1 Corinthians 4:3 (GNB) Now, I am not at all concerned about being judged by any human standard; I don’t even pass judgement on myself.
We all care about what people think about us, we are wire that way.
The very first furrowed brow for the human race was when Adam realized that he was alone.
Up until then everything had been good: but God said,” it is not good for man to be alone”
(Genesis 2-18)
There are social dynamics about that statement that go far beyond the husband/wife relationship.
The story of mankind is shaped by tension between going and grouping.
We speak different languages today because our forefathers choose to group together and build a city instead of going into the world to populate it (Genesis 9:1, 11:1-9).
It has been over 2000 years since the church was first given the mission of going into all the world and sharing the goodnews of the gospel yet, in spite of all the technological advances we have at our fingers tips, we still haven’t achieve the task.
Why? There’s that tension between going and grouping.
We like to be with people- especially the people we care about, and it matters to us what those people think about us.
Caring about what others think of us is one of the building blocks of a healthy society, but caring too much what others think of us becomes the building block of a prison- the prison of fearing other people’s opinion of you too much.
One of the benefits of our prayer is that we spend more time with God and less time with others.
“It is only the fear of God that can deliver us from the fear of men” John Witherspoon
