People scare me. They aren’t scary “like a zombie is scary” (as Jack would say :-), but the influence they wield over my everyday
Fear One: You Might Not Like Me
Two general fears have fueled my need to shape my life to fit other people’s expectations. First, I fear the consequences of what you will think of me because of something I say or do. After seeing me do X, Y or (heaven forbid!) Z, you might not want to be my friend, might not trust me to watch your children, might not respect my opinion or even listen to anything I say, you might think that I’m lazy, believe that I’m ungodly, assume that I’m uneducated, tell someone that I’m not qualified (for whatever I was doing), and on and on the list goes. In order to keep all that from ever happening, I will try my hardest to make you believe that I truly have it all together. The guilt that I feel when I discover that I’ve failed to meet your expectations only pushes me to try hard the next time I see you.
What gives me pause is the thought that maybe there are other people who feel need to please me! Maybe I’m the “scary” person in their lives! Out of fear and guilt, are we all just walking around trying to convince each other that we are perfect? Have we all made the unspoken yet mutually agreed upon decision to be the “perfect” (cough, fake!) version of ourselves when out in public?
I mean, during a prayer time, have you ever noticed that our requests are usually about other people? It’s a rare occasion when someone admits to a personal struggle and asks his or her fellow Christians for prayer. Or if we do talk about our personal lives, it’s in code form. I say “please pray that my neighbor will get saved” when I should be saying “please pray that I’m not a coward this week and that I will go over and talk to my neighbor because I know she needs Christ.” Or I say “please pray for my me and my sons as we transition into homeschooling” when I should be saying “please pray that I will guard my tongue and not lose my temper at the boys when homeschooling becomes super frustrating.” Honestly, I believe that many of us have made the horrible decision to isolated our true selves from other people, cutting ourselves off from any encouragement or prayer because we are afraid to show people what we are really like. Fitzpatrick writes,
“If it is true that we are all sinners in need of grace, and if, most happily, Jesus loves sinners, then why don’t we all stop pretending to be something other than what we are? One of the reasons we are so weary is because we waste so much effort to keep our masks in place. …It’s why we can’t rest or admit our weakness or let others see us as we really are. It’s why we feel so threatened when we are criticized and why we toss and turn at night rehearsing our failures from the day.”
Fear Two: If You Don’t Like Me, God Might Not Like Me
This second reason for modifying my life that is the sneakier of the two. I trick myself into believing that, by keeping people in my life happy, my life will be better and I will be more spiritual. For example, because my marriage is more enjoyable when Paul is content with our relationship it makes sense that keeping Paul happy becomes a priority for me. When Paul approves of me, I feel validated. I feel as though the proverbs thirty-one women would salute me and that God must be pleased. Since I very much like this warm and secure feeling, pleasing Paul can quickly turn into a never-ending quest to “become the perfect wife” in order to constantly re-win Paul’s approval, over and over again. On the days when I don’t live up to some expectation and he is disappointed or annoyed with me, I am left feeling like I must have missed the biblical target for “godly wife” (and that the proverbs thirty-one woman would just throw her hands up in frustration).
Now, consider how this scenario plays out in my life as a parent (with expectations from my friends and family) as a child (with expectations from my parents) as an employee (with expectations from my boss and co-workers) and as a peer (with the expectations of my FB friends, neighbors, siblings, church members, friends and even maybe even the random person in the line in front of me at Target). Day-to-day life becomes a mine field of broken expectations. I tell myself that if people are disappointed with me, then God is probably disappointed too.
So what do I do?? You might expect me to counsel myself to simply stop feeling guilty. Just stop. Stop caring what people think and live my life free of the burden of other peoples’ opinions. This is the generally accepted antidote for combating peer pressure. Reading any number of Mommy Blogs and this is the advice that you will hear. But is it right? Are we really supposed to just “not care” about other people’s expectations, hopes, and lives?
I think we need to forge a different path forward. We need to deal with others’ sometimes wayward opinions with grace and love. Here is what I’ve been learning from Scripture and the way I’ve been trying to live (with varying levels of success).
