How Our Lust for Man’s Approval Blinds Us to Sin
Last year, Lou Priolo, a gracious friend and mentor went to be with the Lord. Afterward, I pulled some of his books off my shelf and was reminded of how the Spirit used him to counsel me. One book, in particular, helped me see more evidence of the fear of man in my heart than I previously recognized. Therefore, I am sharing with you a helpful list from chapter three of Pleasing People: How Not to Be an Approval Junkie. The chapter is entitled, The Dangers of Being a People Pleaser, where Lou gives six ways in which pride (the desire for man’s approval) may blind us to our sin.
Pride tempts us to exaggerate our virtues.
A proud person is likely to overvalue the knowledge, wisdom, gifts, abilities, character, and maturity that God has given him. He often forgets that every good and perfect thing he has was given to him by God (James 1:17) and that without God, he can do nothing (John 15:5). The proud king Nebuchadnezzar boasted (to himself, if not to others) about God’s accomplishments as though they were the result of his own genius and skillfulness when he asked, “Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?” (Dan. 4:30).
Pride tempts us to minimize our flaws.
A proud person may minimize the terribleness of his sin because of an exaggerated view of his virtues. So I’m not perfect, he thinks to himself, but I’ve got so many redeeming qualities, surely God will overlook this little habit of mine. David said, “For in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin” (Ps. 36:2 NIV). The humble Christian is well aware of his weaknesses, sinfulness, lack of faith, and need of God’s forgiveness and grace, but the proud person flatters himself too much to detect and hate his sin.
Pride tempts us to distort and magnify the seriousness of our flaws.
On the other hand, pride can cause a person to overreact to the sins and imperfections in his life. Such a response is not motivated by a genuine concern that one has sinned against God, but rather by a selfish desire to be perfect. Perfectionist tendencies usually flow out of an inordinate desire to win the approval of others or fear of being rejected by them. The conscience of a perfectionist has often been programmed not by the Word of God but by his inordinate desire for approval.
Pride tempts us to change our lives according to man’s priorities rather than the agenda of the Holy Spirit.
The proud person is concerned about changing things in his or her life that don’t matter to God. Rather than looking into the Bible to see what things God wants one to put off and put on, the proud person makes correcting things that may displease others a priority, even though such changes matter little to God. In so doing, he puts more trust in the reasonings of his own heart than in the Scriptures. “He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but he who walks wisely will be delivered” (Prov. 28:26). Because he is more concerned with pleasing man than pleasing God, his spiritual guidance system is out of kilter.
Pride focuses our attention on changing the outer man more than the inner man.
The changes made by the approval addict are often external issues having little to do with character. The proud person wants to clean the outside of the cup and the dish to make him appear worthy or respectable. Those things (clothing, personal appearance, athletic ability, intelligence, the type of car driven, the kind of home owned, job title, amount of personal wealth), when placed on God’s scale and held over against character, don’t really weigh anything. God gives them all, and He expects us to use them for His glory. He does not give us things to use for our own selfish interests and agenda. They are temporal. Character is eternal (see 1 Tim. 4:7-8).
Love of praise tempts us to believe man’s opinion of ourselves over God’s opinion.
Jesus attributed one of the causes of unbelief to seeking honor from man instead of God. Speaking to certain Jews who were looking to kill him “because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God,” the Lord said: 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 NKJV) These proud, ambitious men sought to receive honor from one another rather than from God. They held Christ in low esteem because they held themselves in such high esteem. They didn’t value the things He said because they placed too much value on their own opinions.
To the extent that we seek to please others more than God, we will value the opinion of fallible men more than that of the infallible God. If others perceive us to be better than we are, we will trust their judgment over that of our conscience. If they perceive us to be inadequate in an area of life that God says is not a biblical inadequacy (not a sin), we will hasten to change it at any expense, though we know the Lord would rather have us rest in our acceptance in Christ.
*Excerpted from Pleasing People: How Not to Be an Approval Junkie by Lou Priolo, who went to be with the Lord last week.
If you struggle with perfectionism, you will be helped by Lou’s last book, which he finished writing before he died. It’s a 31-day devotional entitled Perfectionism: Pursuing Excellence with Wisdom.
