Testimony of Healing December 23, 2013 Issue

No need to compete

Jyoti Raghu

This year I took some classes in German, and one of my fellow students was a young language prodigy, a teenager who was incredibly sharp and had great aptitude for learning. I was filled with jealousy and competitiveness—unusual for me. And I was struggling in the classes—also unusual for me.

Since I didn’t like these feelings, I prayed about them. Thinking about the two stories of creation in the Bible, I reasoned that competitiveness and jealousy ultimately derive from a false, material view of creation. If we accept as true the story of creation in Genesis, chapter 2, we believe man to have a mortal origin and a mortal identity.

As this material view of creation unfolds, mortal man learns to relate himself to others instead of to God, and to measure himself in comparison to others instead of understanding man’s ultimate worth in his sonship with God. In Genesis, chapter 3, for example, Cain is jealous of his brother Abel’s devoutness and favor with God. Filled with envy and rage, he kills Abel.

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