This sermon begins with a story about a grave tragedy. On July 31, this past summer, Andrea Roberts killed her husband, Michael, daughter Micayla 11, Dylan 7, and finally herself. The Roberts family lived in Flower Mound, an upper middle class suburb of Dallas. The photographs of their home in the newspaper suggested prosperity. Earlier in that evening the family had watched Micayla play soccer.

The murder and suicide has been a mystery. Andrea left a note but it did not mention a motive. She was a stay at home mom who volunteered at Micayla’s and Dylan’s schools. The neighbors did not detect any trouble. There were no obvious signs of distress. Everyone thought they were a happy family.

I have spent some time wondering what it was that went on in that household that led to such a tragic turn of events. I have wondered what burdens Andrea carried around and why she apparently felt so helpless that she could not just set them down. Andrea Roberts did have a lot of options. Prosperous people have access to good medical care. If it came down to it, she could have just packed a small bag and left with a couple of credit cards. She probably could have asked any of her neighbors for help. There were lots of things she could have done—but didn’t do. Yet from her perspective it seems that she felt she had no options. It is stunning and terribly sad.

There is another Texas news story that I want to use that might shed some light on Andrea’s night. You might know that it is against the law to use anabolic steroids in the Lone Star state. But because there had been increasing suspicion about steroid use among high school athletes another law was passed requiring random testing of athletes. This also seems very sad.

Football in Texas is, of course, the true state religion, but there was a time when bulking up only meant eating a great deal of red meat. Well then some genius figured out that strength training would turn more of that ingested protein into muscle tissue. So football players were required to not only spend a lot of time at the kitchen table and practice field, but also in the weight room, bench pressing their way into enhanced bulk and gridiron stardom. Still, as football teams required an ever increased immensity of human size, and winning was absolutely necessary, some student athletes began to bulk up even more with anabolic steroids. So add to the kitchen table, the practice field, and the weight room, the backdoor pharmacy.

A year ago September a mother in Colleyville, Texas found a strange sports bag in her son’s closet. When she looked inside she found syringes and small bottles of liquid. She had them tested—anabolic steroids. She went to the coach at Heritage High who dismissed her concerns. Colleyville has been touted by Money magazine as one of the top 100 places to live in America. Surely such a fantastic community as Colleyville would not be the setting for such bad behavior. But she kept at it and finally the school administration had to take her seriously. After all, only two years earlier Don Taylor, a high school student and football star from Plano, had hanged himself, a suicide attributed to depression that was a result of the harsh mood swings which anabolic steroids are prone to cause. So the administration at Heritage High held an assembly outlining the dangers of steroids. Still, after her mom had raised such a ruckus the Heritage High athlete had to transfer to another school because of hazing from teammates. It seems that Heritage High had not been able to compete with Southlake Carroll High School, long regarded as the premier high school team in Texas, if not the nation. It was apparently hoped that with a little pharmaceutical advantage they might finally be competitive and thus become football gods. But eventually eight members of the football squad came forward and confessed to doping themselves.

The low estimate in the State of Texas for grades 7 through 12 steroid use? 42,000 children. And although the random testing program has been initiated few believe it will make much of a real dent in the problem. There is, as Adam Smith would put it, intense pressure from the free market trading in adolescent fame and glory. Kids will do just about anything to score that big touchdown. Hey, any one of them could be the next Vince Young, who probably could give Jesus a run for his money as far as popularity is concerned in the Lone Star State. Do you suspect that somewhere somebody is making some careful formulations to come up with a steroid that could beat the test?

It’s hard to imagine where this search for a competitive edge ends. Perhaps someday parents will undergo genetic testing of their infant in utero to determine the potential for an amazingly massive child who could grow up to pound other amazingly massive children into gridiron salt.

The common element between Andrea Roberts and teenage steroid use—the incredible power of competition in our lives. It is a very strong force, nearly universal and impossible to avoid. It is arguably creative in that it forces people to become ever more creative and work harder and longer. But it also has it’s down side. Just as with football, it’s hard to see where this search for a personal competitive edge ends. My most recent issue of Newsweek had an article about individuals who now are making good money as interior decorators for corporate jets. “Pimp my jet,” is the phrase. I do not know about you, but I do not regard this as a positive trend.

