The Need For Acceptance And Approval

A reader writes:

I am currently involved in a book reading club with some separated brethren. We are reading The Search for Significance by Robert S. McGee. Overall it is a good book to help one think about seeing our true worth through God’s eyes. However, the fullness of truth would make the book even better.

The book delves into false beliefs vs. God’s truths. One of the false beliefs discussed is, "I must be approved (accepted) by certain others to feel good about myself. If I’m not approved…. (fear of rejection)." (pg. 305) McGee identifies, "Reconciliation (Col. 1:21-22): I am totally accepted by God." (cf. pg. 305) as the offsetting truth to the false belief of the fear of rejection.

What is the Church’s answer or understanding to the fear of rejection that we as humans face in our daily lives and how do we over come it?

I’m at a bit of a disadvantage since I haven’t read the book and thus don’t know exactly what McGee says about the need for human approval. If he means that the desire for approval by others must not be our ultimate criterion–that approval by God must be–then his thesis is acceptable. On the other hand, he may be diminishing or downplaying the need for approval by other humans in a way that falsifies the truth abou man.

There can be a tendency to this at times in some Protestant circles. I don’t know whether McGee is part of one of these or not, but there are circles in which psychological needs for acceptance and approval by others are dismissed in favor of a "God accepts me, and that’s all I need, I shouldn’t worry about anything else" mentality. This can happen, for example, in circles that are highly suspicious of psychology or the concept of self-esteem (and it must be admitted that there is a lot of junk psychology and even more junk in the self-esteem movement; the trick is not throwing the baby out with the bathwater).

If one needs a Bible verse pointing out that God does not intend for us to draw all of our emotional satisfaction from God alone, I would point to one of the foundational verses about human nature as God designed it:

Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man  should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him" (Gen. 2:18).

This verse is not to be understood as leading to the creation of Eve simply so she could bear children or do housework. The verse reflects the need of the man to be married, to engage in a partnership of life oriented to the good of the spouses as well as the procreation of children. This means that mankind, from its foundation–and the verse in question applies to the situation before the fall, so we can’t chalk this up to original sin–is called to exist in interpersonal communion, and when this fails to happen the situation is "not good."

Jesus made it clear that not everybody is called to marriage in particular (Matt. 19:10-12), but everyone is called to interpersonal communion with others, and that means not only giving emotionally to others but taking emotional satisfaction in human relationships as well. In the case of marriage, spouses are not exclusively givers of love, they are also receivers of love, and if one spouse does not receive love and support from the other then something is wrong with the marriage.

The same applies to other human relationships, whether it is the parent-child relationship (Scripture makes a big point about the duties of parents and children toward each other) and friendships (Scripture also makes a big point about the importance of these).

In all such relationships, we are not meant to be endless wells of charity that never draw upon the relationships for our own needs. That’s just not how God set up human nature. He made us to be social beings, and we don’t exist well if we are deprived of human contact and support.

Indeed, in cases where humans are deprived of all contact with their own kind, they tend not to live for very long and, if deprived of contact from a very young age, they suffer severe developmental and emotional problems.

While we cannot allow ourselves to become slaves to the need for approval and acceptance by others so that we forget our overarching duty to God, we do need these things from others, and the lack of them hurts us. It is natural to fear what hurts us, and so we have a natural fear of rejection.

Sometimes we must face this fear and just endure it, particularly when we will be rejected for honoring our duties to God, and in those circumstances we must just trust God to give us the support we need.

However when we are not in such a situation, it is natural and appropriate to do what we can to mitigate and avoid rejection. This effort can include things like going out and making new friends, engaging in social activities, taking the steps necessary to build families, improving our social skills, doing good things that others will appreciate, recognizing when our anxieties about our relationships are hurting us and making things worse, learning to not stress so much, learning to make peace with others, etc.

There is no single solution here–no equivalent to "Just trust God and don’t worry about what others think"–because God designed human society to be a complex reality that, particularly after the introduction of sin, involves finding and implementing what can be complex solutions to the problems we face.

That complexity is part of us–part of the human condition–and by wrestling with it and building good lives for ourselves we thereby glorify God. It’s what he meant us to do, and it’s what he gives us gifts of nature and grace to allow us to pursue.

By the way, though the reader asked for "the Church’s answer or understanding to the fear of rejection," I would point out that what I have written above is not a perspective unique to Catholics. Many Protestants and other Christians would share it as well, because they, too, recognize the biblical principles and the principles of human nature that are involved.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

9 thoughts on “The Need For Acceptance And Approval”

  1. Wonderful post Jimmy,
    It took me a long time to understand what the Church teaches about man being a social creature and how orthodox social justice teaching flows from that. Properly practiced, this understanding (and the help of the Holy Spirit) should transform our parishes into vibrant communities which nurture and support their members and empower parishioners to go out into the world and claim it for Christ. Alas that we are so far from the ideal!

