The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 6 – 9
Having seen that the soul, even the imprisoned soul, does indeed have its own lusts and desires, we have to ask; what should the soul lust after? Obviously, there are verses like Isaiah 26:8-9. And sure, that’s an answer… but does it really make any sense? How is that of any practical help? Surely you expect a better answer than that after all this. And of course, the Bible has one.
The lusts of the eyes which go to feed the flesh are of the world; they are devoted to the things of this life, and how to take care of this beast. And that’s fine, if you are living for yourself (2 Timothy 2:4). But our selves should be focused on how to prepare a new body, and how to make the next life better. So what should your soul lust after – what is the “of the Father” equivalent of the soul’s lust? Proverbs 13:25.
So the soul wants food. But obviously, that’s a beast desire, right? Well, it would be… if we were talking about food for the flesh. But there is another kind of food that clearly is better: John 4:32-34. So doing what God told Him to do was food for Him. And since the words of Jesus are always soul words (since His soul was always in charge), it means that doing God’s will fed His soul. Now that makes verses like Isaiah 55:1-3 make a lot more sense.
The proper lust for a soul that has hopes of a future life is hunger and thirst. But hungering and thirsting for what? Clearly, bread and water… and equally clearly, not the bread and water you buy in the supermarket. Now we could go off on a number of tangents here, talking about yearning for Jesus, the bread of life; or the water of life He promised to give us; that’s what most people would do.
Or we could talk of righteousness, of the holy spirit; or understanding, or of the Kingdom of God. And some of this would be true. But that would just be replacing one symbol we don’t understand for another symbol we also don’t understand. And while that might feel temporarily satisfying, it would in the end, leave us… hungry. Always insist on a real answer, one that actually means something in the real world.
Jesus was eating food that the disciples couldn’t perceive. Food which was, clearly, far more satisfying than the bread of the Pharisees. So satisfying, in fact, that this non-food allowed Him to eat nothing else for 40 days and nights, which is scientifically impossible. Yet the food that the disciples, and modern science, “knew not of” made it possible. And that food was, according to Jesus’ own explanation, the knowledge that He was doing His Father’s will. Something that was miraculously confirmed just before He performed that 40 day fast! (Matthew 3:17-4:2).
Put differently, the food Jesus had was the approval of His Father. Since His Father vocally approved of Him just before His temptation, He literally went into that fast on a large meal of soul food! And that’s fine for Him; but how does that help you, if God hasn’t come down in the form of a dove and told people you were right? It helps you because all of this is true, as always, on every level. Jesus needed the approval of His Father to survive that fast, and to do the mighty works that He did. And it is that same desire, as always, true on every level, for our father’s approval which drives and motivates all of us.
APPROVAL
Whether you’re a scribe copying the book of Genesis by hand or a child supposedly growing up in the likeness of its parents, you need to have a way of guaranteeing that each new generation retains the accuracy of the original. And so God crafted the soul to need the approval of its parents. That way, when the father said “I’m proud of you, son!” the son would know that his own soul was approaching the likeness of his father’s soul, so that it could carry on his judgments to future generations!
This is, of course, a great thing, for it guarantees that we will strive to measure up to the judgments of our father. But what if our father is not worthy of being copied? What if his judgments are not good enough? Where are we to seek this soul food we were born to require? Just as a hunger for a steak that can’t be satisfied might send you looking for a hamburger, so the soul’s desire for the approval of his father, if it can’t be fulfilled, will send the soul looking for a substitute. If your father cannot or will not give you that approval, perhaps an uncle will; or a teacher; or an army sergeant.
But just like that steak, these other forms of approval won’t quite fill the void the same way. If your best friend says “you’re a good person”, that’s something; that crumb of approval is enough to tantalize your soul’s taste buds, but it’s just not filling. When we turn to other authority figures in our life for this approval, we’re always left hungry. Because their approval is less meaningful than a father’s, so it is only natural to try to replace with quantity what you lack in quality. So you seek fame and attention, the approval of the masses.
So you seek more and more people to tell you that you matter. And so hungry is your soul for this, that you can’t always wait for them to notice it on their own; so you tell them, show them, try and make them see how amazing you are, so that they will say it and maybe finally you can believe it! Yet, if you truly believed it, you wouldn’t need someone to tell you – and you certainly don’t need to tell them (Proverbs 27:2).
Thus, if you’re constantly telling people how smart you are – however subtly or indirectly – it’s because you don’t really believe it yourself, because the one person whose opinion you were designed to value never told you that you were! So instead you seek to pile achievements on top of awards, subconsciously thinking that if you get straight A’s, make a million dollars, and marry a supermodel, your dad will have to notice you… and have no choice but to be proud of you!