Admittedly I am guessing about Andrea Roberts’ descent into her own personal living hell. But Andrea Roberts is not the only Andrea who has been a victim of intense levels of competition. The Andrea that we know much more about in Houston, Ms. Yates, was also involved in competitive Christianity and competitive motherhood such that she too went far over the brink, exhausting her emotional reserves. She had no means of telling when she was finally a good enough mother or a good enough Christian, leading her to conclude that her miserable mothering and praying was guaranteeing a future in hell for her poor, poor children.

How do you tell when your good enough—at anything? How do you tell when you’re a good enough engineer, a good enough parent, a good enough salesperson, a good enough teacher, a good enough son or daughter? When is enough, enough? How big does your house have to be? How sincere do your prayers have to sound? When is big, big enough? When is good, good enough?

I don’t know about you, but I do have a hard time making these calculations. And there is a very sound reason why I, and you as well, have a very hard time answering these questions. Simply put, it’s not rational. Now you already knew that, but perhaps you didn’t realize the extent to which it is really not rational. The reasoning part of our brain, the cerebral cortex, is largely uninvolved in our unending quest for bigger and better, faster and stronger, more this or more that. Instead, the behavior is what we might call a root neurological behavior. Feelings of competitiveness happen at a level in our brains “underneath” our rational conscious control. And we are all in some ways driven by it because it is a biological, as against a rational process in our brains. The rational parts of our brains can measure and sort and reach a conclusion. The pre-rational biological part of our brain does not “know” how to do that. So there is no means by which we can rationally assess a situation and conclude, “Okay, that’s enough.” Thus, it’s important to realize that competition is a biological evolutionary process that is constantly pushing at the edge of life. You can no more stop the brain’s competitiveness than you can stop breathing. So realize, if that evolutionary process can turn a pterodactyl into a sparrow (which is what evolution actually did), imagine what it can do to you. Oh, but the rational part of the brain does have a bit part to play regarding competition. It’s constantly alert to the fact that others are doing better than we are. Sweet.

The tough part of the biological reality of endless competition is that is strikes us that it is “natural” and thus something over which we can have little useful control. Thus, no matter the degree of tragedy which is created by competition run amok, whether in high school football programs or Mattel getting the best deal by manufacturing its toys in China, well, that’s just the way it is. So suck it up, keep moving and make sure your spouse takes his or her meds. Hire a bunch of lawyers, fire the losers, it is a jungle out there.

So what to do? If reasoning is not capable of damping this biological fire, then perhaps our best strategy is to fight fire with fire. Thankfully there is an another biological urge hardwired into our neurology as a result of evolution, the desire to find companions. This neurological process is not quite as strong as the desire to compete as it was designed to augment competition by finding allies to help with one’s own success. But it is still a strong biological, as against “rational” drive. You know this. Have you ever made a list of the qualifications potential friends should possess and then went and tried to assess whether or not individuals you met fulfilled those criteria? If someone scored high, bingo—friend. Low scorers—not friend. You might as well hand out application forms. But finding friends is not a rational process. We all look for very broad markers, more along of the lines of “may have something in common with me.” But at the same time, you’ve probably have had friends with whom you’ve had little in common—other than the fact that you were, inexplicably—friends. Some research suggests that a powerful motivator for detecting potential companions is aroma—odors of which we are not even aware.

But the discovery of companions has been the only real way we human beings can resist the ever vigilant drive of competition. Here’s how this works. Let’s say that our mother is telling us one more time that we are not a good enough daughter. We may even know that we are an outstanding daughter but our neurology starts pushing all the guilt buttons. The smart reasoning part of our brain says, “I have nothing to feel guilty about.” But the underlying neurology says, “Oh, yes you do, for there is no such thing as good enough.” It is very frustrating that we cannot really convince ourselves that we have nothing to feel guilty about. But what we can do instead is find a friend who, if they are a true friend, will reassure us that we are an outstanding daughter. All we need do is hear those words of reassurance from someone else. We will believe them far more than we believe ourselves. It’s almost like magic. The friend doesn’t even have to know the mother, doesn’t have to know the history. All that is required is that you believe they know you and then the magic can happen. “Yes, I am good enough.”

You can extend the “mother making me feel guilty” routine to all the ways by which our biology, challenges us with it’s lever of dis-satisfaction with whatever success we have made. We feel the pressure whether it is questions about being good enough at work, school, in following our personal dreams, or being a parent or a spouse. We always imagine that others are pressing our guilt or inadequacy buttons, and some do. But ask yourself, why do you believe them? It’s because you are primed and ready by that omnipresent evolutionary force driving you ahead with its persistent dis-satisfaction.

