“For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.” (Galatians 10:1)
As Christians, we are fully aware that we are not of this world. We throw ourselves into the church and its services in order to find a place where God surrounds us. Through this constant surrounding of service, however, there is a danger in being aware of the approval of others as we serve and love our God. In Matthew 6:3 it says “But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing”, when we do a good deed, it is hard for us to hide that good deed from others. If you’re a good person, people will take notice, because your goodness is not dependent on your circumstances or surroundings. The important thing is to not want people to notice you. Your right hand should not even know what your left hand is doing, the intention of wanting to be recognized for our service, knowledge, or behavior strips away the beauty of being bondservants of Christ.
Service can be hard for this very reason. I am not talking only about Sunday school service, but also the service of your friends, family, strangers, the homeless, and the sick as well. This is something we put our time and effort in. We take time away from our studying and our social lives to put that time into being servants of God, and as the world teaches us, we want reward for what we have done. When you study hard for an exam, you get a good grade. You have your reward instantly. When you bring a gift for someone, you receive a thank you. These are just how these things work, except for the doings for God. We do not search for an earthly ‘thank you’ from men, but for an eternal life with our Father. When we do good deeds here, it is not to build our home on earth, but to build our home, brick by brick, in heaven. And as soon as we begin to look for our brethren to commend us on a job well done, we lose our sight of heaven and focus on the earthly approval. Augustine of Hippo says about Galatians 10:1 above “For He bids His servants to learn from Him to be meek and lowly of heart, which is utterly impossible for one who seeks to please men on his own account, for his own private and special glory,” Should not everything we do then be aimed only for the glory of God, and not for us? When we take the gifts that God has granted us and use it for our own personal gain, we again lose sight of the kingdom of God. To combat this get into the habit of directing quickly to God every single word of praise you receive. If someone says “oh, you’re really smart and you know oh so much about blah blah” the response to that is to go and thank God for allowing you to understand something about Him.
Not receiving approval can also begin to hinder us from being true servants of the savior. When we perceive ourselves to not be worthy in the sight of others, we might believe that we are also not worthy in the sight of God. If these people don’t believe that I am holy, or educated in the church, then I must not belong in the church (obviously none of us say this to each other because we love each other so much and we understand that the knowledge of Christ is a journey that we all take in a different way). However, I heard this story of Bishop Makarious of Kana which shows us how important it truly is to look to God for approval of our deeds first and foremost. He was a very spiritual bishop and did not busy himself with politics or big decisions of the church. The people thought he was not smart and ridiculed him often. This obviously affected him greatly, as the people he was serving were not respecting him. He went into a room to pray to God to give him comfort and peace with people’s opinion of him. Jesus appeared to him during his prayer and kissed him on both cheeks and told him that He loves him. Did this change the way people saw the bishop? It did not, but that did not matter anymore. The bishop had received his love and approval from Jesus Christ Himself, no one else matters at that point. When we instead focus our attention on gaining the pleasure of The Father, then the opinions of those who do not know our inward selves will become obsolete.
Ways to practice not seeking the approval of others is to hide as much as we can the service that we do, pray to God to allow us to be humble and meek like He is, search within ourselves to understand our intentions behind the things we do and work each day to make each decision centered on Christ. We can take the words of St.John Chrysostom and turn it into an arrow prayer. He says “He who wishes to persuade men, is led to act tortuously and insincerely, and to employ deceit and falsehood, in order to engage the assent of his hearers. But he who addresses himself to God, and desires to please Him, needs simplicity and purity of mind, for God cannot be deceived.” Ask God for simplicity and purity of mind, and remember that He knows all the inner-workings of our heart. How much more worrisome will it be for men to approve of you, but not God!