The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Mirror Mirror on the Web

Episode Date: June 8, 2018

We all have fallen into the trap of comparing ourselves to others. In an age of social media, constant comparison is hard to avoid and it leads to us feeling bad or anxious about our own lives compared to those of our 500+ closest online friends. Jeff explains the dangers of comparison and shows you how to look to God when you start down this path.

You're listening to the Jeff Kaven Show, episode 67, mirror, mirror on the web. Hey, I'm Jeff Kavins. How do you simplify your life? How do you study the Bible? All the way from motorcycle trips to raising kids, we're going to talk about the faith and life in general. It's the Jeff Kaven Show. Hey, welcome to the show again this week. Glad you could join me.

We are in the midst of spring waiting for summer, and it is beautiful, and it's good to be with you. I'm here in the cabin deep in the woods in Minnesota and spending just a few minutes studying and thinking about being a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I've got something I want to share with you today, and I think it's really relevant because it deals with the way that we look at ourselves and constantly compare ourselves with others, and I've entitled this show, Mirror, Mirror on the Web. And so many of us fall into this trap today. And I want to talk a little bit about that and some of the dangers, but also I want to give you something to do if you have fallen into this trap

of constantly comparing yourself to other people and finding out that you are wanting, that you are coming up on the short end. And you feel bad about your life. Maybe you feel depressed. maybe you feel a little anxious and like, well, you know, things didn't turn out the way I wanted them to. And look at my, look at my college friends. And I look at them on Facebook and look what they're doing, you know.

And so we want to talk about that. Yeah, I do appreciate your feedback. I've been going over to iTunes, Google Play, and looking at your comments, really do appreciate it. And all the email that you have been sending in, I read it, I love it. and I like this aspect that we can actually talk with one another. One of the emails that came this week was by Christina. She wrote more of a kind of a request for a topic to talk about. And this is one of those where I'm saying, yeah, Christina, I think I'm going to do that.

And I encourage all of you to write. If you have a show that you want, some topic you want addressed, please send me an email, The Jeff Kaven Show at ascensionpress.com. the Jeff Caven Show at ascensionpress.com. Christine is interested in a particular topic. She says, I would like you to do a show on facing death. That's pretty heavy, isn't it? That's right.

She says, I've been praying for my parents, even though they are healthy, that they may prepare spiritually and let go and let God during their last phase of their life. If you can provide some practical examples through scripture, it will be of great help. Another show topic recommendation is how we can understand purgatory, and that could be helpful as well. Well, Christina, I appreciate you writing me, and I know for sure we're going to do a show on facing death, which it doesn't have to be morbid, you know. People say, oh, man, why do we want to tune in and talk about death? Well, the reason is because we're all going to face it, you know, one day, and you're either going to face it well or face it poorly,

so we might as well talk about that. Hey, today we're going to be talking about mirror, mirror on the web, comparing ourselves to other people and the trap that we get into. Certainly, we notice this with our teenagers today, but this is something that adults are also dealing with as well. You know, I want to start off by saying that it was back in 1983. I had been out of high school for about seven years at that point, been through Bible College, and was out there.

I'd been in radio, working in radio, and I moved back to the Twin Cities from Iowa, and I felt that God was calling me to be a pastor. I had already left the Catholic Church, and I had accepted a position with a small missionary church in Minneapolis, and I moved up from Pella, from a nice radio job, Pella, and I didn't have the money to even get an apartment at that point, and it was just Emily and myself. We hadn't have children at that point, and I didn't have that much money, and so I ended up living in my mother-in-law's basement, and my father-in-laws, both of them. And we were down there, and I was starting to get information and communication from some of my friends that they were done with their masters, or they were getting ready to go in.

to residency in their medical studies. And I sat there and looked in the mirror, you know, at myself and thought, man, you've, you know, you're 25 years old now, and you're living in your mother-in-law's basement. You're starting a church. You're going to make about, you know, $500 a month, $400 a month or whatever it is. You're going to have to drive a bus for a junior high school to make ends meet. And I started feeling lousy about myself. You know, I was comparing myself to my classmates.

no matter who I compared myself to, it seemed like I didn't have it going, you know. I didn't have those degrees yet. I didn't have the money. I didn't have a home. I didn't have children yet. And we were struggling with infertility at that time. And I remember thinking, wow, you know, I just, I didn't feel good about myself. Have you ever felt that way?

