The F.O.E.

This, of course, is a lot easier said than done. There are powerful both internal and external forces at play each day of our lives, which make such delightfully simple life extremely difficult to live out moment by moment. 

Craving peer (or even parental or other authority) approval is just a part of it.

Fear is another.

Our woeful insecurities that drive us to relentlessly seek approval from each other are tied with an umbilical cord to our fathomless fears. 

Take fear of embarrassment, for example. Our old, familiar FOE…

I am certainly not an expert, but this fear might be one of the most dominating principles that guides majority of our social interactions.  Who wants to be publicly humiliated?!!! Who volunteers for the 'shame' box?

It’s been tossed around that on the scale of worst fears, the fear of public speaking is right up there next to the fear of death.

Which means that I’d rather be dead inside a coffin and buried in a hole in the ground than posting myself in a place where I could potentially expose myself to the vulnerability of you thinking,

Wow, she is such an idiot! How could she make such a fool of herself!

Even without you, my own internal critic is always on the job,

Gee-whiz.  You are such an idiot.  Why did you do that?!!! And what were you thinking when you said that?!!!

No wonder so many of us choose to live buried alive (if you can call that 'alive'), hiding inside our coffins, rather than risking the exposure.

God, however, doesn’t seem nearly as concerned with His reputation as much as we are.  I mean, not only do I worry about my own reputation, I worry about... God’s! Who in their right mind would take such responsibility on their little shoulders?!!! Of course, majority of that may not be about Him at all, but that’s a topic for a different blog.