The One-Up

The One-Up--June 13, 2018

"Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor." [Romans 12:10]

There is nothing so difficult as a conversation with a one-upper.

You know these conversations. We are subject to them all the time, those folks who seem to have the need to "top" whatever you have just said with some story of their own that "one-ups" yours.  And we all know people who are dyed-in-the-wool one-uppers. And we love them anyway--sometimes in spite of themselves, but we do love them.  (As a side note, it may in fact be that if do not know what I am talking about, or if you cannot think of anyone in your social circles or family who is always trying to one-up your stories, observations, accomplishments, trials, or funny anecdotes, you may want to look in the mirror to find your social group's one-upper.)

It is terribly difficult to have plain, normal, ordinary human conversation with a one-upper, in large part because it is like trying to play tennis while the other player does nothing but catch and hold the ball.  It is hard to volley back and forth if one person is always trying to monopolize the momentum.   It is also difficult to maintain a cordial friendship with a one-upper, because it is just wearisome to have to have everything made into a competition, where whatever you have to say is simply not good enough, but must be "topped."  At some point, you just get too tired out to keep trying.

At root, the real problem with one-uppers among your friends or family is that they try to make everything fall into orbit around them.  They are, generally speaking, always trying to draw attention to themselves--their higher highs and their lower lows.  Whether they are suffering from delusions of their own grandeur and "greatness" when they top your good news with their own self-tooting horns and stories, or are deep, deep down really quite insecure and so afraid that no one will like them if they don't "win" at conversation by having a bigger success story, a sadder tragedy, or a nobler act of heroism to counter yours, whatever the rationale underneath, it is difficult to have any back-and-forth if your conversation partner is only interested in besting you.

And at whatever scale, whether it is the friend who dominates the one-on-one conversation over coffee, or the family member who commandeers the dinner table to top everybody else's stories from the day, or the demagogues and politicians who look for some way to make everything about themselves and their "greatness" rather than ever actually listen to someone, it is hard to build any kind of community on a foundation of one-ups and one-uppers.  They never let anything get put on top of them, after all.

But we are invited into a different kind of community.  It doesn't have to be a circle of eye-rolling, groaning, head-shaking former friends all clustered around a one-upper who is holding them hostage.  Love--real, genuine, confident, and unconditional love--takes that impulse constantly to one-up each other, and turns it inside out.

This is one of the things I love about this passage from what we call the twelfth chapter of Romans.  It takes the old notion and language of "one-upping" and reinvents it.  For us in the beloved community, the community that dares to practice what the apostle here calls "genuine" or "unhypocritical" love, we are dared to outdo each other in showing honor... to one another.

Showing honor.  Not in getting honor for ourselves.  Not in calling attention to ourselves or magnifying our own greatness.  But we are called to go out of our way to find creative and honest ways to shine the light on each other, rather than on ourselves.   It is an entirely new and different kind of one-upping--the challenge to look for ways to keep cheering for, encouraging, celebrating, and honoring the other, while they do the same for you and everybody else.  Instead of looking for angles for how to turn every story, every comment, and every anecdote into an opportunity for bragging, we are dared to see how life thrives when we seek out how to lift each other up.

Now, I know... this will sound too good to be true.  It sounds easier said than done.  After all, we are pretty often selfish stinkers, and more to the point, we have a way of selling ourselves into a paralyzing insecurity that makes us afraid of what other people think of us, and whether we will be accepted or not.  And unless something can be done to deal with that fearful empty place inside us that resounds with echoes like, "You are not good enough," or "You are unworthy...", well, in that case I suspect that we'll never get very far beyond the old one-upping.  

So... what if we didn't have to worry about being acceptable anymore?  What if we didn't have to worry that we were unworthy, unimportant, or insignificant?  What if at the center of our being was the clear declaration, "You are not only accepted, but you are beloved?"  What if I no longer had to rely on topping your stories to prop myself up over you in order to feel like at least I wasn't the lowest one on the food chain?  What if there was no food chain, no totem pole, no voting the one with the lowest score off the island?  What if instead, we started with it as a given that each of us is beloved... infinitely?  

Maybe, just maybe, if I dared to believe that, and to let it sink in, I wouldn't have to keep turning things back to myself or one-upping the people around me.  Maybe I would be free to look for ways to uplift and honor people around me, without feeling insecure about whether I am noticed enough or not.  Maybe I just wouldn't have to play the old stupid games anymore.  Maybe if, as the 20th century theologian Paul Tillich once put it, we dared to "simply accept the fact that you are accepted," I could spend the energy I used to waste on trying to top other people's stories or successes instead on honoring others, and knowing that they will, in their own ways and times, lift me up as well.

It is both the hardest thing in the world and the simplest thing in the world to dare to take the old one-up impulse and turn it inside out.  It is difficult because I am afraid that if I don't push myself over someone else, I will be left discarded at the bottom forever.  And it is the simplest thing to do because it means being freed from the need to earn our belonging or achieve a certain status, but simply to trust the grace that says, "Even beyond merely being accepted, you are beloved."

For us as community, the choice is clear. If we keep with our impulse to puff ourselves up and pat ourselves on the back as one-uppers, real relationship and connection shrivels up and dies.  But if we dare to believe the news that we are, the whole lot of us, infinitely beloved already, then we are able to build each other up without feeling threatened.  

So hear it, then, take it in, and dare to believe it is true: you are beloved.  You are infinitely beloved.  You are so infinitely beloved that you don't need to worry one smidge about being left out, left behind, or seen as a "loser."  In the community of Jesus, after all, we are taught to relish being "losers" who lay down our lives for one another, and that the seeming "winners" of the day should be prepared to be taken down a few pegs.  That frees us from worrying about ourselves so that we can look for ways to honor the ones around us.  

And, at long last, we could be free from one-upping... all around.

Lord Jesus, give us the confidence that we are accepted so that we can honor others without worrying about ourselves.