What if you were completely freed from what people thought of you? How many things are you doing because of the influence from other people?

I was stressing the other day because of how much hair I lost in the last couple years. I saw a picture of myself taken just a couple years ago, and I had a lot more hair! But why does that bother me? Would that still bother me if everyone was blind and couldn’t see my hair?

So, I started listing things I have or do because of other people:
– Exercise (I want my body to look a certain way. Bigger arms, for example)
– Grooming (Shaving, haircut, etc)
– Many different styles of clothes
– Frugality (I want to let people know how frugal I am!)
– Lawn care (for my neighbors)
– Checking my emotions (I want to come across calm and collected)
– Where I shop (Ross. I want to look the part but not spend like it)

Some of these are good. It’s healthy to care what others think in one sense. But not when it comes to who I am going to be judged by ultimately. We should care what people think only in the context of how we will be judged by the Lord. For example, I should care about how what I spend on is perceived by others only because some people might stumble over it and become extravagant beyond their means. In other words, the only reason why I should care about what others think is so as not to take glory away from Christ, as opposed to from me.

1 Cor 4:3, 4, “But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court… It is the Lord who judges me.”

Imagine if you were free from what people thought of you? How free would you be? How do we do that? Care more what God thinks. In the end, that’s the only thing that will count.

PH