There it sits: “while I am coming, another steps down before me.”
This quiet confession from John 5:7–9 screams across the centuries. It is a cry that transcends race, class, tribe, sex, and time. Can you hear it? These words mourn the tragedy of “survival of the fittest.” They speak of those left behind in a world obsessed with speed, visibility, and performance. A world where even desperation has to compete.
How often do we see it, people kicking the dog while it’s already down? When did vulnerability become a liability in human community?
There was a time I was serving the homeless community in Johannesburg, South Africa. I expected pain. I expected hardship. But what stunned me was the competition culture among the destitute, men and women line-hopping for extra bread, lying about whether they had eaten, jostling for space as if there wasn’t enough dignity to go around. These were not criminals. These were the broken, trained by scarcity to look out for self before sister. Where does that instinct come from? How deep must poverty run for people to claw at one another when they are all, equally, in need?
The same instinct lurks in quieter places too, in salons and schedules, in friendships and favours. People booking up appointments not out of necessity, but to ensure their circle thrives, even if others are left without. Aesthetic monopolies. Emotional gatekeeping. Service with no willingness to share. Is this survival? Or something darker?
Gosh, the horrors of competition culture in South Africa’s history echo this tragedy tenfold. It wasn’t only the apartheid regime enforcing white supremacy at the expense of all others. The violence that erupted between the ANC and IFP, the Zulu and Xhosa tensions, the turf wars and betrayals, these were all marked by a desperate effort to win. What is political dominance if not the sacred twisted into a scoreboard?
When did leadership become something to possess rather than embody?
Scholars like Trudi Hartzenberg argue that South Africa’s development is deeply shaped by competitive policy frameworks, meant to encourage progress, but often reinforcing exclusion and economic violence.¹ Liberty Mncube similarly notes how market power reinforces inequality when left unchecked.² This is competition not as play, but as predation.
In my postgraduate studies on A Biblical Theology of Justice, I came face-to-face with the deep biblical indictment of such systems. The Old Testament prophets rail against unjust balances, against those who manipulate the scales so that others go hungry.³ Justice, in Scripture, is not fairness in outcomes, it is rightness in relationships. So why have we traded covenantal justice for competitive comparison?
Perhaps most tragically, this culture of one-upmanship is nowhere more devastating than in the home. In intimate spaces where love should breed vulnerability, we now see a race for validation. Academic dominance. Financial peacocking. Emotional martyrdom. We keep score with the people we claim to love. Have we forgotten how to collaborate in relationships?
Even more disturbing is the way we compete with ourselves. Our health, our peace, our identities are sacrificed on altars of perfectionism. Consider the rise in non-essential cosmetic surgery globally. The data screams of a world addicted to self-improvement, scalpel over soul. A 2023 study by Dr Jean Kim on body dysmorphia and cosmetic culture reveals how global media exacerbates internalised competition, especially among women in postcolonial contexts.⁴ What does it profit a person to gain a symmetrical face but lose their soul?
If competition is allowed to run its full course, it crescendos in catastrophe. Not metaphorically, literally. Genocide is the final act of a culture that prizes dominance over dignity. Scholars like Lars-Erik Cederman have shown how elite competition and ethnic exclusion are consistent predictors of mass violence.⁵ Manus Midlarsky’s work on the anatomy of genocide links its roots to grievances born from competitive exclusion, who has land, who gets resources, who is seen.⁶ Rwanda. Bosnia. Armenia. The Holocaust. These were not acts of senseless violence; they were competitions that spiralled into elimination.
If my existence threatens yours, must I be erased?
Into this suffocating narrative, Jesus speaks. And He says, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.”
No drama. No ritual. No performance. Just healing authority. Jesus refuses to play the game. He does not ask the man to explain his failure to reach the pool. He doesn’t rebuke him for his weakness or compare him to others who got there first. He simply restores.
Do you see what He’s doing? He subverts the entire system. He does not just heal the body, He redeems the narrative.
Could it be that God’s justice is not about winning, but about restoring the one left behind?
This man had been overlooked for 38 years. But Jesus saw him. And He sees you. He sees the moments when you felt discarded, the times you were passed over, stepped on, interrupted. He sees you bleeding on the roadside while others sprint toward acclaim.
Will you let Him speak to your paralysis?
I have walked with Jesus for 22 years, and I am still terrible at being a Christian. But maybe that’s the point. Discipleship is not a competition. It’s a rising. Over and over. A taking up of what Jesus gives, grace, belonging, purpose. We are not racing to be God’s perfection; we are walking in it, slowly becoming what He already declares us to be.
Are you still striving? Or are you ready to walk?
The devil’s fall began with competition, his desire to usurp the power of the One. Many empires followed suit, only to crumble under the weight of stolen thrones. Historian Paul Kennedy chronicles in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers how overreach and pride mark the fall of every great empire.⁷ Power, when hoarded, collapses.
So why do we still crave it?
Perhaps it’s time we stopped stepping over each other and started rising with Christ. No more scarcity. No more scrambling. Just that voice saying, “Come with me. You are welcome.”
Practical Application
Take time this week to notice where competition culture is silently shaping your relationships, your work, and even your faith. Ask:
• Am I measuring my worth by someone else’s progress?
• Where have I stepped over others to “get ahead”?
• Where have I been paralysed by the belief that healing is for others, not me?
Choose one act of subversion this week. It could be letting someone else go ahead in line, giving recognition to someone often overlooked, or deliberately resisting comparison. Let that act be your “rising.” Not to prove something, but to echo the voice of Jesus who says, “Come with me, you are welcome.”
Prayer
Lord Jesus,
You see us when we are last, and You do not look away.
You hear our silent cries when we are outpaced, overlooked, or undone.
Forgive us for the times we have pushed ahead, forgetting others behind.
Heal the broken places in us that believe love is earned, and worth is scarce.
Teach us to rise, not above others, but with You.
Help us to take up what You freely give: grace, dignity, belonging.
And may we become those who no longer compete, but co-labour with heaven to restore what the world has cast aside.
In Your Holy Name King Jesus,
Amen.
Bibliography
1. Trudi Hartzenberg, “Competition Policy and Practice in South Africa: Promoting Competition for Development,” UNCTAD Series on Competition Law and Policy, 2006.
2. Liberty Mncube, “Has Competition Law Enforcement Been Effective in South Africa?” Review of African Political Economy 45, no. 158 (2018): 167–176.
3. Christopher J. H. Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2004).
4. Jean Kim, “The Rise of Cosmetic Surgery and the Globalization of Body Image,” Journal of Cultural Psychology 15, no. 3 (2023): 201–218.
5. Lars-Erik Cederman, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, and Halvard Buhaug, “Inequality, Grievances, and Civil War,” Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
6. Manus I. Midlarsky, The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
7. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Vintage Books, 1989).
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