Wisdom for Resisting Peer Pressure
Text for Sermon: Proverbs 1:8-19; 12:26; 13:20; 29:25
Introduction.
A reporter was interviewing a 104-year-old woman. He asked her, “What is the best thing about being 104 years old?” She answered, “No peer pressure.”
I guess there is that to look forward to. But before then peer pressure is a constant source of trouble in all our lives. We tend to think peer pressure is a teenage sport but the truth is it is a default mode in all our hearts. We are predisposed to it from the beginning. Adam fell into it with his one and only peer.
The words peer pressure isn’t in the Bible, it has another name. It is called the fear of man.
Scripture describes our spiritual life and experience as two paths, two roads we can walk, the fear of the Lord and the fear of man.
The fear of man doesn’t mean we are afraid of people like we are afraid of spiders and snakes.
The fear of man is a lifelong temptation that can be described as the desire to belong, to be accepted, to gain something by going along with others, to not be on the outside looking in.
The fear of man is the fear of losing others favor, love, or friendship. The fear of man is the influence a group or an individual exerts over us that leads us to change our values, appearance, choices or behavior to conform to a group or someone else’s norms.
The fear of man makes an idol out of approval, acceptance, and that leads to anxiety, self-doubt, paralysis in decision-making, and compromise of personal convictions by going along with the crowd, with the majority, with popular opinion.
Teenagers don’t have a corner on this market, it is real for all of us adults, for married couples, retirees and widows.
I may be showing my fear of man when I check my appearance in the mirror, monitor my likes on social media, rerecord voice messages to sound better, obsessively replay conversations in my mind, compare my life with others’, compare successes, finances, accomplishments, vacations, make purchases thinking about what others will think, fantasize about greatness, exaggerate my successes, or downplay my failures. Anytime I am letting someone “pulling my strings”.
There are plenty of examples in the Bible and they are all adults.
Twice Abraham succumbed at the expense of his wife, calling her his sister.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, his own son Isaac followed his poor example.
Aaron yielded to the people’s demands and made the golden calf (Ex 32:1–6).
King Saul “was afraid of the people and gave in to them,” (I Sam 15:34).
Peter, who loudly declared he would never betray Jesus, caved in to a little servant girl’s questions around a fire.
And even in his Christian maturity he did it again when some Jews were watching his behavior with some Gentiles, fearing criticism (Galatians 2:11–14).
Pilate condemned Jesus to satisfy the crowd (Mark 15:12–15).