One of the things about the human condition is that we are very preoccupied with other people’s opinion of us. We are constantly wondering what people think about us - even people that we don’t know that well.
It is easy to take this to an extreme and to become obsessed with people’s approval.
On the other hand, we can react to this propensity by going the other way and saying, “I don’t care what people think about me; as long as I love myself I’m o.k.”
And that is the mindset of a sociopath: an unwillingness to be accountable to anyone outside of yourself. Lots of criminals don’t care about what society thinks about them. They do what they want to do, and no one can tell them any different.
So what is the solution? How do we keep from being enslaved to people’s approval on one side and enslaved to our self-loving, others-ignoring tendencies on the other.
Paul says that the solution is to live as one who will be examined by God:
“As for me, it matters very little how I might be evaluated by you or any human authority. I don’t even trust my own judgment on this point. My conscience is clear but that doesn’t prove I’m right. It is the Lord himself who will examine me and decide.” (4.3-4)
At the end of the day, you don’t answer to the people you are so afraid of. And you are not vindicated as faithful simply by loving and accepting yourself.
You answer to the Lord Jesus, who died so that you would belong to him and live for him. What people say about you, or what you say about yourself, loses significance in the face of the one who will ultimately examine your life.
May we be faithful to him.
Lord, help me not to shape my life according to others’ opinions, or my own sense of being right. Help me to shape my life as one who lives first and foremost for you. Amen.
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