At age 13, I distinctly remember one conscious thought which gripped me through high school and beyond. It was this. “I want to be the best.” I wanted to be the best dressed, the best basketball player, the best looking, the best student, the best classmate, and the best son. I failed at most of those, but not all. For the most part, I wasn’t the best at all.
At age 19, when Jesus became more real to me than He’d ever been, I wanted to be the best Christian, too. In fact, I so much wanted to be the best that I wanted God to look down on me and say, “You’re the best Christian I’ve ever seen, except for maybe Paul.” And I wanted others to at least think it. It seemed to work for several years but eventually, it all came crashing down around me.
At age 31, this drive to be the best drove me into the ground. I kept failing and the more I failed, the less I thought of myself. I ended up deeply depressed, discouraged and miserable. Underneath my pursuit to be the best was really the drive to be important, that is valuable. The desire to feel valuable is actually a God-given need.
My problem? I had been born with the survival of the fittest mentality. Survival of the fittest is the thinking that only the best are truly valuable in this life. It’s not just about biology but it’s about theology. This thinking is a lie. Jesus said, The last will be first, and the first will be last. (Matthew 20:16)
This dysfunctional thinking is in all of us. That is why people relegate themselves to one of three categories. They believe they are in the successful crowd, the failure crowd or the ordinary crowd.
This survival of the fittest didn’t start with Darwin. It started in the Garden when our great, great, great, grandparents ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. “But you must never eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because when you eat from it you will certainly die.” (Genesis 2:17) When they did, their mind was immediately filled with “anti-grace” thinking. “If I perform well, I am a successful person. If I don’t, I am a miserable failure.” It was a real tree which dispensed real knowledge which has poisoned the human mind of every person ever born.
God’s answer to the survival of the fittest is the survival of the weakest. We have no strength at all to fill our need to feel valuable. Only Jesus has been able to do this for us. In His weakness, dying on the cross, He succeeded in making us what we have always wanted to be – important regardless of our performance. See how very much our Father loves us, for He calls us His children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know Him. (1 John 3:1 NLT)
Believe it! It’s the Gospel.
Live Free In Christ,
Mark Maulding, President and Founder
www.GraceLifeInternational.com All Content Copyright © 2015 Mark Maulding but feel free to pass it on!
