Whether it is sports, academics, Greek Life, or countless other endeavors, we are constantly competing with others. We compete for trophies, scholarships, and promotions. We compete with close friends, mere acquaintances, and complete strangers. Our daily lives are filled with a non-stop stream of comparisons to those around us…“I sure am glad that I wasn’t the only one to bomb that test…I can’t believe he got that scholarship and I didn’t…I wonder how she can afford such a nice car.” So the question naturally arises: is it possible to act compassionately towards those around us while simultaneously pursuing our own personal ambitions?

The answer hinges on how we choose to define our self-worth.

From a very young age, I bought into a common myth that my value as person depended on how good I was at certain things. At my age, those “things” were usually sports. The kids that excelled at sports were always the most popular. So when I figured out at age 11 that God had blessed me with the ability to play golf really well, the entire course of my life changed. I dedicated every waking hour to improving my golf game. And the better and better I got, the more and more affirmation I received from both adults and kids my age. However, I didn’t realize that I was choosing to get on an emotional roller coaster. On days that I played well, I experienced an incredible high. But on days when I played poorly, I felt completely humiliated.

In my high school years, I committed to play golf at the University of Georgia. This was the ultimate affirmation of who I was as a person. I viewed myself as more valuable than others simply because I could hit a little white ball really well. While I never was an outwardly ruthless competitor, I definitely was ruthless on the inside. I looked down on kids that were worse, and my mind was constantly fixated on how I stacked up against the competition. It wasn’t until I experienced a significant injury and my golf game subsequently deteriorated that I truly began to examine how I defined my self-worth.

The life of Christ lies in stark contrast to the attitude I have just described. He told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23). The idea of denying one’s worldly desires in exchange for the desires of the Heavenly Father is essential to the Christian worldview. As followers of Christ, we are all called to crucify our self-centered ambitions upon the cross and focus instead on spreading His gospel of love- a gospel of love that's built upon the belief that each human has inherent and immeasurable value because he or she has been made in the image of God.

While it’s clear how Christianity facilitates a life of compassion, it is much less clear how competition fits into the equation. On the one hand, God has blessed us all with unique talents and certainly desires for us to use them to bring glory to His name. Conversely though, competition tends to lead us to a self-centered attitude in which we live for the praise and adulation of others. Thus, our ability to compete with a compassionate mindset depends on our basic motivations for competing. Are we driven to excel at our given pursuits by the hope of gaining admiration and accolades from those around us (and thereby increasing our “personal worth”)? Or are we passionately competing with the primary goal of praising God’s name and bringing others closer to him?

God does not love us more or less based upon how well we play a sport, the organizations of which we’re a part, or how much money we make. There is no amount of success or failure that can alter the immeasurable value that He places on each of our lives. If we too can begin to recognize the fundamental and inherent value of each human life, then we can also hope to find compassion in a competitive world.