Soaking in the Stew
For years, Dancing with the Stars would remain a fixture on broadcast television. Websites and videos proliferate offering more and more opportunities to sit and watch. And often we read and watch because in that moment it seems there is nothing better to do.
Yet those moments are often filled with comparisons of what we don’t look like, the dance moves beyond our skills or training, and the adulation that belongs to someone else. And in those moments drenched with dance floors beyond our experience, but not our desire, we forget that we belong to the Lord of the dance and lose our spiritual bearings.
The grievous result is the human habit of being immobilized by a sense of failure and loss with the onslaught of perpetual social comparison.
Students in American middle schools and high schools live in a daunting world of social hierarchy. Those at the bottom of the pecking order often face a daily series of taunts and dismissals. Those at the top, typically glistening with perfectly chiseled facial features and body contours, reign as royalty over their adolescent fiefdom; homecoming courts, pep rallies, and Valentine carnations serve symbolically as the confirmers and celebrators of the pecking order. Victory is only experienced by the “winners.” Even the throngs residing in the middle of the hierarchy, the “bourgeois of popularity,” find themselves succumbing to the threats of social descent or the dreams of social promotion.
Everyone, it seems, is soaked in the stew of social comparisons, often reducing the complexities of life to “winners” and “losers.”
For over fifty years pop culture has provided North Americans with glimpses of such adolescent angst amidst a psychological jungle of social comparison and status seeking. Rare is the tenth-grader who doesn’t spend at least fleeting moments pondering the possibilities of greater social prominence, kicking themselves for stupid things said or not said, done or not done. All this against a backdrop of mediated “cues” from the social media, the internet, television, film, and celebrity culture—a tidal wave of constant social comparison.
Adults, of course, can sometimes feel like the forlorn teen, wondering the halls of the high school with no invitation to the prom and no hope of ever making the varsity team. The carnations, letter sweaters and pep rallies, all symbols that celebrate the high school hierarchical priests, are pushed into the faces of the marginalized. Just like “Dancing with the Stars” is pushed into the faces of those who can only watch and drown themselves in negative comparisons.
Then we get older and realize that there are different types of proms and parties and dances that we never get invited to, invitations extended to celebrities that will dance in spotlights of prominence while we only watch. And the more we watch, the more our mere spectating becomes a daily sedative to dull the gnawing sense of insignificance.
For all the wonderful, life-enhancing accomplishments of the past two centuries, including communication technologies that place headlines and art from around the world at our fingertips, the task of wisely navigating this title wave of mass mediated social comparisons is complicated. This includes the challenge of maintaining a clear picture of who we are in Christ, regardless of our hierarchical standing, regardless of social comparisons of power and prominence. Whether we are known by Hollywood or not, whether we are known by Wall Street or fallen in the crevices of poverty, we are known by God. And we, first and foremost, belong to him. He has provided another audience for the arena that is our life, the “cloud of witnesses,” (Hebrews 12:1-5) watching us run in an eternally significant race and dance in an eternally significant dance.
The Apostle Paul writes to the Galatians something that aids in the struggle against social comparison: “Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else….” (6: 4,5). Hierarchical status—whether a circle of friends, a community of artists, leadership teams on a church staff or the number of “followers” on digital media—is confirmed by an emphasis on comparisons. This could mean comparing wit, philosophic insight, performance in conversation, in the field, or on stage. It was evident enough in the Galatian church two thousand years ago for Paul to address it as a concern. In this passage, he provides both a diagnosis (too much competitive comparisons of talents, gifts, and contributions) and a prescription (cultivate the mental habit of self-examination, not confirmation by comparison).
The emphasis of the Apostle Paul is that the habit of comparison as a primary instrument of identity should be moderated and minimized. If not, the habit can plunge us into one of two danger zones. First, it can cause us to feel superior and confident in our heightened status; we can find ourselves in the blinding spell of arrogance. On the other hand, if comparisons with others are regularly evoking a sense of inferiority, we can find ourselves with a dwarfed sense of who we are (our “belonging”) and our task in the world. We tell ourselves, shamefully, that we’re not “dancing with the stars.”
Scripture discourages the real or imagined construction of varying levels of status. There is one family; everyone, like Joseph, wears the coat of many colors (Genesis 37:3). Everyone is celebrated, everyone is granted graces sufficient to faithfully serve all. The mental habits, attitudes, and behaviors necessary to promote faith-filled identity should reflect our belonging. Individual identity gets its first hints in the fact of belonging, not in our efforts to out-perform and out-shine others, nor in our ability to rise up the ladder of ministerial prominence or social media acclaim. This is part of the victory Christ Jesus has won for us! We belong to him!
The “stars” we dance with must be our family and friends, our neighbors and opponents, the forlorn and forgotten in arenas where faithfulness is not about social comparisons.
Paul D. Patton, Ph.D., is a professor of communication and theater at Spring Arbor University in Michigan. He has graduate degrees in Guidance and Counseling, Religious Education, and Script and Screenwriting, and a doctorate in Communication with an emphasis in theater arts. He has been married to his wife Beth for over forty years and has three daughters (all actresses)—Jessica, Emily, and Grace, three sons-in-law, David, Joe, and Eric, and four grandsons, Caleb Rock, Logan Justice, Micah Blaze, and Miles Dean.