So finding companions is absolutely essential to blunting that half creative half crazy making force in our lives. Creating the potential for such companions is one of the principal reasons why this congregation exists. Here, we claim, we will hold you in affection for who you are. We claim you already have inherent worth and dignity. You cannot get more worth here, you cannot get more dignity here. You are given that up front. It’s almost a miracle. But, I hasten to add, it does not come free. It does not come free.

Now I know what some of you are thinking. Here we go again, another budget drive pitch. Not so. I am talking about a different kind of cost. It’s not about something you can pull out of your wallet but something you will have to pull out of your heart.

You may have detected from time to time that as far as inherent dignity and worth are concerned that we are not perfect in the practice. We are good on the promise. Less so in practice. We are fairly good on wishing that our own inherent worth and dignity was affirmed. But as for affirming somebody else’s inherent worth and dignity? Well that’s a work in progress.

And it is work. You might be mislead to believe that this is a place that is burden free. After all, here is the place where you can lay down all the burdens that our society places upon your weary shoulders. Here you will find the people, get the insights, find the support. But who are the people who are doing all that support and all that affirming? It’s not going to rain down from heaven. It will come from you and I. And it is an error to believe that such affirming does not require work.

If nothing else, none of us are 100% affirmable 100% of the time. So if you were expecting to affirm only those people who unquestionably deserved it you would likely wait a very long time. We are not Trappist monks for god’s sake, we’re people. And besides which, if we were really saintlike would you want to be here? Wouldn’t it be a little intimidating, maybe even boring? But given the fact that we are not saintlike, it does mean that there is important work to be done, burdens to be carried. And it is challenging because it requires a willingness to affirm people who are different than you, people who do things you do not understand, even on occasion people who do things you do not like. This does not mean excusing mistakes, this does not mean being forced to agree, this does not turning a blind eye to immorality—if such were to happen. But it does mean making a promise never to turn one’s heart away from one another. As a certain Nazarean once replied to a question about forgiveness, it’s 70 times 7. Perhaps certain things are unforgivable. But I have not yet encountered such a thing in this congregation. Still it is important not to underestimate the hard work involved in promising to keep one’s heart open to another. It can sometimes be a hard burden to carry. It is a discipline, not a cakewalk. This news may come across to some of you who are new as a kind of bait and switch. Here you thought you could be a part of religious community that did not ask you to believe things that made no sense. Ha, I’m free! But after the initial thrill comes the realization that being rid of dogmatic religion does not make your life easier. Real growth in mind and spirit is fundamentally hard work. You then realize that you are going to have to work on affirming the people who here made promises of companionship to you, and you them.

But the hard work does have amazing benefits that cannot be found by any other means. The first benefit is that if you are really interested in learning things about the world and yourself, then you will actually have to pay some attention to people with whom you disagree. If all you did was hang out with people who seemed to be only “your kind of people,” well what do such people have to teach you that you already don’t know? And ironically, it often turns out that the people who have the most to teach us are the ones with whom we feel the greatest dissimilarity.

The other benefit is actually far more charming and much less disruptive. In fact, this other benefit is down right pleasurable. This benefit? You will find that if you are willing to carry this burden of affirming people who are different, people who sometimes annoy you, people who sometimes will let you down, you will discover that such a burden is about all you can carry. It’s hard work, so hard in fact, that you find you have less energy and time left for noticing those competitive burdens. In a sense affection floods the neurological circuits so that questions about being big enough, strong enough, smart enough, they are still there but they become a muted background noise.

Our neurological competitive drive which unceasingly creates dissatisfaction is burdensome. Because it is a biological reality questions about being good enough at work or in family life cannot be answered by any rational method. What we can do instead is find companions who can reassure us and give us some respite from evolution’s drive for success. Such companions in turn create another set of burdens, burdens which, however, would we more gladly carry as we each help one another deepen our understanding and grow our souls. And as we shift our focus from exclusively mulling over our constant yearning for our own success, to being of support and comfort to one another in our yearnings, we each will be able to more easily pronounce, “I guess I am doing a pretty good job.” We will move ahead through the days of our lives as companions, not free of all burdens, but free enogh to carry on the good work of faith, hope, and love.