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Do you often compare yourself to others? If you do, you usually end up in one of two places. Either you decide you’re a lot better than others, or you decide you fall way short and don’t measure up. Comparing yourself to others is a very bad habit, often a sinful habit, and can truly handicap you.
That is one lesson we learn from the parable of the talents, which is recorded in Matthew 25. As Jesus tells this story, there are three people who start out with very different amounts—or talents—which they are to manage for their boss. One begins with five, one with two, and one of them receives just one.
The first two work hard and double their talents, so the first one now has ten, the second one has four. But what about the guy who had only one? Does he now have two? No, he still has just one because he decided not to do anything with the one he had. After all, he might lose it, and the boss wouldn’t like that. He comes up with this lame excuse that he didn’t want to lose his one measly talent, so he hid it.
If he expected to get a sympathetic response from his boss, he was badly mistaken, because the boss harshly chastised him for not multiplying what he had. Yes, he started with only one talent, but then all he had to do was come up with one more, and he would have received the same reward the other two received.
I think part of his problem was he compared his one talent with the other guys and decided he couldn’t do much with just one talent anyway, so why bother. He did nothing because he made the mistake of comparing himself with others and then throwing a pity-party.
There’s no doubt that in your job there are people of differing abilities and talents—some more gifted than others. But the issue is not what you start with; it’s how you finish. If you work by the Jesus rule, he’s not asking you to measure up to other people, but simply to be faithful to multiply what he has given to you. Comparing yourself to others will often discourage you. Just be grateful for what you have and make the most of it. That’s the Jesus rule.