The Approval Addiction

Most of us in ministry have the same set of ego issues as people in any other profession. We just have a different way of keeping score.
—John Ortberg

Mayor Richard J. Daley, who was as celebrated in Chicago for his malaprops as for his ability to get votes out of corpses, once said of his opponents, “They have vilified me, they have crucified me, yes, they have even criticized me.”

Mayor Daley could have been speaking for those of us in ministry. Whether it’s politics or the pastorate, not everyone will believe we’re wonderful. Criticism, especially “friendly fire,” can pull the plug on our motivation and energy. Generally we pastors have a fairly high need to be liked. While not a bad thing, the need for strokes can set us up to have difficulty dealing with criticism.

But if the actions of Jesus and the prophets are any indication, then giving effective spiritual leadership will surely mean doing things that displease the very people whose approval we desire. For most of us, it’s only a matter of time (and usually not very much time) before the people we’re supposed to serve have vilified, crucified, or even criticized us.

Our strong reaction to such criticism reveals, I believe, a serious addiction problem. It has nothing to do with substance abuse or chemical dependency. It is, rather, a craving for approval. Its primary symptom: the tendency to confuse my “performance in ministry” with my worth as a person; to seek the kind of approval from people that can only satisfy when it comes to God.

This addiction has been around at least as long as the church. Paul thunders against it to the Galatians: “Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? … If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ” (1:10 niv). Even more disturbing is the diagnosis from John about people who were blocked from faith because of this addiction: “They loved praise from men more than praise from God” (12:43 niv).

Addiction shows up in odd ways and at unwelcome times.

It’s four o’clock in the morning. I am awake. Recently I left a secure job with a real church to plant a new one, with no buildings, no offices, no secretaries, no handbell choirs, no professional scaffolding at all, and only six weeks’ worth of expenses (including my salary) in the bank. I do some of my best worrying at 4:00 a.m.

Something disturbs me about this particular concern, however. It occurs to me that a good chunk of my apprehension over this venture is not just that if we don’t succeed, many people will not meet God, although that’s part of it. My anxiety is not just over the financial needs of a family with three small, ravenous children; if worse comes to worst I can fall back on a degree in psychology. (There will always be enough rich, neurotic people to counsel.)

Part of the fear nagging at my heart—a bigger part than I want to admit—is that if we don’t succeed, I won’t look successful. Recognition, paradoxically, is the first step toward liberation. At least when I become aware of my need to appear successful, I can say, “I refuse to make decisions or hold back on risks based on something as stupid as my need to impress people who most likely are not even thinking about me anyway. I refuse to allow the approval or disapproval of others to determine my worth as a person.”

But recognition doesn’t make it go away.

The voice within

When I get up to speak on Sunday morning, the congregation hears my voice, but I hear another, more confusing voice in my head. It’s also my voice. Sometimes it shouts, Thus saith the Lord. But at other times, more often than I care to admit, the voice is less prophetic.

What will they think of me? the voice wonders.

Sometimes I feel less like the prophet Amos and more like Sally Field at the Academy Awards. I find myself desperate to be able to say as she did when she’d won her second Oscar: “You like me! You really like me!” I do not like this Sally Field voice. I wish I had more of a Rhett Butler voice and could greet evaluations at the door with, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a … rip.”

When Jesus spoke, he was free from the need to create an impression, free to speak the truth in love. But the voice within me is not free. It is driven by ego and pride. It is ugly to me, and I’d turn it off if I could, but turning it off proves not to be so simple. Where does this voice come from?

In Lake Wobegon Days, Garrison Keillor writes about growing up without praise under the theory that compliments cause swelled heads. But the years of emotional malnourishment, far from weaning him away from the need for approval, instead created an insatiable appetite for it:

Under this thin veneer of modesty lies a monster of greed. I drive away from faint praise, beating my little chest, waiting to be named Sun-God, King of America, Idol of Millions, Bringer of Fire, The Great Haji, Thun-Dar the Boy Giant. I don’t want to say, “Thanks, glad you liked it.” I want to say, “Rise, my people. Remove your faces from the carpet, stand, look me in the face.”

This would make for a rather awkward benediction, however.

Approval and anger

Sociologist George Herbert Meade wrote about the “generalized other,” the mental representation we carry inside ourselves of that group of people in whose judgment we measure our success or failure. Our sense of esteem and worth is largely wrapped up in their appraisal of our work.

Your generalized other is a composite of all the Siskels and Eberts in your life whose thumbs up or thumbs down carries, for you, emotional weight. This may include parents, seminary professors, key lay leaders, or other pastors. My guess is that most of us in ministry have the same set of ego issues as people in any other profession. We just have a different way of keeping score.

When my identity is wrapped up in whether I am perceived as successful, I am set up for the approval addiction, for it is my very sense of self that is on the line.

“Who am I?” Henri Nouwen asks. “I am the one who is liked, praised, admired, disliked, hated, or despised. Whether I am a pianist, a businessman, or a minister, what matters is how I am perceived by my world.”

