Comparison can only become an ally when we use it to compare ourselves to the right standard and if we do so for the right reason. It can only become an ally when we compare ourselves to Jesus out of a longing to be more like him. The way to grow in holiness is not to compare ourselves to other people, but to compare ourselves to the Savior.

Comparison comes as naturally to us as eating, breathing, laughing, weeping. From our youngest days we begin to compare ourselves to others and quickly find the old adage to be true: Comparison is the enemy of joy. Though we so readily compare ourselves with others, we discover that this fosters a deep unhappiness. What promises joy actually delivers misery.
The reason is that comparison is intrinsically competitive, so that we don’t really want to be merely pretty, but prettier than the other person; we don’t really want to be merely wealthy, but wealthier than he is; we don’t really want to be merely successful, but more successful than the other person. No follower count is high enough until it is higher than hers, no church big enough until it is bigger than his. If we fail to get the things our hearts desire we grow in envy, but if we do get them we grow in pride. Our comparison is never rewarded with contentment.
Even in our Christian lives we can be prone to comparison. We can judge ourselves righteous by comparing ourselves to others’ depravity, we can judge ourselves faithful by comparing ourselves to others’ sinfulness, we can judge ourselves committed by comparing ourselves to others’ apathy. We can become like the Pharisee Jesus introduced in a parable—the one who went to the temple to pray and said, “I thank you, God, that I am not like other men”—especially like that traitorous tax collector who stood nearby.
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The Psalms of Ascent are a reminder of what we possess in Christ.  So, let us take up these Psalms.  Let us read and remember that Christ built His house, laying Himself as the chief cornerstone.  What is more, each of us are living stones situated one beside another creating a beautiful house temple to His glory. Therefore, let each psalm take us on a pilgrimage to our Christ.  And there let us be glad and rejoice for we are safe in Him who is our God!

The Psalms of Ascent is a collection of Psalms in the Psalter.  There are other collection or groupings of Psalms. This collection is not unique in that sense.  However, this collection was a well-worn collection.  This dog-eared collection was taken by pilgrims to Jerusalem three times per year on their pilgrimage, hence the title, Psalms of Ascent. These pilgrims were going up to Jerusalem! Some have viewed the 15 Psalms that make up this collection (Psalms 120-134) as the fifteen steps leading up to the temple in Jerusalem.[1]
What is more, this series of Psalms is finely structured.  Psalm 127 is the middle Psalm leaving seven on either side.  This middle Psalm is the only one in the collection written by Solomon.  It is as familiar as it is loved. This is the Psalm that reminds us that “unless the Lord builds the house, those how build labor in vain.” Advice Solomon himself should have paid close attention to during his reign.  Yet, the Psalm drives us beyond Solomon to think of Christ.
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It is obvious now, looking back at the post-9/11 and pre-Obergefell era, that the leftward drift of this movement was inevitable. The end of Renn’s “neutral world” and the beginning of a negative world hostile to Christianity began soon after the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision in 2015  and accelerated rapidly with Trump’s 2016 victory. Changed circumstances undermined the attractive witness model as previously practiced. The neutral-world ethos could not hold in the negative world; the era of open debate was gone.

I converted to Christ in the year 2000, leaving behind my atheistic contrarianism. I entered American Protestantism completely unaware that something unique was occurring. In the 1980s, Calvinism reemerged as a potent intellectual force in evangelicalism, spearheaded by Baptists John Piper and John MacArthur and Presbyterian R. C. Sproul. In the early 2000s, young Gen X seminary graduates and writers who were influenced by these men became a movement known as the Young, Restless, and Reformed (YRR). New personalities and publishers emerged, and megachurches were formed. Centered on Calvinistic doctrines of salvation, these Baby Boomers and Gen X Calvinists achieved a good deal of theological unity. 
Their cross- and intra-generational unity was most evident in the Together for the Gospel conferences (T4G), which began in 2006 and held every other year. It was organized by four friends, already well-established in their own  circles in the pre-social media days—Mark Dever (Baptist), Ligon Duncan (Presbyterian), Albert Mohler (Baptist), and C.J. Mahaney (Charismatic), along with three invited speakers: Piper, MacArthur, and Sproul. What unified them were belief in biblical inerrancy, male headship of families, and the “five points” of Calvinism, which can be reduced (albeit simplistically) to the traditional Reformed doctrine of predestination. Thus, they were opposed to feminism, modern “critical” biblical scholarship, and the freewill doctrines of Arminianism. The conference grew over the years to include younger pastors such as David Platt (Baptist), Matt Chandler (Baptist), Kevin DeYoung (Presbyterian), Thabiti Anyabwile (Baptist), and others. 
I attended the 2008 T4G in Louisville, Kentucky, seeing the men I had read for several years joyfully sitting on panels together, despite their important differences. This togetherness was real. But it was also entirely a product of the time. It was in the middle of what Reformed writer Aaron Renn has labeled the 20-year “neutral world” period from 1994 to 2014—a world in which Christianity no longer had a privileged status but was not disfavored. Most everyone in these evangelical circles was a political “conservative” or typical evangelical voter, against abortion and homosexual marriage. Nevertheless, on political questions, the YRR leaders approached politics very differently. Piper was an outspoken Christian pacifist who would have even refused to defend his own family against violence. MacArthur regularly proclaimed his sentiment that “government can’t save you.” In contrast, Mohler (along with thePresbyterians) devoted attention to “engaging” the culture. But in the neutral world these differences were seemingly less pertinent; the glue of their unity was opposition to theological liberalism.
The late Timothy Keller also rose in prominence at this time in communicating the Gospel to coastal elites. His neo-Calvinism spread far and wide among the Gen-X world, establishing an ethos centered on “winsomeness” and a “third-way” politics above (not between, so he claimed) the political left and right. 
Under Keller’s influence, the YRR era was not retreatist but activist—pursuing “cultural engagement” by demonstrating that orthodox faith is the key to a coherent, good, and complete life. The purpose of “public theology” was more evangelistic than political; and most adherents, even if they disapproved of “neutrality” language, still approved of the possibility of debate within a shared public square. That is, entering public discourse offered Christians the chance not so much to win politically as to demonstrate their serenity, through a politics that appeared attractive, heavenly, and pleasantly aloof, and devoid of anxiety, overreaction, and anger. To the urban liberal, this was a quirky but safe political stand that checked the boxes on most “social justice” concerns. 
Hence, Christians who followed Keller’s approach could downplay or overlook questions of political power and focus instead on verbal and aesthetic persuasion. The principle regarding politics, especially for followers of Keller, was that political commentary and activism was an extension of “witness,” not fundamentally a means for good political outcomes. Every decision in ministering this witness tended to defer to whether it resulted in making Christianity attractive to non-believing urbanites. Politics was an extension of cultural apologetics, built around “authenticity” as opposed to the kitschy, suburban “seeker-sensitive” movement of the ’90s. The assumption was that secular people will become dissatisfied with the secular identities on offer and look for a coherent alternative. This approach made sense in that neutral world that no longer exists, where the Christian identity was one viable alternative among competing identities.
The Gospel Coalition (TGC), founded in 2005, exemplified this approach. A “coalition” of likeminded mostly neo-Calvinist churches, TGC served mainly to platform rising stars and to establish an elite evangelicalism. TGC’s long-time (and current) editor in chief, Collin Hansen, who wrote the book Young, Restless, Reformed in 2008, credited Keller’s works on “cultural apologetics” as a driver of the movement. Subsequently, the target engagement-audience for TGC (and neo-Calvinist apologetics in general) has always been urbanites, or at least non-rural residents. Few talked about the need for ministries to rural, working-class whites.
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