Competition? Christlikeness

COMPETITION

I have a hard time finding any place in the life of the believer for competition.  Perhaps it’s due to a very warped understanding on my part – and I’m open to that.  But in my experience, although we couch it in “nice” double-speak, competition is about beating another person or team.

Yes, I understand that competition is a test of skills and abilities as well as strategy and teamwork but, at least in my experience, there is that underlying drive to defeat – beat – conquer – crush the other person or team.  I was raised to compete, to win, to crush my opponent utterly.  It wasn’t about being first – it was about be the only.

My first experience with competition was against my dad.  He was a fencer – and pretty good.  When I was around six or seven he decided to toughen me up and make a competitor by making me fence with him.  He was about 6 foot 3 or so and in pretty good shape.  I was about 3.5 feet tall and relatively round.

I can still remember those painful and humiliating sessions.  I still have the scar in the back of my throat where he “accidentally” stabbed me.  I can still feel the pain of being swatted with a foil.  See, in his view one was only a winner if one’s opponent was – well – destroyed and humiliated.

I was fortunate in that we left him when I was still salvageable.  But when we moved back to the US everyone said I had to play football (I was a little taller and not so round).  I had never seen American football.  I had played “soccer” which is a game of skill, strategy and finesse.  Football simply looked stupid to me.  I could not conceive of how it could be “fun.”  Still don’t.

Well I played football but I wasn’t much into “killing the quarterback,” or stuffing the running back.”  I wasn’t into hurting people much at all.

Then I got jumped by a group of toughs from my high-school and something snapped.  I challenged all of them to meet me and get in a single file and I offered to fight them one at a time.  Of course I had some back-up in the form of some friends of my older sister just to keep it fair.

They never showed and things really changed for me at school.  Then I got into power-lifting.  I loved it – my competition was gravity and muscle failure.  I went at it whole-heartedly.  I began to look like a power-lift and people around me changed.

There was something gratifying about being able to intimidate people just by being there.  It was the polar opposite from what my dad had made me feel.  Something snapped again.  I was going to be a winner – no matter what.

It all came to a head years later on the Racquet-ball court.  A friend of mine and I were playing and he started to rag on me (he was very very good).  Something snapped.  I quit wanting to win and started wanting to destroy.  Well, to make a long story short, we both left the court bloody and bruised.  I never played Racquet-ball “competitively” again.

Actually I never did anything competitive that put me in direct contact with another human being.  I just didn’t trust myself.  I have “competed” in a lot of things but they are things in which I can focus on beating myself – improving my skills without any comparison to others.

When I was shooting competitively it was a struggle.  Some folks just have to rag on others by chest thumping and crowing.  It got to the point to where I was tempted to get a “Match Disqualification” right at the first shooting stage.  This would allow me to shoot the match without worrying about my “score” in relationship to others.  But I gave it up when the economy went south and it got too expensive.

How do you teach competition without that element of what I can only see as “enemy identification?”  We talk in terms of beating, crushing, defeating, etc. the other competitor(s).  They have to go down!  

Here’s the question.  How do we, as followers of the Prince of Peace, handle competition?  In thinking about kids and the instilling of an adversarial attitude towards those we compete against it concerns me greatly.  We want to be (and our kids to be) winners, but how do we do it without designating those we compete against as “the enemy?”  How do we keep ourselves (and our kids) from the typical rage and anger used to motivate “winners?”  Why is our “best” only good when we “beat” another?

I think of Eric Liddell and am amazed.