God forgive me, I covet approval.
I don’t know where or how it started. I remember being pleased even as a child that people were pleased with me: that I could make them smile or feel proud. I loved my parents especially, they were wonderful and loving, and their approval meant more to me than nearly anything. And so I, consciously or unconsciously, aimed for that the entirety of my life.
As a kid, this served me incredibly well. Generally speaking, my parents wanted me to behave in good and godly ways, and winning their approval meant mostly doing that. It served me well! I grew into someone who by and large at least tried to live for Jesus, and they approved of that, and all was well.
It was in the teenage years that the cracks started to show, and these persisted through my college and even my graduate school years. Some of my behaviors my parents ought to have disapproved of: they were sinful or selfish. But others were innocuous: changing my fashion sense (not to anything immodest or inappropriate), wanting to wear my hair differently, trying new makeup.
The year I graduated with my master’s degree, a married woman of two years who lived in her own apartment, I wore dark gray eyeshadow for the ceremony. I don’t remember why, now. I think it made my eyes pop. When my mother pulled in, she looked at me askance.
She made light comments throughout the day: “Do you think that looks flattering?” “Isn’t that awful dark?” “It’ll smudge.” And years later, looking back at the photos: “Remember that awful eyeshadow you wore? So dark. It wasn’t flattering at all.”
What I remember isn’t so much the disapproval, or even the absurdity of the fixation. What I remember is the feeling that I had done something wrong. That wearing an eyeshadow color had, suddenly, a moral or ethical heft I didn’t see or couldn’t understand. I didn’t understand it then, but even in those years I began to conflate approval with doing right or being right. Disapproval almost always meant I’d failed in some way, that I had to examine myself or figure out what I had done wrong.
This has, in my adult life, made me chameleonic in ways both good and bad. The good? I pay attention to people and the signals they send; I read their faces; I am quite perceptive. When I am engaged in public speaking or teaching, or even in a critical dialogue, this is a blessing from God. I can see where things are going well or badly; I adjust; I tailor my words or tone. For this reason, I am a deft communicator.
The bad? More often than not, if I’m not paying attention, I adjust myself. If I’m saying something that appears to bother someone my instinct is to shut up immediately. If people frown, get angry, or otherwise look displeased, my immediate impulse is to scramble: where did I go wrong? If someone, anyone is unhappy or displeased, I assume always that I am at fault and that it is my job to repair the error.
This has been a vexing push and pull in my Christian life.
On the one hand, we ought to care about how others feel and how we treat them. Sinful behaviors often result in displeasure, sadness, or anger, and we ought to avoid them. To do otherwise would be to harden our hearts, to be unrepentant. So it’s not that the approval or disapproval of others doesn’t matter. Sometimes approval or disapproval offers a needful cue to modify our own behavior.
But sometimes the approval or disapproval of others doesn’t have anything to do with anything at all, godly or otherwise. They’re tired or mad, or don’t like the way you did something, or how you look or what you chose—but there’s nothing unholy or sinful about the choice, nothing that would make it a referendum on anything spiritual at all. And I think—maybe especially because of Paul’s teaching on stumbling blocks—that there’s a Christian tendency to say “well stop doing it anyway. If you’re causing a brother or sister an issue…”
But sometimes what we do as Christians, or in the day to day course of life, garners disapproval.
Jesus made people uncomfortable. He certainly didn’t always say the polite or socially appropriate thing. He challenged people. He asked questions. He engaged in social behaviors that mortified the people around him. Even his own disciples had a hard time with some of what he did! Certainly he caused, and faced, disapproval. And he was Christ. If Christ can face and suffer disapproval, we can understand that sometimes this is built into the human and Christian experience.
And also? Sometimes people can disapprove of us for reasons that don’t really have anything to do with us at all. When I applied for a new job once, I learned I upset a coworker. She didn’t want me to leave my role! I thought that was funny: I had no responsibility nor obligation to her, but that didn’t seem to matter. She had feelings!
So did my mother back in the day, about my eyeshadow. Now I loved and still love my Mom, and I miss her every day. But looking back, that’s pretty funny. It was okay for me to wear an eyeshadow I liked. It was okay for her not to like it. That didn’t make the choice wrong or bad.
I suppose, in the end, especially as believers, we need to be careful about letting the approval or disapproval of others make our choices for us. It can sometimes be a guide, but we serve only God. Not people. And it is only the approval of God we ought to seek. If our choices fall in lime with what He desires for us, and other people have reactions to that—they’re allowed. But to adjust ourselves in accordance with them makes us inconsistent, unstable, shifting. All the things a child of God should never be.
If people don’t approve of you? Ask yourself first what God thinks. And work from that truth, not the flush of opinion in the moment. Building our behaviors on a solid foundation, and not the shifting desires of the crowd, remains the best way to keep our integrity, our virtue, and our focus on God.
Samaritan's Song 