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

by Edward T. Welch

Sometimes I would think, Is it really Christ that I am standing on, or am I standing on my perceived successes and the favorable opinions of others? After all, other people were usually very affirming. Maybe I felt good about myself because they felt good about me. Or maybe I felt good about myself because I had done respectably in athletics and had decent grades, compared to other people. Maybe I had taken pride in my ministry aspirations, compared to other people and their seemingly lower spiritual goals. Maybe I found an identity in being “nice,” or at least nicer than most of the people I knew. But aren’t all people-pleasers nice? In short, perhaps I was still being ruled by the opinions of others, but since I was feeling fine, I wasn’t very motivated to investigate further. I certainly wasn’t going to talk to anyone else about it — that would have been too embarrassing.