like, without him taking care of my biggest problem, which was a spiritual problem, which was my disconnection from God, which was a spiritual, like, health crisis, without him taking care of that, I have nothing, I am nothing, everything here is meaningless, but he took care of that. And so therefore, I am his daughter, and I'm also his servant. And so every little aspect of my life is gifts and blessings and intentionality of experiences from Him.

[00:18:10]:

And now, I'm not saying everything we experience is from Him. Right? We have a real enemy who can cause and wants to cause us harm. He wants to steal, kill, and destroy. Right? But scripture tells us that God can work all things together for our good. So even those really sucky, awful things that have happened in your life, God can somehow miraculously turn that even into good. That's all grace, friend. And when I imagine my life through the lens of grace, when I look at every single thing that has happened as if it was something really specially ordained by the God of the universe to happen because God has me on a certain path with a certain plan for that path. And, again, intentionality.

[00:19:07]:

How can I dare compare my path to someone else's? How can I dare say to God, you put me on the wrong path? God, you should've done it different. God, you should've made me taller. God, you should've, you know, given me a different husband and made me born in a different place, made me born in a different era. You should've given me a different family. You should have given me different circumstances. You should have made us wealthier, or you should have, you know, done this or and it's like, oh, friend, like, I hear you. There are things in our life that have been super hard. And, I mean, especially, you know, I've I've worked through lots of issues with lots of various people over over the years that I've been doing this.

[00:20:00]:

But when you talk to someone who just had a really rough family upbringing, and you think your first question is like, god, why? Like, why didn't they just have more loving parents? Like, why did their parents do that to them, or allow that to happen to them? Why weren't they more protected? Why, why, why? There's so many different things in our lives where we can say, why God, why did you allow that? Why did that happen? And yet, and yet to fully believe that God is still in control, that He is sovereign, and that He allowed that because He believed that somehow it was going to be for our good and his glory. Somehow he was going to use that. What the enemy intended for evil, God turns to good. Friends, this is hard, deep theological stuff. But through this book, I show you how understanding God's grace in everything that's happened to us can really stop us in our tracks from comparing ourselves to other people. It can stop us in our tracks when we wanna grumble and complain. Now I do I talk about this in the book. Like, God wants to hear our frustrations and our sadness.

[00:21:19]:

Right? It's okay to lament. It's okay to to pray to God and be honest. I love how honest David was with the Lord through the Psalms. He was like this, I wanna die. Like, this just stinks. I hate this. You know, all these people wanna kill me, God. Like, what are you doing about it? Don't you see this? Aren't you gonna save me? Like, that's a cry of lament.

[00:21:41]:

When things are hard in our lives, god wants to hear from us in that authentic and genuine way. It's okay to grieve things that have happened to us and say, god, I don't understand why you gave me those parents, or why I was married to him, or why was my child born like this, or why did I lose that job, or why did we lose that home, or why did we have to move, or why did he have to get that diagnosis, Or why did she have to die? God wants us to bring all of this to him with lament. But what we can't do is be grumblers and complainers. Remember the old testament? Right? Remember, I I love the Veggie Tales version of this. So if you've not seen, if you didn't have kids or grandkids that went through a Veggie Tales phase, the Veggie Tales story of Moses leading the people out of Egypt and they're, you know, wandering around in the desert. And these vegetables are sitting around complaining about manna. Right? Because that's how God fed them in in the desert for 40 years with manna. And they're like, remember how good we had in Egypt because we had steak and we had tacos and, you know, it's vegetative, so it's kind of more satirical.

[00:22:56]:

Right? But they're forgetting that they were in slavery, that God delivered them from literal slavery where they had no freedom at all. And they're complaining because they don't like the way God is providing. God has chosen to provide through manna, and they want god to provide through tacos. Now I think it'll be rather impractical to have tacos fall from the sky or tacos be waiting outside on the lawn every morning when you woke up and got outside your tent, but that aside. Right? God chose to provide for them in that way, and they're grumbling and complaining. They think oh, watch us here. They think they know better than God how it should be. And friends, if we do that when we're comparing, if our comparison is a grumble towards God, I know better than you how it should be.

[00:23:49]:

God, I know how you should have made my body. God, I know how my life should have gone. Right? Then her posture towards god is, oh,

[00:23:59]:

maybe a little prideful.

[00:24:01]:

Maybe not one of humility where we understand that god is god and we are not. And so, yeah, friend, there's some convicting stuff in here. But if you know me, my style is I try to give you the hard stuff packaged in a lot of fun and maybe some antidotes that will make you smile and some stories that will make you laugh and some lightness, some levity so that when you get to those hard truths, you're ready to swallow, but you're still encouraged. And you're able to start walking a different path because you've heard the truth in love. And so that's what this book is all about. If you're tired of always trying to be better, of always chasing better, I need a better life, I need a better body, I need a better man, I need better children, I need a better house, a better car, like, friend, that there's no level of better that you can reach that will free you. Because better is a comparative adjective. So better can only exist in the context of comparison.

[00:25:19]:

You cannot have better unless you are comparing 2 or more things. So comparisons ladder, it has no top rung. If you stay in the life of comparison, you just keep climbing and climbing and climbing and climbing and climbing. And it is exhausting. So if you are tired of comparing, if you're tired of chasing better, will you go check out my brand new book, The Comparison Free Life? It's on Amazon and all the other places. Friend, I think it'll touch you. I think it'll encourage you. And and the only thing about this book, just to know, is there are questions at the end of each chapter.

[00:25:59]:

So you don't have to read it alone. Grab a few women from your church and read it together. Answer those questions together. There's a scripture some scripture to look up, just questions that will help you think about comparison in a biblical way. And I think it's gonna encourage you. So go check out comparison free life, everywhere books are sold. And, hey, I'm glad you listened today. I hope you are too.

[00:26:24]:

I hope something today, maybe even more than other days, has helped you stop comparing and start living. Bye bye. Oh, hey. We have cool merch. If you are asking yourself, compared to who? If you are ready to stop comparing yourself to other people, but maybe you need a little reminder of how to do that, go to our new store on Etsy. You can get there through my website, improve body image.com/shop, and pick up some cute compared to merch. I have a hat that I love that says compared to who. I throw it on every bad hair day.

[00:27:00]:

But there's shirts and other fun stuff that will encourage you to stop comparing. The Comparative Show is proud to be part of the Life Audio podcast network. For more great Christian podcasts, go to life audio dot com.