You know, have you ever compared yourself? I know I've talked to a lot of people who struggled with infertility, and they look at their sister, you know, who has six kids, and she just looks at her husband and they get pregnant. And there you are struggling. Well, this comparison game is something that can really bring us down. But I want to talk about that a little bit because it can be really, really debilitating in your life. And we need to get on top of it. I remember in sixth grade, even before this issue of living in my mother-in-law's house, in sixth grade, I remember it. so clearly. I was a very fast runner. And in sixth grade, all of the guys that were the jocks

had these shoes called, as a kind of a new company called Adidas. You say, new, well, you've been around for a while. Yes, I have. The Adidas, and it was one particular, there was one particular model of the Adidas that everybody wanted. It was the Olympia. It were white with black stripes. Another one was called Adida Rom. It had blue stripes. And I was the fastest kid in the school, but my parents bought me bumper sneakers. Very cool. Not. And everybody had Levi jeans, and I had jeans from a place called Montgomery Wards or Sears. And I remember thinking of myself, man, I am just, I don't feel cool. I'm not with that group. And it was because of the shoes and the pants, I wore. That's what happens when we are young, you know? In 1954, psychologist Leon Festinger,

he hypothesized that we make comparisons as a way of evaluating ourselves. And that's what I was doing in sixth grade, and later on when I was a young pastor at 25. We, you know, you can look at a young lady who takes 25 selfies of herself, finally comes up with the one that she really likes and she posts it online and she doesn't get any likes and so she takes it down she's evaluating herself based on on comparison a young mother who sees what her classmates are doing for their children during summer break you know they're going to go to this really cool camp and she doesn't have the money you know to do that and and feels bad as she compares herself with her colleagues or the man who sees the job positions that his college friends are getting and he's yet to get

job and he's still working in an industry that's not what he's studied for. And he feels bad about himself. A Princeton psychologist, Susan Fisk coined the phrase envy up or scorn down to summarize the feelings provoked when we weigh our worth next to others. And we do it constantly. And when we are reliant on others for our feeling good about ourselves, we are prime candidates for depression. We're prime candidates for anxiety in our life when we have to rely on others to make us feel good or, you know, to feel accomplished. One characteristic among adolescents is a constant awareness how others see us. As I mentioned when I was six year, you know, sixth grade comparing myself with others based on my Adita shoes versus the, or their Adita shoes, versus my bumpers. And the older that people get, the less they compare themselves to others,

at least that's the way it's supposed to be, is that the older people get, the less we're concerned about other people, but we still do compare ourselves. And psychologists talk about this a lot, that we stop comparing ourselves with others and we compare ourselves with our selves with our past. In other words, our comparison is with ourselves over time. How have I been doing over the last 15, 20 years? Did I get that, you know, that position that I wanted or my retirement account? Is it where I expected it to be at 45? And so we're comparing ourselves with ourselves more and more. But here's what's kind of interesting. Social media has allowed our adolescence, because this is so normal in adolescence to compare ourselves with others,

you know, his clothes and all of that. Social media has allowed our adolescence to be extended into adulthood and keeps us from growing up and being productive in the kingdom of God. If you grew up in the 40s to the 80s, can you imagine calling up 200 of your friends in 1978 in 1982, in 1964, calling up 200 of your friends every day to see how they're doing and then compare yourself. You say, well, you couldn't even do that. That would be impossible just with time. Yeah, that's what I think sometimes when we say, I long for those good old days. But here's the deal. We can now. We can do it very rapidly with social media. It's ridiculous. We need to get a life, really, because today we can go through 200, 300, 400 people very quickly to see how they're doing

what they're saying, what their life is like, or what they are saying that their life is like, and then we compare ourselves. And if we do this every day, just think of how it robs us of productivity to be who we really are. I like what the Apostle Paul says. The Apostle Paul says in 1st Corinthians 13, 11. He says, when I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reason like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. And I think that one of the things that we have to give up as adults, it's childish, is finding out who we are by comparing ourselves with others, where our desk is situated in the room, what shoes we have, what pants we have? What does our book bag look like? Now obviously I'm talking about things that kids are

