Crab Mentality

I have attended a camp called “The Captain’s Steward: A Servant’s Heart”. I have been in many campings before but they were more on leisure and academics, this one was about being a Christian. This was my first time to attend a camping like this. The objective of this camping was to encourage the youth to become a good servant of the Lord God. It also promoted humility and selflessness. I really enjoyed my experience there, it was so exhilarating or should I say soul-lifting.

We had a game there called “Bring Me Back My Baby” wherein the main goal was to find the lost captain/leader of the group. We were grouped into  9 members each team. The mechanics of the game was to bring back your leader in the base(starting point) but you would only be considered winner if all your members are still complete. The other groups can have a hostage from your group if they find your member roaming around without your whole team, and that would prevent you from winning. So this was how we did it.

We wandered for about 2 hours in the whole campsite. Given that the place was something like timberland and it seemed creepy, we still ventured for the sake of winning and we felt somewhat accountable for his lost but we found nothing. We got exhausted. We were already losing hope when we saw the members of the other group heading towards us and we thought that if we take them as hostages, it could also prevent them from winning. Crab mentality was what we had that time, it was like ‘if we can’t win, then no one else can win’. We hostage them even though their whole team was just a meter a way and that made us unfair. It just made us(the two groups) to argue and that delayed us to find our captain. So in the end both of us lost the game.

My point here is God will never grant your requests or prayers when your intentions are for the downfall of the others.  He doesn’t want us to reason like that. He only desires the best for us. What we did there was so shameful knowing that we were there for the Lord God. We failed to show off the true meaning of selflessness.

This camping did a lot of teachings to me. I learned that we should delight in the victory of others though they are enemies. We shouldn’t wish for the worst of our competitors. In that way, we are already victors in the eyes of Lord Jesus and He will bless us.