And when my drug of choice is withheld, I respond with the same anger as any other addict: Don’t these people know I have the best interests of the church at heart? Don’t they know I could have gone into some other profession and made lots more money? It’s as if I’m entitled to universal trust and consideration.

Nouwen goes on to write:

Anger in particular seems close to a professional vice in the contemporary ministry. Pastors are angry at their leaders for not leading and at their followers for not following. They are angry at those who do not come to church, and angry at those who do come for coming without enthusiasm.

They are angry at their families, who make them feel guilty, and angry at themselves for not being who they want to be. This is not an open, blatant, roaring anger, but an anger hidden behind the smooth word, the smiling face, and the polite handshake. It is a frozen anger, an anger which settles into a biting resentment and slowly paralyzes a generous heart.

If there is anything that makes the ministry look grim and dull, it is this dark, insidious anger in the servants of Christ.

Wherever it comes from, whenever my craving for approval makes itself known, I’d better pay attention.

One Sunday morning, as I was greeting people at the door, a visitor handed me his card.

“I usually attend Hollywood Presbyterian,” he said. “But we’re visiting here today. Give me a call sometime.”

I looked down at his card—”Speech Instructor.”

Hollywood Presbyterian is the home of Lloyd Ogilvie. Lloyd Ogilvie is perfect. His hair is perfect, his robe is perfect, his smile is perfect, but above all, his voice is perfect. Deep as the ocean, rich and resonant, Lloyd Ogilvie sounds like what I expect God will sound like on a really good day. Next to his voice, mine sounds like I’m in perpetual adolescence. It’s difficult to feel prophetic when you hear yourself chirping like Mickey Mouse: “Okay, now, let’s repent.”

When I catch myself comparing myself to others or thinking, I could be happy if only I had what they have, then I know I need to withdraw for a while and listen for another voice. Away from the winds, earthquakes, and fires of human recognition, I can again hear the still, small voice, posing the question it always asks of self-absorbed ministers: What are you doing here?

I reply by whining about some of my own Ahabs and Jezebels. And the voice gently reminds me, as it has reminded thousands of Elijahs before me, that I am only a small part of a much larger movement, and at the end of the day there is only one King whose approval will matter.

The voice also whispers, Do not despise your place, your gifts, your voice, for you cannot have another’s, and it would not fulfill you if you could.

Celebrating solitude

To truly care for people requires not caring too much about their approval or disapproval. Otherwise the temptation to give their preferences too much emotional weight is almost inevitable. To effectively lead people—without being damaged in the process—requires regular withdrawal from the very people I’m trying to lead.

Thomas Merton wrote that the desert fathers considered society to be a shipwreck from which all individuals must swim for their lives. The very pecking orders and ladders of success that I naturally find myself climbing, they fled in horror. In solitude I see the career successes and failures—which look so huge in my day-to-day life—take on a much smaller look from an eternal perspective. (“If you can meet with triumph and disaster,” Kipling wrote, “treat those two imposters just the same.”) And the development of my soul, which I can lose sight of altogether in my routine strivings, is revealed as the one great task of my life.

Approval addiction involves some irrational thought processes, which solitude helps clear. Psychiatrist David Burns notes it is not another person’s approval or compliment that makes me feel good, it is my belief that there is validity to the compliment. Suppose you were to visit a psychiatric ward, he imagines, and a patient approaches you: “You are wonderful. I had a vision from God. He told me the thirteenth person to walk through the door would be the Special Messenger. You are the thirteenth, so I know you are God’s Chosen One, the Prince of Peace, the Holy of Holies. Let me kiss your shoe.”

Most likely your self-esteem-o-meter would not rise. Why not? Because between other people’s approval and your pleasure in it is your assessment of the validity of their approval. You are not the passive victim of others’ opinions. In fact, their opinions are powerless until you validate them. No one’s approval will affect me unless I grant it credibility and status. The same holds true for disapproval.

Several years back, at a previous church, I used to get regular complaints from a parishioner about all aspects of the service, mostly that the music was too loud. When he couldn’t get satisfaction from me, he hounded other staff and board members. One afternoon my secretary informed me that I had a visitor from OSHA, the federal watchdog agency. It turned out this same parishioner, as a last resort, asked for government assistance to get the sound system turned down on Sunday mornings. By law, OSHA was required to send someone out.

“Can you imagine the kind of ridicule I’ve taken all week,” the OSHA representative said apologetically, “with people knowing I’m going out to bust a church?”

Though dramatically stated and strongly disapproving, these complaints didn’t bother me at all. They originated from a character who lived on the fringe, as far as I was concerned. I realized from this incident that no one’s disapproval can emotionally affect me without my authorization. For me to allow disapproval to subtract from my sense of worth as a human being is both irrational and destructive.

Getting guidance

In addition to solitude, I find it helpful to have another person or two to whom I regularly go for guidance on these issues.

