A Confession About What Other People Think

Recently, I took one of those random Facebook tests which a friend shared. I've begun to do this more just for fun to see what they say about me. For that reason alone, this particular test turned out to be ironic. This particular test was to determine what your sub-conscious was obsessed with. What was unique about this one is that it asked you to pick a picture that reminded you of a certain thing or feeling.

Being a semi-educated person, I know I shouldn't put too much stock in the answer, but the minute I saw it the answer stabbed at me. The reason why it bothered me so much is that I know it's true. The answer it gave me was that my sub-conscious was obsessed with what others think of me.

The truth is that this is kind of a tough thing for me to admit. It's embarrassing, because after everything I've written in my Rambles and elsewhere about the necessity of detachment and letting go, the implication is that, subconsciously, I'm attached to the opinions of others and doing things to gain the approval of other people. In the back of my mind, I'm obsessed with what I think other people are saying about me.

The thing is, I know this is at least partly true. I am, and have always been, insecure about what others think of me because of the many times I was told how bad of a person I was as a kid by classmates, teachers and other adults. This is another reason too why the extreme difficulty I have with trying to find paying employment is so painful for me. Every time someone accuses me of just not wanting to work or wanting to just take from others hurts and only reinforces that insecurity. Even my pursuit of the ministry was to some extent partly motivated by this insecurity to prove to everyone, including myself, that I wasn't rotten or worthless. I wanted to get as far away from that person “whom I used to be” as possible.

This past spring, I wrote this as a status update:

“Of all the things that we must renounce, one's own personal self-image is the hardest. This is especially true if one believes that he is a good person. I know that my own psyche fights to protect this self deception which I have as a good, even godly person regardless of all the evidence to the contrary. My psyche moves instinctively to protect itself by ignoring, arguing with, or outright suppressing such contradictory evidence. In my case, I grew up being told how bad of a person I was, but not wanting to be. The evidence usually agreed with this assertion. I have since, unconsciously, spent most of my adult life trying to prove to myself and everyone else that I was not, and failed at it miserably. Now, without the delusion of this false self image I am forced to observe myself as I am, as the evidence points. And I am forced to do nothing, because there is nothing I can do to contradict the evidence of my own thoughts, actions, words, and feelings. I believe that this is a necessary process for my own progress. The cross means total renunciation. Deep, thorough, and complete. Not even what I want to believe about myself can be spared.”

Tonight, I got hit in the face with it again as my insecurity was held up to me like a mirror. A friend on Facebook posted a link to a blog post which rubbed me the wrong way. When I attempted to express where I differed, the author of the blog post commented, strongly implying that I didn't know what I was talking about and that my personal relationship with Christ was in question. Suffice it to say that I didn't respond well. As I think about it now after the fact, what probably went through my sub-conscious mind was something like, “I can't let everyone else who reads this think this about me!”

My final response went through several revisions as my first impulse was to list my “credentials” to not only prove that I knew what I was talking about, but also to put him in his place. However, the Holy Spirit kept hitting me in the face with the same simple truth that the Facebook quiz revealed. I was reacting to the assault on my perceived self-image. I didn't feel like I could let it go without correcting the image he was painting of me, and this was because of my own inherent insecurity about what other people think of me. My heavily revised final comment, hopefully, wasn't quite so focused on me trying to prop up a certain image of myself for a man whom I didn't even know.

The problem here is that I, sub-consciously, so crave approval I didn't get as a kid that any assault on my perceived self-image now is taken by my psyche as a threat. The deception in this is that my self-image, any self-image, is a facade I project or seek to project. This person that constitutes “me” is constantly changing and far more complex that the false facade I might try to defend.

Furthermore, my self-image is a moot point. It's smoke or a mirage and matters less than both. I will die, and I will face judgment. It doesn't matter what I delude myself into thinking that “self” is supposed to be. The only thing which matters is my mortality and standing before our Lord in judgment. In baptism I have died with Jesus Christ, being joined to Him in His death through baptism. Propping up the facade for people's approval is kind of pointless in relationship to that.

The hardest thing about this insecurity is knowing that even if I get people's approval, it will never be enough. I know this because it never is. My psyche is always pushing me on it. As I continue to follow the path of Jesus Christ I will meet with less and less approval from other people. Because of the faulty attachment to the opinion of others which I possess, this will always cause me pain until I am disciplined to detach myself from this craving. Until this, this pain cannot be helped if I want to continue to press towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.