BETTER APPROVAL
One problem with approval from humans is that most parents either never give it at all, or give it out like candy. A third category flips back and forth between these two depending on their mood… which is to say, depending on which of their fractions is in charge in that moment. We all know that little old lady who is a praise factory, dispensing flattery and admiration for the tiniest accomplishments. As children, we quickly learn the law of supply and demand; that the praise of someone who praises everything means nothing.
We also know the person who, no matter what you do, they will find fault, and it will never be good enough. Usually, we still find ourselves struggling to earn their approval simply because they have made it seem so valuable by hoarding it. This sets up a self-destructive attitude where we dismiss the approval we are given because it was too easy to get; and kill ourselves seeking to please those who give it least. Both are unhealthy, because we will never be able to be satisfied either way.
The only way to ever truly satisfy our soul’s hunger is to hear our Father say “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him” (Matthew 17:5). Even worldly psychologists know this. Unfortunately, Adam guaranteed that no human father is truly worthy of copying. Which means that even if the fallen Adam did give Seth his approval, it wouldn’t mean as much as it should since Adam wasn’t a worthy original to copy! So Seth’s soul’s hunger could not be completely satisfied by Adam’s approval!
And so even for those few lucky people who had a stable and loving home life, the approval of their human father isn’t enough because deep down we know that they aren’t qualified to approve of us, being imperfect themselves. So, obviously, we are meant to turn to an alternative; not, this time, to the “next best thing”, but to an even better thing: the approval of God (2 Timothy 2:15). That’s why we want to work miracles (Mark 16:17), to prove God loves us.
That’s why people want to preach the gospel, so they can show God all the wonderful things they did, and force Him to be proud of them (Matthew 7:21-23). And yet, as that verse shows, the only thing God cares about is that we act like He acts (Genesis 1:26). We can conquer the world, and it will still not earn His love. Likewise, keeping Christmas, giving to the poor, denying the flesh, killing heretics and infidels in His name, all these things that you might think He wants – none of this will earn God’s approval, when all He wants is for you to act like Him (2 Corinthians 10:17-18).
So the only way to find this approval your soul craves is by pleasing God; by striving to measure up to His stature. Our soul is hungry for this (Psalms 107:5-9), lacking the validation of God because we are too unlike Him to earn His praise (Isaiah 32:6)! And just like your flesh, when your soul is hungry it makes it weak! And that’s how it becomes imprisoned by the lesser fractions; because it was too weak to fight back because it had no approval! No food for the soul!
So it was conquered in no small part because it was starving! Because without the approval of authority figures, it will have no self-confidence; and without confidence in the quality of its judgments, it will not have the strength to stand firmly behind them, and resist the totally unearned confidence of the heart!
VALIDATION
A child that grows up comparing itself to his father will rejoice when he earns his approval… but what happens when he disappoints his father? The Father said that the wages of sin is death; what can we do then, if we have disappointed Him? Luke 23:34. We need someone to tell the Father – and us – that we are human, and that we did the best we could. Jesus said this as the head of the church (Ephesians 5:23), which collectively forms a symbolic woman.
And so in the human level, it is the mother who intercedes with her husband and reminds him that the child meant well. It is to her that the child looks for comfort after the father yells and punishes; for as it is his job to break the heart, it is hers to bind it up again (Isaiah 61:1). Thus it is her validation that helps a child cope with the father’s disapproval.
Remember: her job is not to negate his disapproval. She in no way contradicts the father’s judgment, which was just and fair. After all, the child did fail. He does have to do better. But he needs to believe that he can do better. That there is a path back to his father’s love after failing. We will fail in this life, a lot. Whether we’re learning to ride a bike, finding a spouse, or building a space shuttle, we will feel like giving up.
We will feel that the Father asks too much, that earning His approval is impossible. And it is then that the mother validates our efforts, encouraging us to continue. If a child grows up without validation from the mother, then he will seek it elsewhere; the easiest way is to marry a woman who will replace her; something psychologists are thoroughly aware of, but don’t really understand why we do (various oedipal theories involving sexual attraction to the mother are proposed).
But we do understand why; their soul is trying to find the validation they couldn’t get from their real mom through a replacement mother figure, a wife. We see this in the Bible in Genesis 24:67. Most likely, his mom had been dead for three years at this point. He couldn’t have still been in mourning for her… but without the mother figure, he had no one to forgive his sins until Rebekah came.
Likewise, see Galatians 2:2 NLT. Paul was afraid that his teachings all these years might have been wrong; he went to Jerusalem because his spirit wanted the approval of the apostles there to confirm that he was on the right path and their validation to excuse his mistakes! The approval of human authority figures and the validation of the church, the woman!