Some time ago I heard from an attender that our church doesn’t talk enough about sin.

“Can you imagine that?” I said later to one of my spiritual guides in my nondefensive, emotionally open way. “What he really wants is a sermon series promoting the legalistic, superficial, developmentally arrested approach to morality that will condemn outsiders and reinforce his own self-righteous spiritual smugness.”

I waited for my friend to agree with me that this guy had obviously fixated at Kohlberg’s lowest stage of moral development (preconventional level—heteronomous morality).

Instead he asked me two pointed questions:

“Well, do you preach about sin enough?”

Then, after I had squirmed, he added, “And what is this need you have for everybody to agree with everything you do?”

He forced me to reexamine my own understanding of sin and to proclaim it in a clearer way. He also reminded me that ministry is not about getting people to like me.

A certain amount of discontent is inevitable, and probably even healthy, in any group of people. Not every infection calls for a massive dose of penicillin. Many of the personal hits a pastor takes will be absorbed in the natural flow of events. But at least two types of situations call for criticism to be confronted and refuted.

One is if the criticism affects the health of the body.

I have a friend who pastors with as much sensitivity and integrity as anyone I know. Because of several changes going on in the church, however, he was accused of (among other things) being a megalomaniac. This has about as much validity as charging Mr. Rogers with inciting violence. This criticism, however, went far beyond what his psyche could tolerate. It struck directly at his ability to serve effectively and at the church’s trust in its own leadership process. Because it affected the health of the body, this attack had to be handled head-on.

The other time I probably need to respond directly to criticism is—unfortunately—when I don’t want to. Recent studies on self-esteem suggest that most issues involving our sense of worth revolve around approach/avoidance tendencies.

That is, when we sense ourselves avoiding something out of fear, we interpret ourselves as wimping out, and our self-esteem drops proportionately. On the other hand, when we approach directly a situation we’d rather avoid (even if we’re not particularly effective in it), our sense of esteem rises because we did the difficult thing.

At one point early in my ministry, we had a particularly difficult EGR (“extra-grace required,” as Carl George calls them) person on the governing board. When his term finally expired, I breathed a prayer of thanks. Sometime later I was engaged in what was supposed to be an extended time of prayer, when I realized I was deep into an anger fantasy involving this former board member.

In my anger fantasies, I never torture my opponents too brutally, because then I would feel guilty (and that would rob my sense of revenge of its purity). Usually in my fantasies, whomever I’m angry at suddenly realizes with painful, shame-ridden clarity the massive, unfair hurt they’ve inflicted on me and my family.

“I hope you’re satisfied with what you’ve done,” I always say, pouring hot coals upon their too-late repentant heads until they feel like scum.

“I hope when you go home and look in the mirror tonight you can live with what you see.”

It occurred to me that I might still be angry with this guy. I realized then I needed to meet with him and discuss it, even if all issues didn’t get resolved (they didn’t). Otherwise, there would always be that suspicion lurking in the back of my mind that I had avoided a confrontation I needed to have.

The discipline of secrecy

We have yet another weapon in the battle against the approval addiction: the discipline of secrecy.

“Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them,” Jesus warned. “If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven” (Matt. 6:1 niv).

His particular examples relate to financial contributions, fasting, and prayer, but they reflect a deep insight into all of human nature. I used to think Jesus meant God had a reward stored up for me in heaven, but if my motives were self-serving, I would lose it. What he’s really talking about, however, is losing the intrinsic power that these good deeds have of helping me enter the life of the kingdom. He was talking to people who were addicted to having their righteousness admired—so addicted, it was impossible for them to enjoy righteousness for its own sake.

If I give my money away, I have less opportunity to become a slave to it, and I can experience true freedom and joy. If I choose to impress people by making sure they know about my generosity, however, the nature of my action changes. I settle for the narcotic of approval, and instead of becoming a little more free, I become a little more enslaved.

On one particularly busy morning at our house, I voluntarily emptied the dishwasher before my wife got up, even though it wasn’t in my job description. That evening, when she still hadn’t commented on it, I tactfully mentioned how fortunate she was to have such a thoughtful husband. At this point, the fundamental character of what I had done was altered. Instead of one tiny action helping me become more like Christ, more like a servant without feeling I had done something extraordinary, it became one more item on a quid pro quo checklist.

Jesus says to do good things without telling anybody about it. Eventually you’ll find you lose the need to let people know. And you’ll also find you can do good because it really is the most liberating, joyful way to live.

I try to implement this discipline of secrecy regularly in my own life. If I’m going to a meeting where there will be people I perceive as important (my “generalized others”), I try ahead of time to identify the things I’ll be tempted to say to impress them, and declare those topics off limits. (I don’t get carried away with it, though. You’ll notice this chapter didn’t get published anonymously.)

Weaning myself from the approval of others is a lifetime project. Its viselike grip on my soul can be broken, however, enabling me, when vilified, crucified, and even criticized, to rest in the approval of the One I serve.