I stumbled across something interesting today about my family. My aunt wrote about my grandmother saying, "I always did what was expected of me," soon after my grandfather died. While my aunt goes deeper into the meaning behind this phrase, I am interested in the emphasis on image in her words. Who was she trying to impress, God or the world or was she aiming for both? I am curious about it because the focus on image has definitely been passed down through the generations, and I find myself falling into the trap of wanting to look good in front of the world, sometimes at the expense of being real with the world. Certainly behaviors and values are passed down by families, but I also think in many ways that this concern with doing what is expected is very much the way that women have traditionally been socialized in our culture. In my grandma's day, it was expected that women were good housewives with clean houses, well-fed families, and well-behaved children. In our day, women are expected to be all that as well as ambitious and successful outside of the home. Christian women may feel like they have even more expectations to meet because we are also called to be Christ's ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20). If we always do what is expected of us, we are bound to go crazy in trying to meet everyone's expectations. Something has to give.
The key question that we must ask ourselves is whose expectations are most important to us--who are we trying hardest to impress? Is it God? Is it our husband and/or our children? Is it our friends? Is it the parents of our children's friends? Is it our colleagues at work? Whose opinion matters most and how do we show that with our actions?
If we are placing anyone's opinon of us or expectations for us above God's, then we cannot expect our representation of Christ to be true. When we put the world's view above God's, we are adulterers because we are looking outside our covenant relationship with God for validation and fulfillment (James 4:4). When we invite the world in to meet these needs that only God can fully meet in our lives, we are implying that God is not enough and that His opinion of us isn't as important as what other people think. Try as we might, we cannot look to the world for approval at the same time that we are looking to God for approval. We simply cannot call ourselves God's friend if we are living for the world instead of for Him. The good news is that God does care about our husband, children, and career apsirations, and we can be successful in those areas while still serving Him. And even better news is that if we are living to meet His expectations, we will find that we are actually better at being a wife, mother, and career woman than if we were focusing our attention on those goals instead of God. But we have to keep Him first. We have to live to impress Him and not worry so much about whether or not we are impressing others in the process.
Posted by Kim at March 15, 2007 07:59 AM