When People Are Big and God Is Small: Overcoming Peer Pressure, Codependency, and the Fear of Man

by Edward T. Welch

Fear in the biblical sense is a much broader word. It includes being afraid of someone, but it extends to holding someone in awe, being controlled or mastered by someone, worshipping someone, putting trust in someone, or needing someone more than needing God.

The fear of man can be summarized this way: We replace God with people. Instead of a biblically guided fear of the Lord, we fear others.

Do you avoid people? If so, even though you might not say that you need people, you are still controlled by them. Isn’t a hermit dominated by the fear of man?

Have you ever been too timid to share your faith in Christ because others might think you were an irrational fool?

The love of God is the answer to every human struggle, but sometimes we can use it in such a way that God’s job is to make us feel better about ourselves, as if feeling better about ourselves were our deepest need. God does not promise such things.

Included in the answer is the fact that we need to think less often about ourselves.

These three reasons have one thing in common: they see people as “bigger” (that is, more powerful and significant) than God, and, out of the fear that creates in us, we give other people the power to tell us what to feel, think, and do.

Both sin and shame share a common treatment: rest, cleansing, and acceptance is found in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But keep in mind the difference between the two. Sin is something we have done; victimization is done to us.

You’d think that with such a conviction these leaders would become Jesus’s disciples immediately and seek to persuade the others to believe. Yet that didn’t happen. Their faith quickly withered. Why? They feared confessing their faith because of the possible reactions of those in the synagogue, “for they loved human praise more than praise from God” ( John 12:43 niv).

Paul was not a people pleaser. He was a people lover, and because of that he did not change his message according to what others might think. Only people lovers are able to confront. Only people lovers are not controlled by other people.

“Be alert,” David warns us. “Normal fears become idolatrous when you try to manage them on your own.”

Since he endured shame and violence, Jesus knows shame and has a keen eye for kindred spirits. When she fixes her gaze on him, Jane can stop trying to cleanse herself from her disgrace and instead learn how Jesus cleanses her from shame as well as guilt. Because he both experienced shame and took the shame of his people on himself, shame no longer defines us. In fact, by grace through faith, shame is no longer part of us at all.

Our culture embraced a “God as we understand him,” who is known by way of an inner journey. “GodDependency is . . . relying on your own understanding of what a loving God is and does for you.”4 “There are myriad approaches to both prayer and meditation. No way is the right way The real thing is the actual experience of God Spiritual growth comes through deepening insight into my being.”5 These are the fruits of a pluralistic, you-do-your-thingand-I-do-mine culture. “I have my version of God, and you have your version of God.” The only immoral act in such a culture is to say that your version of God is superior to anyone else’s.

The effects of this quiet revolution in how we think about God continues. When our faculties are exalted, God will be less than holy and sovereign. We will be unaware that, at every moment, “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). We settle into a routine in which God exists but is far away and unengaged in the details of life, and for all practical purposes, we live our lives on our own. The problem is this: when the knowledge of God and his presence erodes, we are left with ourselves, and we simply cannot trust in ourselves. We are too small, too weak, so we trust in people, and the fear of man intensifies.

For example, Western culture has taught us to think individualistically rather than corporately. We think about me rather than us.

Will we be able to praise him tomorrow when we feel like failures? From the Bible’s perspective, God deserves praise simply because he is God. The natural focal point for our thoughts is not our own deep longings but the immeasurably great “God of glory” (Acts 7:2), the Holy One of Israel who reigns. Rightly seen and understood, this glory can dominate us.

The oil of consecration cannot be contained. It keeps descending and descending.

People pleasers can mistake “niceness” for love. When they do, they are prone to being manipulated by others, and burnout is sure to follow. People pleasers can also mistake saying yes for love. But a yes may be very unwise. It may not be the best way for us to repay our debt of love. Saying yes to one task may keep us from another task that is more important.