compared with, but adults have their own mature things that we compare ourselves with, like car, neighborhood, bank account, clothing, club, you know, memberships, all of these things. They really mean nothing in light of eternity. You see, when you get caught in the comparison trap, you never get on with your life really. Your amazing gifts, your contribution to society, your creative genius and your distinct way of contributing to the kingdom of God, all lost in the comparison game. It's like we never see you. We don't know who you are because you're on a chase to become something that is like make-believe out there on the web. As I was thinking about this, and I'm right, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm mentioning these things today because I've had

conversations with people lately who, who said, literally said they felt so down after going through Instagram and Facebook and seeing what other people, you know, are about in their life and what they're doing. And it got me thinking, you know, what's really, really important here and how do people get over this. And I think it really gets, it really gets back to Jesus Christ. It really gets back to the Lord. In Galatians 4, in verse 8, Paul said, formally, when you did not know God, you are in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly's elementary spirits or elemental spirits whose slaves you want to be once more. I love what Paul says there. He

says, now that you have come to know God, which I'm sure you would say that, because I would too, right? Now that you've come to know God. But then he pauses, sticks an old comma in there and says, or rather to be known by God. Wow, that's a beautiful statement. What Paul is saying to us there is that we can say we know God, but there's something even greater, and that is that God knows you to be known by God is the most precious thing in the world. It's the most precious thing in the world to be known by God. You know, the examine prayer, which is something we've been talking about frequently on the show, is a great way to daily compare yourself with yourself and what God expects of you. In the examined prayer at the end of the day, what do you do? You begin by thanking God

and you look back on your day and you don't compare yourself with others on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, Snapchat, whatever it might be. You're looking back at your day and not saying, well, how does this compare to Susan, Donna, John, Frank? But how am I doing in comparison to what Christ expects of me. That's the proper attitude for us to have. This is one of the keys to getting over this problem of mirror mirror on the web. And if you're going to compare yourself with anyone, it should be Christ, right? Or the Blessed Mother and the saints. And it should be in categories that matter. I was thinking about this this morning and I was thinking, you know, what are the categories that we compare ourselves to others in? It's money, it's success, its degree,

its homes, its cars, it's, does it really matter? Does it really matter? Should we be comparing ourselves in categories that do matter and with people who can make a difference? And that's Jesus Christ. So comparing ourselves to others and becoming depressed is not so much, I think, a problem at the social level as it is a problem with our relationship with God. Remember that parable of the man or the men, I should say, who went to work at different times in the morning afternoon and late afternoon. And they all worked for the same amount of money. And the master paid them, but they were unhappy because the guy who had only worked like an hour got the same wage as the guy who came at eight in the morning. And what was the master's response? I love it. He says, do you grudge my

generosity? See, when we play the comparison game, mirror, mirror on the web, and we, feel like, I'm not loved. I'm not successful. We are totally missing God's generosity in our life. And I'm going to take a break in a moment. When I come back, I'm going to tell you a few things that I would recommend, at least, on how we can deal with this. So don't compare yourself to others based on things, but be secure in God's love. I was a pastor for 12 years, and I can tell you that what you think about others in terms of success is not all that it's cracked up. up to be. People out there are a lot like you, and they're searching, and they are assessing. We're going to take a break. When we come back, I want to give you some points on how to deal with

this that are really down to earth, and I think they'll make a difference in your life. You're listening to the Jeff Kaven Show. If you're looking for a way to learn more about your Catholic faith, I invite you to check out the Ascension Presents YouTube channel. You're going to find tons of free videos featuring Catholic presenters like Matt Frad, Liadero, Jackie Bobby Angel, and Emily Wilson. Go to YouTube.com slash Ascension Presents. That's YouTube.com slash Ascension Presents. And if you like what you see, please share and subscribe. Welcome back. We are talking about mirror mirror on the web and looking at our lives and comparing and finding out that not only are we comparing ourselves with the wrong people should be,

people like Jesus, the Blessed Mother and the Saints, but we're thinking in the wrong categories. We're thinking in terms of things rather than eternal things, that, you know, temporal things versus eternal things, the things that really, really matter. And I was thinking, just right there right before the, during the break, I was thinking, honestly, honestly, if Jesus was physically with you right now, would you be checking your social media? Would you be looking at the likes on your Facebook post if Jesus was with you right now? I don't think so. I don't think so because you're known by God and that's what really, really matters. Listen, he loves you. He loves you so much and he accepts you the way you are and the comparison game is not going to raise your stock

internally. The changes that are expected by God in your life are all good. and they're doable. Insecurity can drive you deep into the web, but peace and godliness can settle your heart down. It's a peace, and I love this. Listen, it's a peace that the world does not understand. It's a peace that passes all understanding, Paul says. That's what we want.

