By Father Casey
In my sermon last Sunday, I talked about our societal obsession with scorekeeping. We always want to know where we stand with one another: who has what, and who seems to be “winning” at life. Scorekeeping can consume our relationships, as we tally who’s done what for us, who has hurt us, and how we’ll relate to them in response.
Scorekeeping also makes us miserable.
We live in the wealthiest, most educated, technologically advanced society in the history of the world. We have stood on the moon and smashed the atom and decoded the genome. And yet contentment has never eluded us more. We are, as a society, less happy than ever. According to the Happiness Index,[1] a statistical instrument that uses a variety of factors to measure happiness, Americans are among the least happy people on the planet, and getting less happy each year. And all our fixating on scorekeeping is a major contributor to this crisis.
A while back I heard about an American businessman who was on vacation in a coastal Mexican village. He noticed a fisherman unloading a few large yellow fin tuna from his small boat. The American complimented the fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The man said only a little while.
“Didn’t you want to stay out there and see how many more you could catch?” the man wanted to know. No, the fisherman said, he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. “I keep one fish for my family’s dinner. I trade the other one for whatever else we need for the day.”
“But what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, stroll into the village each evening, where I sip wine and play guitar with my friends. I have a full life.”
The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing, but instead of bartering, sell the fish, and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat.”
The fisherman was intrigued. “What then?”
“With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution.”
“Yes? What then?”
“Well, you’d need to leave this village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles, and eventually New York City, where you’ll run an expanding enterprise.”
The fisherman asked, “But how long will this all take?” To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”
“Okay, and what then?”
The American smiled broadly. “That’s the best part! When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions!”
“Millions? Wow.” the fisherman replied, “Then what?”
The American had to think for a moment, before saying, “Then you would retire and move to a small coastal fishing village where you could sleep late, fish a little, take a siesta with your wife, stroll into the village each evening, sip wine and play guitar with your friends…”
The key to joy and peace is to set down the scoreboards, because the Kingdom of God is not a place of scorekeeping. That’s what we heard Jesus teach us last week, and what he’ll be teaching again this week in yet another challenging parable. Comparison is corrosive. It attacks our souls. It makes us miserable and leads us nowhere God wants us to go. If all we do is compare ourselves to each other, sizing each other up, and allowing their situation to determine our attitude, we will only ever be unhappy. Because scoreboards are idols, false gods, asking us to worship them, but offering no hope for blessing in return.
Now, I’m not talking about justice or equality. When it comes to those aspects of a healthy society, we can and should use comparison as a way to evaluate if some people are being unfairly left out from the goodness and plenty experienced by others. Given our nation’s long history of systematically excluding people of color from equal education, employment, housing, and countless other basic realities, comparison can help us know how far we still need to go before our society is truly free and fair.
What I’m talking about is the spiritual practice of contentment. It is how we get in touch with grace, and recognize the abundant gifts God is giving us all the time, rather than constantly feeling dissatisfied. It is how we look at all we have, rather than all we don’t. It’s how we become the sort of people who know joy, regardless of the quality or value of our stuff. It’s how we live out the words of the Lord’s Prayer, in which we ask God only for “our daily bread.” It is how we stop being the businessman, and start being the fisherman.