Reputations

Somewhere recently I read that little children have no reputation to earn, keep or lose. They are oblivious to the whole concept of reputation, and totally unconcerned about what others think of them. The author suggested that this was what Jesus meant when he said that if we want to enter the kingdom of heaven we must become like little children (Mk 10.15).

This lack of concern or even awareness of their own reputation is perhaps what also distinguishes "fools for Christ". Such people are free to do whatever God calls them to do because they have nothing to lose. It doesn't matter to them that others might think them foolish for acting or speaking as they do.

If little children have no concept of reputation, how does it develop? Why are most of us so concerned to protect our reputations? I suspect it comes from constantly hearing phrases such as "What will people think?", "You look very silly when you do that", "How do you expect to make friends if you behave that way" and so on.

Even if parents avoid using such phrases themselves, their children soon hear them elsewhere. They observe how older children and adults constantly assess, judge and condemn other people. "She really shouldn't wear those colours with hair like hers", "He's such a lazy so and so," "Have you seen the weeds in their garden?"

Children soon realise that they, too, are being assessed. Besides having to learn what is right and wrong, they discover another set of behaviours they have to learn; 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable'. Failure to comply leads to disapproval and exclusion from the group. And fear of exclusion is a basic human fear.

That is not to say that children shouldn't be taught to treat others with consideration and to behave in an acceptable and gracious way. No-one wants to raise a child who is obnoxiously inconsiderate. But might it be possible to teach good manners and consideration as an aspect of loving one another, rather than using the threat of exclusion?

It seems the majority of us grow up instead with a strong sense of the importance of keeping our reputation untarnished, and have an often-unrecognised but powerful fear of disapproval. How, then, do we move from there to being like little children, "God's fools"?

Do we need some re-training process? Anxious people can be taught to listen to their own thoughts and recognise when their fear of disapproval is becoming irrational. With the help of a therapist, they can learn to answer "Who cares!" when that inner voice says "What will people think?"

But my impression is that those who are fools for Christ don't need such therapy. They instinctively answer "Who cares!" Their grasp of what it means to be a child of God is so strong that they can't be moved by fear of exclusion and loneliness. They are so convinced that they are approved by God, so sure that there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, that human approval is of no consequence to them.


This post is one of a series on what it means to be free in Christ:

Free in Christ - introduction

Choosing the right master

God's freedom and ours

Jesus and freedom

Going beyond personal freedom

Freed from the fear of death

Fools for Christ

Reputations