Fearing People
Written by Hayley Mroz
Welcome to the Life Counseling Center blog! On this blog we will share about how Christ and scripture intersect with various struggles we face in everyday life. We pray that it is a source of encouragement and hope for you, and anyone you may choose to share it with. We have decided to kick off the blog with a series on something we can all relate to: fear. For starters, let’s dive in together to the struggle of fearing people.
Let’s get a definition on the table first. What does it mean to fear people?
One way I have thought about it is to fear people is to be controlled in the way you live by another’s opinions, judgments, or reactions. In these moments, those who believe in Christ forget that they are fully accepted by Him and no longer condemned (Romans 8:1). It is only Christ’s judgment of us that is true.
The Bible has much to say about fearing people, but Proverbs 29:25 is one verse that has been helpful to me in my own journey to be free from fearing people.
“The fear of man lays a snare,
but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.”
A snare is defined by Merriam Webster dictionary as something by which one is entangled or impeded. It is also defined as something deceptively attractive.
Fearing people is deceptively attractive. We adjust who we are to meet other people's expectations and avoid their displeasure because it feels good initially. We might get praise or approval and feel better about ourselves. We will come to a point however when we feel a loneliness and emptiness in allowing our lives to be controlled by other people. We realize that by doing this no one knows who we truly are–how we are truly struggling, or how we are truly gifted–because we have been too afraid for people to see. Behind fearing people is a sense of shame that whispers “I am not enough.”
Not only are we so affected by fearing people, but so are those with whom we are in relationships. We cannot simultaneously fear a person and follow the greatest commandment to love God and other people (Matthew 22:36-40). When we fear people, we move into a mode of self-focus. We spend more time thinking about ourselves and how we are being perceived than we really engage with the person in front of us.
We all struggle on a daily basis to believe in our hearts that we are approved by Christ. When we fear people, we may believe Christ’s approval of us in our heads, but in our hearts we struggle to embrace this reality, so we go looking for approval from others. In his book The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, Tim Keller talks about how Christ’s approval of us changes our everyday lives and says,
“He (Christ) was struck, beaten, put to death. Why? As our substitute. He took the condemnation we deserve; He faced the trial that should be ours so that we do not have to face any more trials. So I simply need to ask God to accept me because of what the Lord Jesus has done. Then, the only person whose opinion counts looks at me and He finds me more valuable than all the jewels on the earth.”
So, what are we to do when we discover ourselves struggling with fearing people? This is what we will begin to explore in our blog post coming next week!
Hayley Mroz is a counselor at Life Counseling Center. She enjoys counseling people who feel paralyzed by anxiety, stuck in insecurity and comparison, and those struggling with loneliness or a lack of purpose. Read Hayley’s full bio here.
To request an appointment with Hayley or one of our other counselors, click here.
