THE PERIL OF PEOPLE-PLEASING

 

And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?”  (Exodus 32:21)

It is such a subtle thing, and therefore the more sinister.  Doubtless, there are men who enter ministry motivated by a desire to milk the congregation for all they can get from them.  They are pursuing position and possessions and find the church a goldmine of opportunity.  Such charlatans tell people what they want to hear—a quid pro quo arrangement.

That is not likely the case with those who read these words.  Rather you are in ministry to serve God by serving people.  We begin with a conviction that what people need most is not always what they want.  They need to be confronted compassionately with truth.  Yet, if we are not careful—because this brings difficulty and resistance—we compromise and begin to move into a people-pleasing mode.  Our motivations are not necessarily mercenary at the first.  We make excuses—I want to accommodate people so that I can build a bridge to them—to reach them.  The issue with such a bridge, however, is that a bridge goes both ways—and rather than bringing the church out of the world, we take the world into the church!  Compassion that abandons conviction becomes compromise and ceases to be true compassion—for sin is the gravest danger for the church, and we become a willing host when open minds and open arms are spread so wide as to tolerate evil and error.  It is possible to be popular and build a crowd that way—all in the name of God!  You may use Bible terminology and still move away from Biblical truth.

Aaron is the model of such compromise.  When the people demanded a god they could see, and wanted to worship as the rest of the world was doing, then he surrendered to the crowd.  He still used the right vocabulary and tried to dress it up with attaching God’s name and worship to it, but that did not sanctify the compromise, it only compromised the sacred.

Moses’ response is instructive.  There was indignation.  God’s honor was more important to him than pleasing people.  His action was forceful, but not without love—it was just that love for God was foremost, and out of that flowed a love for people.  Like Jesus, he balanced grace and truth—which is the supreme standard for every leader.  Moses not only expressed indignation, but offered intercession.  He was willing to have his name blotted out of God’s Book of Life, if it would be possible to spare the people from the wrath of God in blotting their name out!  Such conviction and compassion! 

The bar is set very high in spiritual leadership.  Still, that is what we should strive by the grace of God to attain.  May God deliver us from the people-pleasing spirit of Aaron, and cause us to delight in pleasing our Master above all as Moses sought to do.  To please God will often cause people to be displeased.  Children selfishly cry when they cannot have their way and do not understand correction.  Loving parents do it anyway.  Conviction and compassion is a tightrope we must walk.  May God give us the sound sense and strong spine for a steady stride forward.  If we fall, we will drag down others.