But Paul had learned these things from Jesus, Himself (Galatians 1:10-12, 16-17). He should never have doubted that, and he didn’t need the Jews’ approval! And as Galatians shows, it turned out to be a waste of time anyway (Galatians 2:4-6) – as it always will be when you seek approval or validation from other men (Luke 16:15).
THIRST
A father’s job is to point out sins, and reward positive obedience. He isn’t interested in praising the absence of screwing up; only in praising the achievements that matter (Luke 17:10). Keeping the negative law is what you’re supposed to do, it isn’t worthy of praise! Only someone who has lived through what you’ve lived through and knows how hard it was can understand that not sinning is, itself, often a great accomplishment! (Hebrews 2:17-18). Thus, validation must come from someone who dwells on the past, a spirit trait and thus a female trait!
You may have noticed above that David’s soul was hungry and thirsty. And as our daily bread represents God approving of us (Isaiah 55:2), so the water represents the validation. It is validation which is like water to the soul. Water, which washes away sins! (Ephesians 5:26). It is the mother saying “I forgive you, it wasn’t your fault, you did your best” (Psalms 79:8-9, Psalms 103:14-16). Only someone who can relate to your problems, and thus empathize with your sinning nature is capable of making you feel better about your failures; and this is why Christ, though male, fulfills this role as head (and therefore, part of) the woman!
The Bible doesn’t use the word validation, but it does use a very close synonym: justification. See Romans 4:25 NKJV (and a lot of other verses in Romans, but I won’t bore you with that). Yet validation is a better word for us, because justification has a negative sense in modern English, more like Job 32:2 uses it. We need this justification in order to become a true copy of the original, because we can’t do it perfectly the first time! (Titus 3:3-8). It is, of course, Jesus who makes intercession for our sins with God (Romans 8:26-27), but not Jesus alone! Jesus as the head of the church!
The cloud of witnesses of the other saints who form body of the woman, who are the spirits of just men made perfect… they also remind God of what He is trying to accomplish (Hebrews 12:1-13, 23)… and their example reminds us that we can pick ourselves up and still yet attain our Father’s approval!
A VENGEFUL SPIRIT
That verse in Romans points us to another layer; that as it is the spirit of God, Jesus, who intercedes for our soul, so it should be our own spirit which makes intercession for our soul; it should be our own spirit which validates our soul, and forgives our own mistakes. It is the job of the spirit to forgive the sins of the soul (Proverbs 16:6). But it can’t do that if it’s busy gloating over them to prove that it should rule! Our spirits, arrogant as they are, delight in rubbing in every failure of our soul to justify their rebellion. Only a broken spirit can heal the soul!
But most of us have an unbroken spirit; which like all improperly educated spirits, is irrational. Like a mother defending a monstrous child, our spirit will leap to defend our heart and soul from any external assault; it is a master of justifying, of excusing, of saying “he’s a good boy! How dare you pick on him!” And yet at home the same mother is frustrated to death with that same child, and smacks it in anger. Likewise, our own spirit is an incredibly harsh critic of our heart and soul; even as it bitterly defends those things it hates in the heart to others, it not-so-secretly loathes them from within.
Most of the self-destructive thoughts we have come from this spirit which hates the flesh and has only contempt for the soul. When you think to yourself “you don’t deserve it”, “you’re a loser”, “I shouldn’t try”, “this will never work”, it is simply the spirit talking, which by nature has no faith in your soul’s ability to solve problems or your beast’s ability to achieve a goal.
And, as always, the answer is to judge the spirit; hear it out, consider the facts, and then let the soul make an objective decision; something which it can do if it has strength from the approval of a father-figure! Because then it will have the confidence to stand behind the decision.
But since today’s world rarely even has the pale physical shadow of that approval from their human parents, they are incapable of doing this, and so the soul just lays there and takes the abuse of the spirit, and since it is not worthy of God’s approval, it seeks that of fellow men.
And so like the soul, the spirit needs something too; but unlike the soul, the spirit is too arrogant to know it. So the soul has to want something for it. It is the soul that desires a better spirit in Psalms 51:10; because the spirit doesn’t realize it needs to drink of the water of life!
Its own water is plenty good enough (2 Kings 5:10-12). That is why the soul both hungers and thirsts; it hungers for bread it needs for itself… but thirsts for the water to wash its own spirit! (Hebrews 9:13-14, 1 Peter 3:21). So that the washed spirit can, in turn, validate its own soul!
And just as our soul hungers for the approval of its father to confirm that the soul’s judgments were exactly what the father would have done… So also our weakened soul thirsts for the validation of its mother, to assure it that it did the best it can, and that it will do better next time. But in another layer, our soul hungers to believe that it is doing all God expects it to do; and it thirsts for a better spirit, one which will not only forgive our sins… but will teach our spirit to forgive our souls!
