Peer pressure – we all from time to time have fallen victim to not wanting to go against the crowd or wanting to seem out of step with the majority. I know in my own life I have on occasion sought the approval of others at the expense of compromising my values because of peer pressure.
As a Christian I am realizing more and more that we need never give in to peer pressure to conform to the norm, when it goes against our conscience, in an attempt to gain the approval of our peers. In fact, I think Pastor David Jeremiah gives us the antidote to peer pressure when he stated: “If you are a Christian, your search for approval should be over.”1
My friends it is always nice to get the approval of men but there is something so much better and that is the approval of God! And when we do things according to the will of God and obey His commandments, get excited because you are doing something that is pleasing the Creator of the universe – and what can be more wonderful than this!
When I was attending college at Princeton University, I believed in Darwinian evolution. And the main reason was almost all of my peers believed in it. If you asked me to defend my position I had little evidence to use. As a result I just followed the crowd because I wanted to be accepted and not be the odd-ball out. So, rather than research the issue of creation/evolution, with it monumental implications, I was content to just stay with my peers and not risk being ostracized. Little did I realize that I was not just accepting a theory, but a worldview that has vast implications depending on whether I believed in creation or evolution.
While I was not a Christian at Princeton, I allowed what I thought others might think of me to be of more importance than what God thought of me. Today, I realize that all of my evolution believing peers back then got it totally wrong! And thankfully when I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior not only did I investigate the entire creation/evolution question, and realize how vastly superior the creation model is, but I came to understand that caving in to peer pressure for approval can’t compare with doing what is right and gaining the approval of Jesus!
In today’s society we are often called to choose between either the approval of man or the approval of God. The sad reality is that even we as Christians sometimes go against what God is telling us to do for fear of what man might think over the fear of what our Lord thinks. The result is we feel miserable and miss out on the approval of God, which is so much better than that of man. May I challenge you to walk in step with Jesus and experience the amazing joy that man-centered approval can never deliver!