Don’t Be Like Them. Virtue Signaling Is a Deadly Game.

Be careful. It’s a dangerous thing to let your desire for other people’s approval affect how you live out your faith.

I have certain habits that I’m sure have saved my life a time or two. One of them is this: When I’m covering my duck blinds with brush in late summer and early fall, there are two ever-present dangers. 

One of them is the insidious purple-tail wasp. If you don’t know about the purple-tail wasp, let me just tell you this — their stings will light you up. The problem is that the Almighty has programmed them to construct their nests out a paper-like material that blends perfectly with the stems and branches that I conceal my duck blinds with. You can be in the middle of them before you know it.

The other danger I constantly face during late summer is the demonic and deadly cottonmouth moccasin. I don’t have any idea why God made them in first place, but I do marvel that he camouflaged them so well that it is literally impossible to see them until it’s too late. They too will set you on fire.

So, I’m very careful to avoid these two critters. And if any of my crew yells out, “BE CAREFUL,” I’m quick to lunge in the opposite direction. Even at my age, I’m capable of covering great distances in a single bound when given the proper motivation, and wasps and cottonmouths are indeed the proper motivation. 

There’s that kind of danger that I’m careful to avoid. But there is another danger that I take even more seriously. I know enough about my heart to know that I’m too often tempted to go my own way … to do my own thing. In my spirit, I desire to obey God, but in my flesh? Well, I’m as rebellious as the next guy.

Jesus addressed this in Matthew chapters five through seven. He was comparing the religion of the Jewish religious leaders with the kind of religion that God desires. And basically, it boils down to the difference between being religious for the sake of appearance and truly loving and pursuing the God who made us.

The Pharisees’ religion was all about performing good deeds so that the regular folk would see them as better people. They coveted positions of power and influence. They loved the places of honor. When they gave to the poor, for example, they would blow trumpets so that they could assemble a crowd before they passed out a few dollars to people who were already humiliated by their poverty.

In other words, they had abandoned God’s commands and had gone their own way. As a result, they had also abandoned any passion that they could have had for seeking God’s approval and pursued human admiration instead.

Jesus said, “Don’t be like them.” Instead, every good deed that you do (and we should do good), you should do it secretly — just between you and God. 

Yes, it is a dangerous thing to allow your desire for applause and approval of other humans to affect how you live out your faith. That’s why Jesus started this section of scripture with a warning:

“Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them.…”

—Matthew 6:1

When Jesus said, “Be careful,” he didn’t say so lightly. This is a serious warning; much more serious than the warnings my posse might issue when we’re brushing my blinds. He meant what he said. That’s because the consequence of seeking man’s approval instead of God’s is serious — deadly even. Check out the rest of that verse:

            “… If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.”

We can’t have it both ways. We can’t be religious with the goal of getting others to give us a standing ovation while pleasing God at the same time. It’s one or the other.  Not both. 

As I said, I know my heart, how it often deceives me. This is why I don’t follow the new-age admonition to “follow my heart!” I can’t think of anything more dangerous than that. And because I know that my heart is unreliable, I am also aware of my desire for applause. 

Fortunately, I ran across a passage of scripture early in my walk with Christ that has served me well through the years.

“Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.”

—2 Corinthians 5:6-10

When he said that he makes it his “goal to please the Lord,” I think he meant it. His desire to please God was rooted firmly in the promise that God made through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and his resurrection from the dead. That promise is that he’s going to set us up in his house once he comes back to retrieve his followers from the grave. We get to live with the God who created the cosmos — forever!

For this reason, I don’t find his commands to be a burden (1 John 5:3). After he plainly demonstrated that he loved me enough to pay the debt I owed by dying for me, I am certain that I can trust him enough to believe that everything he’s commanded me to do is for my own good. So, why wouldn’t I seek to please him? Why would I even want to get your approval for anything? You aren’t God and neither am I.

I don’t mean to sound arrogant when I say this, but I am at the point in my life where I couldn’t care any less what you or any man thinks of me. I’ve allowed God’s spirit to shape me and mold me through the years so that now I am only concerned with what he thinks of me. I want his approval, not yours. 

I’m convinced that this is revolutionary! This is the kind of thinking that can change the world.  Instead of virtue signaling by doing good to impress others, what would happen if we just laid all of that down before the cross of Jesus? 

The real danger of doing good to impress others is that we become so addicted to the applause that we soon forget what good is. Once this desire for approval takes root in our hearts, we tend to do whatever it takes to get others to praise us.

Be careful.

I may stand alone on this, but I don’t think so. I encourage you to be like Paul — make it your goal to please the Lord. When you embrace that as your life’s roadmap, you won’t get caught up in the silly hoopla of the world.  You’ll be focused — laser focused. God will honor that! He sure will.