And so let's stop comparing ourselves with the world. Now, if you right now are climbing someone else's imaginary ladder, get off and begin to focus on heaven and focus on Christ and focus on the things that really, really matter and compare yourself to who you were this morning last week, last year, and grow in virtue and grow in character, grow in holiness. Now here's what you can do. I'm going to give you five things real quick, okay? Number one, today take some time to make a list of 10 things in your life. Get an index card. Maybe it's one of the note apps, you know, on your smartphone, whatever. Today, it takes some time to make a list of 10 things in your life that you wouldn't

trade the world for. Now, if you can't come up with 10, come up with five. But 10 things in your life where you'd say, I wouldn't trade the world for this one thing. And write those 10 things down on an index card or in that note app on your phone. Number two, take some time to thank God for those 10 things, for those gifts that you have. Go make a holy hour or sit out on the back porch, but do it and take 15, 20 minutes, whatever, and just thank God for those 10 things that you wouldn't trade the world for. Recognize the gift and the treasure that you have already in your life. Is it your husband, wife, is it children? Grand. children? What is it in your life that you wouldn't trade? Because you're so appreciative.

Number three, in the areas that you feel inadequate, offer them to God and proclaim that he is your adequacy. You are known by God. Ask him for help rather than hang your head. Ask him for help. You feel bad about a situation you're facing with your kids and all your friends, at least on Instagram seem to have this problem tackled, don't hang your head. Go to the Lord. Ask him for help. Number four, cut your social media time in half. Pretty broad. Yeah, it's pretty bold, isn't it? Cut your social media time in half. If this is offending you, cut it out. Cut it in half at least and spend time reading scripture or praying or serving in the church or loving your family and paying attention to and nurturing the gifts that you do have.

And number five, when you feel down as a result of seeing what others are doing or say they are doing, take out your index card with your list of 10 things you wouldn't trade the world for and thank God. let those things be a constant reminder of the great treasures that God has given you. At the end of the day in the examined prayer, it's always a wonderful idea to just take some time and to thank God. But I really do think that cutting your social media time and spending that time doing the things that we say we don't have time for, like reading and praying and serving in the church, it would be a really good thing.

Now, I know one thing for sure, because I've talked to so many people around the country, and I feel the same way, and that is this, when people give up their smartphones and they give up their social media, for example, on the weekend or a retreat, they almost always come out of it with a refreshing, new look at life. Let's discipline ourselves. Let's use social media for good, right? it's all good. Let's use it for good. But let's not use it to find out who we are. Let's use things like scripture, the teachings of the church, prayer, the lives of the saints. This is how we find out

who we are. This is how we find out if we are successful or not. And so let's turn social media on its head. It will serve us. We will not serve social media. Social media will not tell us who we are. We will listen to God to find out who we are. I don't know exactly how many people this message this week is touching, but I know it is. And if it's you, I'd love to hear from you. can you write me the jeff kaven show at ascensionpress.com that's the email the jeffcaven show at ascensionpress.com or leave your comments if you'd like to even if you want to leave them anonymously on iTunes or google play love to hear from you and i want to close this out in prayer and pray that god will continue to build you up as a son build you up as a daughter and that as you look

into the word of god james says this that the word of God is like a mirror. We look into it and we find out who God is and we find out who we are and we make the adjustments. Isn't that beautiful? James talks about this. How the word of God is like a mirror. The web is not the mirror. The scriptures are the mirror. Let's pray. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Lord, I lift up my friend to you and I ask you to bless them right now. they are at, on the way to work, on the way home, at work, at night, early in the morning. Lord, bless them, and I pray, Lord, that you would speak deeply into their heart concerning who they are, and that they are created in the image and likeness of you.

And that is a good thing. And that you have called us to continue to nurture this being created in the image and likeness of you, rather than created in the image and likeness of an imaginary ladder on the We thank you, Lord, for transforming our life in Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you, my friend. I love you. We'll see it next week.