Now you are ahead of everyone else

Today I was walking through town and I saw an advert for a new iphone type thing and it said this (or something like) - 'Now you're ahead of everyone else'. Now this advert struck me because it made me realise just how obsessed we are with status and being ahead of other people.

You see the fact that this phone is ahead of everyone else's shouldn't really matter. After all what should matter is how good the phone is. If the advert said 'this phone is better than other phones because it has this, this, this and this' then it makes sense. After all that's what matters. What matters is how good the phone actually is. However, the manufacturers know that actually we don't care so much about how good the phone is but rather about how it makes us look. We like the idea of being ahead of everyone else.

Even our phone shopping so often comes down to that old ambition of being better than everyone else. Companies know that this ambition runs deep and so advertise accordingly - 'This phone/tv/car/perfume will make you better than all people who don't have it'. However, Jesus tells his followers to have a radically different ambition. Jesus says (see Mark 9v35-37) that his followers should not seek to make themselves better than others but rather should make their life ambition serving others regardless of their status. This is a radical ambition (you don't see adverts saying 'buy this phone it will make you appear worse and better at serving all people however unimportant') but it is the one we are called to so let's try at work, at home, at church wherever to avoid wanting to be ahead of everyone and instead think about how we can serve all!