Lesson One: God’s Opinion Matters First
Many people ask the question, “Who am I?” What we don’t realize is that the way we live shows us what we believe our identity to be. When I live in fear of your opinion, the answer to the identity question would essentially be “whatever others want me to be.” I am Paul’s perfect wife, I’m Jack’s perfect mother, I’m Jane’s perfect daughter, I’m Rachel’s perfect friend, etc. But God never commanded you to be the person they wanted you to be. He commanded you to be his child first. His opinion is the one that truly matters. As Tripp writes,
“Where you find your identity will have everything to do with how you respond to the hard work of relationships with others. Either I get my identity vertically, out of my sense of who God is and who he has made me in Christ, or I will seek to get my identity horizontally, out of my circumstances, relationships, and successes. …When you seek to define who you are through those relationships, you are actually asking another sinner to be your personal messiah, to give you the inward rest of soul that only God can give. Only when I have sought my identity in the proper place (in my relationship with God) am I able to put you in the proper place as well.”
So when I have to decide what to say or how to act, I shouldn’t ask myself what would so-and-so want me to do right now. My identity as God’s blood-bought child must come first and causes (compels? 2 Cor 5:14–15) me to ask what God wants first and then to consider how I can do that thing in a way that would be kind and helpful for my husband/friend/parent. If what they want from me matches what God wants from me, then great! I can jump in and love God by meeting their expectation (i.e. my children expect that I will love them and feed them and forgive them, God does too! My husband expects that I will encourage him, listen to him, and help him, God does too!) But if what that person wants (demands) from you is not one of God’s stated expectations, well, then life gets tricky.
Lesson Two: What To Do When God and People Don’t Agree
Ok, this is where I’m going to try to become really practical. Wouldn’t it be lovely if the bible was just a giant list of dos-and-don’t? No generalities, no thinking on my own, just a huge list of everyday tasks specific to my everyday life (“What? You want the meal I cook for you to be organic? Let me check….nope! Not in the bible! You want me to teach the twos Sunday School Class? Let me check…oh. I guess I will. Apparently, it’s commanded.”) But that’s not how God does it. Instead, God gives us an example to follow (Christ), a few general overview rules (love God, love others, hate sin, etc), and some smaller more applicable commands that cover some of the specifics in life (don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t steal, don’t gossip etc.) For anything not specifically covered, we have to make choices base on these truths, choices of how to best glorify God in the situation.
We get ourselves into trouble when we rush forward, assuming that glorifying God means meeting everyone’s expectations and keeping them happy. Is that what God’s spiritual daughter should do? Sadly, this mentality has been my knee-jerk reaction for most of my life. It causes me to simply buckle down and work harder present the world with the very best version of “Elizabeth Snyder, Extraordinaire” that I can with the hope that everyone will be content and satisfied when they interact with me. It’s exhausting. Instead of the easy yoke and light burden offered by my gentle and humble Savior (Matt 11:29–30), I race around trying to please everyone else instead. As Welch states,
“We are all kneeling and bowing down before something. … Look carefully and you will see that what started off as a small concern about the opinions of other people has been supersized. It became the center of your life. When your desire for acceptance, love, and approval grows like this, you are actually worshipping other people. They have become idols with legs.”
While it is helpful to know the expectations of say, my husband (so that I can understand how my actions might affect him), I am not commanded to meet all of these expectations. He is not the rule maker or the one who determines how I am to love him best. In fact, I am biblically obligated to stop and determine whether his expectation is even correct before I think about meeting it! And this obligation must be carried into all of my interactions with other people and their expectations for me. Remember how I said that this is where dealing with people getting tricky? This is especially true when dealing with other believers. Fitzpatrick notes,
“Since we want to live in grateful obedience for our salvation, messages that come to us from Christian speakers and writers [and friends, and parents, and blogs, and women’s retreats, etc.] have more power to condemn us. So when we hear a rule about what we should do to please God, we need to be good students of the bible. We need to ask ourselves, ‘Is this actually something that the Bible specifically commands?’ We should also ask, ‘Is this a wise application of a specific verse?’ If the answer isn’t a resounding yes, then we can feel free to ignore it.”
