Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Woe to you when all men praise you: The Upside of Disapproval

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Woe to you when All Men Praise you: The Upside of Disapproval


Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets. Whoa! Unintentional homonymic pun!


This is one of Jesus’s harder saying because we humans are social animals, we are gregarious, we instinctively like other people (which is one explanation for the success of Facebook, for instance).  We need approval.  And so much of human endeavour is motivated by the desire for approval.  People at the receiving end of the Amish practice of “shunning” developed depression, mental illness, and died before their time.


The moon has its dark side, and so do most things on earth. People’s approval, for instance. I led women’s groups over a period of seven years. This blog would never have been successful if I had still been leading them. (Is it successful? Well, it’s in the top 25 religion blogs according to Wikio’s rankings released yesterday and it is not yet 7 months old.)


The blog might not have been particularly unique or interesting if I had still been teaching women’s groups. Now I am just a voice crying in the wilderness (sometimes, literally, on both counts!) Some groups I taught had 25 women.  If I were still teaching, I would have been afraid to share my struggles and doubts and sadnesses and failures openly for fear that it may not have been inspiring or edifying, that it may have been discouraging, that it may lead to second-guessing me when I did teach, and so what I taught might have been less effective.


Since churches are lead by human beings (i.e. by sinners), no church gets everything right. I would not have been able to point out where I thought we were deviating from the plumbline if I felt I was leading something and was under authority. There is one issue on which I deviate from orthodox Christian doctrine. I would not have been able to blog about that issue. (And I still haven’t–coward!!–but soon will. I think.)


When everyone approves of you–and I have noticed this in other people as well as in myself–to some extent, you lose yourself. You pretend to be nicer, sweeter, smilier than you really are. My own danger signal that I am acting nicer and sweeter than I really am is when my cheek muscles start hurting. I am smiling so much in a not entirely natural way!


And when I sense disapproval? Well, I return to the healing fountain, to the one who knows the worst and still accepts me. I allow him to cleanse me and fill me. I say, “Well, this is what they 
think of me.  There may well be some truth in it. But what do you think of me? And thank you for loving me, whatever you think of me. Fill me again with your spirit, to overflowing. Help me to follow you.” 

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Comments

  1. Thank you, Simon. I had heard of “Toxic Faith” and will research it. Your summary is intriguing.Cults operate on those principles!!

    I will look up “The Undefended Life.” I had not heard of it.

  2. One of the major things that came out of the course I've just taken, for me personally as well as academically, was the danger of leading when you're in need of the approval of others. You can't make the tough and potentially unpopular decisions that are sometimes necessary if you're craving the aproval of those you lead.

    I don't mean that you need to be indifferent to the voices of people around you, but that someone who is operating out of insecurity to the extent of needing others' approval for their own personal fulfillment can be a very dangerous person in leadership. A church leader, for instance, who makes decisions out of his own insecurities can make some impressively bad decisions and can rightly be called a toxic leader. (See my quote from Toxic Faith.)

    Simon Walker has done a great series of books on “undefended leadership” (and now “The Undefended Life”) which relates to all of this – leading and living without the need for the approval of others.