THE LOVE OF GOD FREES FROM SEEKING THE APPROVAL OF MAN

 

 

The opinions of man can control and devastate us, even for someone who has it all. Haman was the second most powerful man in the Persian Empire. When he passed, everyone bowed before him except for one man, Mordecai the Jew (Esther 3). Haman was so enraged that he decided to exterminate all of the Jews.

Our need for approval and validation is so utterly life-controlling that those who have everything always need more. In The Significant Life, George Weaver cites President Lyndon B. Johnson as an example of this:

·       According to one commentator, “It is a curious footnote to history that long before he ran into trouble, Johnson had turned central Texas into a living monument to his heritage and his journey to the summit (the L.B.J birthplace, the L.B.J. boyhood home, the L.B.J. state park, the L.B.J. ranch and more).” (22)

Sadly, this insatiable and oppressive need doesn’t turn many towards the God of the Bible. Jesus had charged the religious leadership with being more concerned about the opinions of men than of God:

• “How can you believe, who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44)

Without the love of God, we are never satisfied. We are empty stomachs, which always need more. King Herod had refused to sell grain to Tyre and Sidon. So they sent some very savvy ambassadors to him. When Herod began to speak, they proclaimed, “This is the voice of a god, not of a man” (Acts 12). They understood Herod and also human nature. So does Scripture:

·       The fear [trusting in the opinions] of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is safe. (Proverbs 29:25)

I too had lusted over the approval of man. Before I had graduated from social work school, the highly esteemed director of our department called me in. I had expected her to commend me. However, she said, “I don’t know if I should say this to you, but I think you are going to have problems wherever you go.”

I was devastated, but before I had an opportunity to ask her to explain, she received a phone call and remained on the line for the next 15 minutes. I finally left feeling that I had an arrow in my side, and it was a wound that remained for a number of years.

We are imprisoned by this need for approval and validation. It is a life-controlling addiction. However, Jesus had promised us freedom:

• Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:31-32)

Therefore, Paul had declared:

·       [This] is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me. (2 Timothy 1:11–12)

As our esteem of God’s opinion of us grows, our esteem of the opinions of other diminish.

After being imprisoned and vulnerable to the opinions of others for many years, I am beginning to understand Paul’s words and the freedom implied by them. To understand that you are a servant of God and to know that only His opinions ultimately count is liberating to say the least. It is also edifying and empowering!

 However, aren’t we merely exchanging one set of enslaving opinions for another set? As Bob Dylan had once sung, “You Gotta Serve Someone.” We are social creations. Consequently, we hunt for cues from our surroundings as to how we define ourselves and answer the question, “Who am I, and how should I live?” Our minds are restless until we can answer this question. We seek self-definition as fervently as we seek food. Besides, we should seek to answer this question. It is what makes us human:

·       The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. (Proverbs 20:5)

We can live like an animal to simple fulfill our immediate needs and desires, but we were designed for more. In The Significant Life, attorney George M. Weaver identifies our drive to establish our self-importance:

·       Individual humans are not concerned so much about the survival of the species as they are about their personal survival or significance. In order to push ourselves beyond our confining space-time limits, we as individuals try to set ourselves apart from the rest of humanity. It is unsettling to admit that one is average or ordinary – a routine person. (7)

Where should this search for significance lead us? We can attempt to find this in our association with others, even if pathological. Weaver writes about the opposite attempt to establish one’s mark on the world:

·       In 2005 Joseph Stone torched a Pittsfield, Massachusetts apartment building… After setting the blaze, Stone rescued several tenants from the fire and was hailed as a hero. Under police questioning, Stone admitted, however, that he set the fire and rescued the tenants because, as summarized at trial by an assistant district attorney, he “wanted to be noticed, he wanted to be heard, he wanted to be known.” (44)

Evidently, this drive for significance is so powerful that it can overrule the moral dictates of conscience. One mass-murderer gunman explained in his suicide note, “I’m going to be f_____ famous.” (45)

This drive for significance can even override all other affections. On December 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman, a zealous fan of the Beatle, John Lennon, first obtained his idol’s autograph before gunning him down. He explained:

·       “I was an acute nobody. I had to usurp someone else’s importance, someone else’s success. I was  ‘Mr. Nobody’ until I killed the biggest Somebody on earth.” At his 2006 parole hearing, he stated: “The result would be that I would be famous, the result would be that my life would change and I would receive a tremendous amount of attention, which I did receive… I was looking for reasons to vent all that anger and confusion and low self-esteem.” (47)

By attaching himself to someone greater, Chapman was able to elevate himself. Was it “low self-esteem” or merely Chapman’s own way to achieve what everyone else is trying to achieve by chasing after celebrities for their autographs – importance? Weaver reports that:

·       More than two hundred people confessed in 1932 to the kidnapping and murder of the infant son of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh. (50)

The need for significance is so powerful that people are willing to pay almost any price for it. However, observing the emptiness of this pursuit, some have converted this absurd quest into a quest for ultimate meaning. It might take the form a of moral-crusader. The UN claims: “The precious dignity of the individual person is a central humanist value” (82-83), another indication of our common pursuit of significance, even if disguised as a “nobler” quest?

Because this quest is so exhausting, others have forsaken the temporary attainments of this world in favor of attaining enlightenment, even their absorption into a person-less nirvana–-a universal consciousness where individual distinctions do not exist. This is the monistic answer – a rejection of the illusory, worldly strivings in favor of a singular other-worldly pursuit, immortality, or so it seems.

Is this hope merely escapism? The poet Miguel de Unamuno protested that the:

·       “Tricks of monism avail us nothing; we crave the substance and not the shadow of immortality.” (84)

According to Unamuno, monism presents a false hope. To whom does it offer immortality if the individual no longer exists in the monistic heaven, but rather just a universal consciousness? Is this immortality any more substantial than a dead body thrown in the ground with a tree planted over it, eventually lifting its nutrients into its branches and fruit? Is it any more substantial than Napoleon’s hope of immortality in being remembered by others, by history, by something grander than himself?

Chapman felt himself elevated by Lennon’s autograph. others by achieving success and praise, even worship. It seems that all these attempts to take hold of immortality are also attempts to join ourselves to something greater.

What do we make of this quest? Is it entirely aberrant or does it reflect something essential about our human reality, something that must be fulfilled? Often, our desires are curiously matched with real-world objects. We hunger, and there is food; we thirst, and there is drink; we tire and there is sleep; we are lonely, and there are friends and family. Is it possible that our desire for significance is also matched with an object of fulfillment? Is there a God who has created us for relationship with Him? Is it possible that our pursuit is connected to something greater than us? Is our need for significance a product of a divinely implanted desire for God?

This desire remains strangely unfulfilled in most people. Could it be that it has been misdirected onto the wrong objects - success and notoriety? The Prophet Isaiah vocalized an alternative solution:

·       “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money,   come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live… Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.” (Isaiah 55:1-3, 6-7)

To receive from God is to be free from our need to establish our self-importance, from the endless burden to prove and to define ourselves! Instead, we were created to be loved by God and to love Him back.

Is this just another form of servitude, a bondage which deprives us of our freedom? If so, it is like that of the fish who is bound to the water, where his freedom is ironically maximized. Jesus admitted that coming to Him represented a form of servitude, but a blessed servitude:

·       “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28–30)

Yes, I have a yoke around my neck, but it is a yoke that we all need. It is a yoke of meaning, purpose, and truth. I gladly adorn myself with it when I get out of bed and commit myself to the One who loves me and proved it by sacrificing His life in the most painful and humiliating way conceivable. It is my honor and glory to wear His yoke.