1 Corinthians 4:3-4 “But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself…. It is the Lord who judges me.”
I asked my students to give an impromptu speech using something they carried with them as a prompt. One student presented a small, white plastic box. As he began his introduction, he said, “Everyone knows what this is. If you don’t know, you would have to be living under a rock!” He went on to explain the usefulness of his wireless ear buds.
After he finished, I responded, “I’m crawling out from under my rock. I thought it was dental floss!” The class laughed at my self-admitted ignorance. I did, too. So much for having a cool image! Sure, I care about what my students think of me, but my caveman status seemed too good not to share.
It’s way too easy for most of us to fear what other people think. Do they like me? Do they think I’m incompetent? Or boring? Am I measuring up? When we feel insecure about the answer to these questions, we’re tempted to put on masks—and I’m not talking about N95s. We feel compelled to cover up our inadequacies, presenting ourselves as something we’re not. Consequently, there’s a lot of unhappy people on the planet confused about who they really are. No wonder suicide rates are soaring.
Paul took a completely different approach. He said it didn’t really matter to him how people judged him, even folks who had the authority to put him in jail or kill him. He viewed others’ evaluations as insignificant and limited compared to the only One that mattered. The only One able to see the whole picture, both the inside and outside of a person. Paul valued God’s judgment above all else and it set him free to be who he was meant to be, even if he made mistakes along the way.
How about you? Do you value what other people think of you more than what God thinks? Resist the temptation to let others’ judgments define you. Instead, depend on the One who created you. It’s not a big deal to mistake earbuds for dental floss, but it’s a very big deal to dismiss God’s judgment.