Undaunted we remain where suffering is certain
and unwanted gospel by heartless world is left;
even as we brave it, fierce in our conviction,
we find a love much stronger with the grieving and bereft.
The story of our saving, in the going and the telling,
will disciple every nation to the kindness of our King,
and we will keep on speaking – keep on teaching, keep on walking –
until all people know Him and lift one voice to sing:
Holy, holy, holy,
Glory, glory, glory,
You are the One who is to come
and evermore shall be.
The Commission, PDM.
“Do you care a lot about what people think on here?”
This was a question in today's Ask Anything on Instagram.
It was a puzzling question. I answered it as best I could. And I thought I'd answer more thoroughly here because I think some of you might relate to my sentiments.
When asked, “do you care what people think?" I would have to say no - and yes. No, I don't care if people approve of my decisions. I have come to them with a lot of research, time, thought, prayer, and counsel from people in my real life. There is an adage, “Don't take criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from" and when it comes to the online world, I think this is true. The criticism of someone who doesn't know you, and maybe doesn't like you, bears a lot less weight than the loving critique of someone who knows you well. For instance: Years ago one of my “frentors” (friend-mentors) corrected me for how I talked about myself and my difficult-at-the-time marriage. It wasn't until she was gone I realized she had actually rebuked me – it was that loving, but also that true.
But online, it's different. People think they know us but don't. People become commodities; we are no longer human - we are products to review:
“I saw she followed this person so I unfollowed her.”
“I didn't like what she said in her stories so I was just done.”
“She makes me feel inadequate. Unfollow. Dislike."
If those of us who minister online allow this behavior - “what people think” - to dictate our value, we lose our minds. I can testify to this because I've tried it. Every time I have allowed popular opinion to lead me rather than the Spirit, I have experienced an overwhelming anxiety that destroys joy, peace, and fruitfulness. I have struggled to discern the line between humility, or teachability, and the absorption of unrequested opinions from tens of thousands of people. I have concluded that I cannot care what people think because I cannot care what they think and also care what God thinks. A multiplicity of human opinions always fogs up the glass of God's will.
This influx of opinions poses another problem, one that applies to all of us. The more opinions we give weight to – the more we operate in people-worship – the more we devolve into a paranoia I call “hater-consciousness”. If someone disagrees with us, they're a hater. If someone has valid questions about our choices, they're a hater. A hater-conscious person is a martyr of her own making. She speaks loudly of haters because she cares so very much about people's opinions, she will obsesses over the good ones or trumpet the bad ones. This is exactly what happened to King Saul in his spiral with David (1 Sam. 10-31). Saul could not rejoice with David's successes because they weren't his own (1 Sam. 18), tries to kill those he sees as a threat (1 Sam. 19) and even vents his anger on those close to him in his paranoia (1 Sam. 20). At the root of Saul's unstable leadership was not fear of the Lord, which leads to wisdom, but a deep and abiding fear of man and man's opinions.