  2. This is something that has struck me while learning more about John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. Our call (and need) to engage in interpersonal communion is clear right from the beginning (It is not good that the man should be alone), and it is a way in which we image God’s love as opposed to being a substitute for it.

  3. A perennial topic and a difficult one to address and stay in bounds. (kudos to Jimmy for such a balanced answer)
    There’s so much that can be said on this topic since rejection is such a universal experience. Several comments occurred to me (and I rejected them all), so I’ll just get some popcorn and watch for a while.

  4. I suspect that it is often the case that those who are in wont for those human relationships often lack the resources of various kinds to just ‘go out and make new friends…etc.” Yes, those things need to be done, but let us not rub salt in the wounds and tell them to just get in gear and do it. Because human beings -are- created to be social, they’d have done so if it were in their power to do so unaided.

  5. Puzzled, yes those “in wont for those human relatinships” would likely have fear of rejection, but couldn’t it be said that all of us at some time, have experienced rejection or feared rejection? I think it’s safe to say that there are outwardly successful people, even de facto successful people, with a fear of rejection.
    Just tossing that in.

  6. As someone with a lot of experience of rejection, and a couple years in the past where I had no real friends at all, I’ll say that on the one hand Puzzled is right, saying affectively “get it in gear socially” does not help someone in that situation. On the other hand, in less extreme situations perhap it is a good idea to advise getting out and doing things socially more. Various things including being legal to drink have gotten me out a lot more this year, and as a result I have made a lot of new friends and have a much more fulfilling social life than ever before.
    It is also good to emphasize that seeking social approval, working on social skills, etc. is not sinful and could even be the will of God for you at the moment. Of course things could go to far, towards vanity or putting the approval of others above approval from God (leading to bad behavior)or neglecting other duties or whatever, but I don’t think anyone here is suggesting those things are ok.

  7. I haven’t read the book either…but from the way the excerpt is described and the phrasing used, it sounds like the message’s target audience is not so much the people who put socializing ahead of God, but the people (like I used to be) who feel themselves utterly cut off from the human race, and are on the verge of true despair from it.
    I’ve been there. Recovering alcoholics yammer on about “hitting bottom” and I never really got what they meant before, but for me, Miami was “bottom”…and just as hitting it can push an addict into recovery, hitting it pushed then-quasi-atheist me back into the Church in which I was born but not actually raised.
    Yes, the companionship of other human beings is important _also_. But it’s a very fickle thing. It can be lost entirely for any number of reasons, some of them our own fault and predictable, others our fault and not predictable, and others not even our own fault but rather merely the result of chance circumstance. Once lost, restoring it can be an extremely difficult undertaking.
    People in such situations can really very desperately need to know that God loves them first, last, and always, regardless of whether their fellow humans can be convinced to do so. It’s an important message, despite being perhaps theologically and psychologically incomplete.

  8. Matt, that’s how I read it also. The first time I read this thread, what popped into my head was “Only in God is my soul at rest” (ps. 62).
    One reason why I sort of danced around this topic is that all of the above are good points. Catherine Doherty has written about “doubts, loneliness and rejection” and says that sometimes one needs to do the people thing and sometimes it’s God drawing a person more deeply to Himself.
    What jumped out at me from the person who wrote to Jimmy was the Catholic/separated brethren aspect. Recently, I’ve been reading The Dark Night of the Soul, both the book itself and about it. I was surprised to read that Mother Teresa spent the last 40 years of her life in a dark night and (although I can’t find the quote) said she felt like the most rejected person on earth. I think that experience can only be fully understood by people in the Catholic faith.
    Anyway, my two cents for the morning.

  9. We must also remember though that we shouldn’t give in to the ‘crowd mentality’ and compromise our values and Catholic beliefs just for the sake of ‘fitting with the crowd’ and submit to popular opinion all because of the worldly desire for human approval/human relationship.
    After all, even in the face of unpopularity, Jesus never gave into the crowd. In John 6, when people, including his disciples, threatened to leave him because of his teachings on the Eucharist, if winning people’s approval were what was important to him, Jesus could have stated then, in order to salvage this situation and his human relationships, that he was merely referring to the Eucharist as something symbolic, as most Protestants have believed all along.
    Also, if it is human opinion, human approval, that is what is above all most important, remember that in the end, it was the crowd that called for the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus could have won human approval from these folks had he acquiesced to their needs and demands; yet, he chose to stand on the side of Truth and fulfill the will of his Heavenly Father, even if it meant human disapproval.
    Today, just for the sake of human relationships and human approval, people sacrifice their values and beliefs (e.g., about abortion, marriage as something sacred, etc.) because for want of human approval and just fall in the crowd. I think Jesus taught us to be better than this and rise above the crowd, even if it means human disapproval and sacrificing human relationships. We can also see this virtue in the lives of the Saints as well, where even in the face of loosing relationships even with their own family in addition to those of their friends and meeting up with disapproval by many, they, for the sake of Christ, were willing to sacrifice all these things for God.

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