There are even times when glorifying God might mean making someone unhappy. God knows this. Isn’t the whole point of parenting helping a child learn that many of their expectations are actually wrong and need to be corrected? If I always tailored my life to meet the desires of children they would grow up self-oriented and undisciplined. Instead I must teach them that self-centeredness is to be put away and that love should be their default mode of thinking (1 Cor 13:11–13). If I always tailored my life to meet the desires of my husband I might miss an opportunity to be a true friend who points out error in his life (Prov 27:6). Do you see what I am getting at? Sometimes, saying “no” or not doing the thing you’re “expected” to do is actually the best choice, the one that glorifies God the most.
Lesson Three: Dealing With Everyone’s Evaluations
All this talk might make you wish that people would just mind their own business and not have any opinions about anyone else. We should live in a world where there is zero judgment. Whatever you do is fine. You’re fine. I’m fine. It’s all good. But we aren’t fine. People do see my faults and I see theirs. Blithely ignoring what people think is the other side of the swinging pendulum. If I cared too much about the opinions of others, some care too little.
You see, God designed us with the ability to observe and the ability to sort through our observations and draw conclusions. He even gave us a giant “how to” book! Proverbs is full of helpful tips for determining for evaluating people; the fool (Prov 18:2, Prov 13:6), a true friend (Prov 27:5-6, Prov 22:24-25, Prov 27:9), a godly woman (Prov 31:30, Prov31:26), an ungodly woman (Prov11:22, Prov 7:5), a flatterer (Prov 29:5, Prov 26:28), a liar (Prov 17:4, Prov 14:5), a hypocrite (Prov 26:19, Prov 7:13-14) along with other savory and unsavory characters. Given what I find in Proverbs (along with all the other instructions in the bible), I’d venture to state that God expects us to observe people, draw conclusions and then act on those conclusions. Stay away from the fool. Don’t trust a liar. Regard flattery with suspicion. Listen to your true friends. Seek out godly companions. Find godly mentors.
So, regardless of what we would like, God wants us to evaluate each other. I must watch you and you should watch me. But he expects us to use our assessments in a godly manner. Biblical evaluation is needed in order to determine who is struggling and in need of help (1 Thess 5:14), it is the tool we use to recognize those who is foolish and should be avoided (Prov 14:17) and it is a requirement for choosing those people who will wield great influence in our lives — like spouses, friends, elders and mentors (1 Cor 11:1). However, if we use our assessments in an ungodly manner, when pat ourselves on the back or snicker at the shortcomings of others, we set ourselves on a path that can lead to devastating spiritual pride. Given that we are all sinners saved by God’s unrelenting and unmerited love, we should be quick to show mercy and give grace. That person you are evaluating is no less valuable or less loved by God than you are. Manning writes,
“The way we are with each other is the truest test of our faith. How I treat a brother or sister from day to day, how I react to the sin-scarred wino on the street, how I respond to interruptions from people I dislike, how I deal with normal people in the normal confusion on a normal day may be a better indication of my reverence for life than the anti-abortion sticker on the bumper of my car. We are not pro-life simply because we are warding off death. We are pro-life to the extent that we are men and women for others…we can touch the hand of another with love.”
Love God, Love Others, Hate Sin
In the battle against fear of man and guilt over perceived failure, this little phrase has been an anchor for me. I love it. I’ve actually thought about getting it tattooed on my wrist, though I haven’t quite gotten up the nerve to face my fear of needles (perhaps I can start my next post with that, “Needles care me. . . ” :-). Still, though it might never find a permanent place on my body, I want it to find a permanent place in my heart. Loving others doesn’t mean forgetting God, loving God doesn’t mean ignoring the people around me. And my sin (pride, fear, unbelief etc) will always hurt relationships. Taken all together, taken in the right order, my priorities are clear. Putting them into practice may be difficult and uncomfortable at times, but having those biblically defined goals settled in my mind gives me the freedom to live genuinely and honestly with people…scary, scary people : ).
Books that were helpful (not mentioned in the other blog post):
Relationships: A Mess Worth Making by Paul Tripp
What Do You Think of Me? Why Do I Care by Edward Welch
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