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Anthony DeMello in “The Way to Love” shares some strong words on how deeply we are influence by others:

“Look at your life and see how you have filled its emptiness with people. As a result they have a strangle hold on you. See how they control your behavior by their approval and disapproval. They hold the power to ease your loneliness with their company, to send your spirits soaring with their praise, to bring you down to the depths with their criticism and rejection. Take a look at yourself spending almost every waking moment of your day placating and pleasing people, whether they are living or dead. You live by their norms, conform to their standards, seek their company, desire their love, dread their ridicule, long for their applause, meekly submit to the guilt they lay upon you; you are terrified to go against the fashion in the way you dress or speak or act or even think. And observe how even when you control them you depend on them and are enslaved by them. People have become so much a part of your being that you cannot even imagine living a life that is unaffected or uncontrolled by them.”

As much as we wish it weren’t so, these words ring true. We care what people think, even if we act like we don’t. Now this can be good or bad depending on who you’re trying to measure up to, but often it is negative. The only One we should be comparing ourselves to is the Perfect One who sees our ugliness, flaws, scars, wounds and embraces us with the same arms that wrapped around so many lepers in need of a touch.

In John 5:41-44 Jesus has some harsh words to say to the Pharisees who are more interested in receiving honor from each other and not from God. Who are you living your life for? Are you rejecting God because you are seeking to be accepted by your fellow Christians? What is their love compared to God’s anyway?