CHALLENGING CULTURAL SYSTEMS WITH KINGDOM IDENTITY: CONFESSIONS OF A LIKE-A-HOLIC

I have a confession to make.  I am a recovering like-a-holic.  What does that mean?  It means that I like being liked.  And, I don’t just like it.  For a long time, I sought after the approval, the friendships, and the love of others.  I consume friendships.  I consume the praise and approval of others.  Like an addiction, being liked by others became a drug to me.

People who meet me call me outgoing.  I hear them say, “Man, I feel like I have known you forever.”  Even though I just met them.  Phrases like, you are such an extrovert.  You are so easy to talk to.  You can talk to anyone.  These are phrases I hear all the time.  Although I am outgoing and my interest in others is truly genuine.  I can tell you that the authentic gifting I have been given to connect well with lots of different people, has often been exploited by the way the world sells the concept of acceptance.

We live in a world obsessed with being liked.  We program people to like being liked.  And, in my case, I LEARNED how to make people like me.  I learned how to be outgoing and tailor what I say and how I say it, so that it invokes a favorable response from the people around me.  I LEARNED how to be pleasing to others.  It was as if I have been taking an inventory, a poll, a survey in my head all of my life.  Every time I said something, or went somewhere new, or  met someone new or bought new clothes, I stopped asking myself if that was really what I wanted to say, or if that person I was talking to was really who God was drawing me to, or if those clothes were really what I LIKE TO WEAR.  I was taking a survey. 

Certain types of clothes got a certain amount of approval from my peers, adults I was around, even boys I liked.  Every time I got a “like” from someone, if you will, I filed it away in my brain, as if I was keeping an internal tally of how many people liked what I said or what I did or what I wore.  The same was true if people didn’t like what I said or did.

When I started to notice my addiction to being liked, to the approval of others, I was in my 30’s.  As me and my family moved to a new place, I was made painfully aware of how I do this.  I change my speech, ever so slightly, so that the new person I am talking to likes what I have to say.  I change the interests I talk about, so that it creates this connection with the new person I just met.  Not that I don’t like the interests I am talking about, but I just change the interests based on what I have sized up in being important to the person I am talking to.  Coming face to face with being a like-a-holic has been really hard for me.

I loathe this quality in myself.  And, let me tell you why.  Because it distorts my Heavenly identity.  The truth of the matter is that when I take things like strengths tests, or personality quizzes, I am literally BUILT for relationship.  Every test I have ever taken tells me that I can literally feel what people are feeling.  I am a master of sizing people up and knowing exactly where they are at within 5 minutes of meeting them.  The Lord literally gave me gifts, in my genetic makeup, that make me phenomenal with people. 

When I met Jesus, and received the Holy Spirit.  This gifting was heightened and highlighted even more.  I lead with my communication.  My love of information and desire to know a lot about tons of different subjects helps me connect with almost everyone.  Figuring out what makes people tick and what their good at or interested in is how God created me to lead others.

But in my fleshly, human desire to be liked, those amazing and wonderful qualities get distorted.  I mean, as a follower of Jesus, my whole commission is to go into all the world and make disciples.  It’s kind of hard to do that when the natural gifts, talents, and abilities God has given me to make connections with others becomes about them liking me instead of God impacting their lives through me.  My Heavenly identity becomes distorted by my own desire to be liked, instead of being effective.            

Let’s be real, we live in a world where “LIKES” and “LOVES” are a thing we seek.  We are all being programmed to desire the approval of others, whether we realize it or not.  You can deny it if you want.  But there is not one young person reading this who posts on their social media without getting an alert minutes later letting you know that someone has liked, loved, or commented on your post or your picture.  We have begun to identify ourselves by the way we are seen, pictured, or represented on social media. 

I believe that we, as a generation, have not really given social media and its implications on our identity, as much scrutiny as we should. There is a documentary on Netflix called “The Social Dilemma”. You don’t believe me that we are being programmed to crave approval by who knows what type of complex computer algorithm is populating our news feed? Go watch the documentary for yourselves. Start to think critically about social media, its creators, and if the computer behind that screen truly have YOUR best interest at heart.

We live in a society of like-a-holics.  We want to be liked more than we want to walk in the true, individual, Heavenly identity for which we were created.  We let the world distort our Heavenly gifts, talents, and abilities.  Just like me, we have LEARNED what gets the approval of others. 

My desire in sharing this with you is to challenge you.  I hope this may even start you thinking.  It is time we rise up and become a generation of young people who start to wake up and ask tough questions of ourselves.  Am I allowing others to dictate how I use the gifts, talents and abilities God gave uniquely to me?  Am I allowing the “likes” of those around me to dictate and feed my sense of self-worth?  Or, am I asking God how He made me uniquely to bring the Heavenly identity He gave to me into the world around me to change it, affect it, and create kingdom minded solutions to the problems I see in the world. 

What God created you for is more important than people liking you.  Take it from me.  I have missed out on countless opportunities to truly lead others to Him by my insatiable addiction to be well liked.  I have also missed out on some radical encounters with God because I thought about what people would think before I asked what God thought.  Do not make my mistake.  Ask Him about yourself.  Ask Him what He thinks about you.  Jeremiah 33:3 promises us “Call to me and I will answer you and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.” WOW!  When was the last time you just asked Him about yourself?  He has made you a promise.  When you call, He will answer.  And, HE has things He wants to tell you.

I would love to hear your thoughts.  Are you a like-a-holic?  Or, like me, are you a recovering like-a-holic?  You don’t have to be.  You have a God who LOVES you and desires to show you how He created you.  He wants to show you the truth of your Heavenly Identity according to His image in you, so that you can stop letting others define and dictate how your earthly identity gets expressed to the world around you.

Have questions or comments, please drop me a message below, or send me a message at whitney@brandedgen.com