BEHAVIOR
We do nothing for no reason. We like to think we’re unique, and special, and unknowable, and we just aren’t that complicated. We spend our whole lives doing things for one of three reasons; approval (soul), validation (soul-for-spirit), or the immediate lusts of the flesh (beast). One man might boast of how good he is at sports. This is because he believes he can get approval that way, and praise of men might lead to praise from his dad.
He’s not into that “nerd stuff”, “that’s just lame”. Is it? Or is it just something his friends would mock him for, thus robbing him of some of his group’s approval? Another man might say “I think sports are stupid.” Is it because he just feels that way, for no reason? Or is it because he is not good at sports, and so he realized early in life this would not be the path to approval? Thus, calling them stupid makes failing at them matter less.
Another person loves math; is this just a random quirk of neurons? Or does math make them feel smarter than other people, thus better than those who don’t understand math, and thus more worthy of approval than they? Or does math appeal to them because it represents certainty? There are no reasons to take risks in math – the answer is in the math, you just have to find it. If you have to guess, you’re doing it wrong.
So to people who hate making mistakes – because they don’t have any validation to forgive their sins – math would be a safe home. The beast-driven jock who hates math is simply not good at it. And usually, that’s because he can’t make his heart pay attention. His spirit then tries to create rules to protect him from future embarrassment, by not trying – because if he never tried, his failure didn’t really count.
Yet if he had his mother’s validation to forgive his mistakes, he would be able to try, fail, and try again until he succeeds. The motivations are different in different people, and are usually a complex mix of interacting fractions and their respective lusts, fears, and pride; yet each of them can be understood and separated, if you just think about it honestly.
Do you really like this movie because “it’s a great movie”? Or is it because you, personally, identify with one of the characters; he solved a problem you wish you could solve, he achieved something you’ve been desperate to achieve… his daddy loved him?
NOTHING IS DONE FOR NO REASON
Most of these motivations trace back to preteen experiences and trauma; a fond memory of watching the stars with your dad when you were four could very easily lead to a person “loving outer space”. Do they really? Or do they just miss that time when their dad still paid them attention? The same goes for songs, hobbies, careers, friends, cars, comics, games, beliefs… these are not mysterious things.
They are just the way that our fractions interacted with the various punishments and praise we received as a child, and the best way we could see to feed that hunger within. All the things we do are the inevitable result of a scared little child in a grownup body trying to earn the approval and validation of his parents – or if our soul decides it’s a lost cause, trying desperately to pretend we don’t care about it.
The specific way in which we choose to do these things is the logical result of the events of our life, in particularly our early childhood, as our various inward selves perceived them, and just as a billiard rack never breaks quite the same way… still, it is subject to laws of action and reaction just as rigorous, and just as predictable, as our own mental triangle… provided you have sufficient information.
To take a simple example, we don’t just “want” a tattoo. They aren’t just “cool” (or, for that matter, inherently disgusting, although they are forbidden in the Bible – Leviticus 19:28). Because we do nothing for no reason. We want them because they allow us to advertise our herd, which validates us (49er’s logo, cross, military affiliation, favorite fantasy character), or to give us a constant source/reminder of direct validation (mom, boobs, cross, etc.), or commemorate a momentous event that made us feel approved of (birth of a child, great game, special vacation, etc.)….but more than anything else because it allows the scared little child within to stamp something on their flesh that, they hope, will make something they wish were true about themselves somehow become true because it is now part of them.
Thus, by tattooing barb wire, a knife, or some other symbol of manliness on yourself, you would be able to prove to yourself, whenever you doubted, that you are tough – it says so right across your knuckles. Thus telling anyone who understood the fractions that deep down you believe you are NOT that tough, not that manly. Or by getting a butterfly tattoo, you can remind yourself that you’re going to soar one day, once you come out of your cocoon; or a rose, because you’re going to find true love; or a dolphin because someday you want to be a marine biologist. All of these tattoos exist to counter a fear you have; the fact that you have the tattoo, proves you have the fear that urged you to get it.
LIBIDO
Except for the basic needs of the body, every choice we make can be traced back to the soul’s desire for approval and validation – how that desire then interacts with the spirit’s rules, or lack thereof; and the heart’s selfishness and impulsiveness. In life, no matter who you are, there will be times of stress. Times when you risk failure, or worse, actually do fail. And the more you fail, the more stressed and concerned for the future you are. Now when you’re stressed, you don’t get hungry – you get thirsty.
Your mouth goes dry instantly in times of stress. And like all things, this reveals the handiwork of God… because the more you doubt that you can handle this problem, the thirstier you are for someone to tell you that yes, you can do it. The more evidence life hands you that you are not good enough, the more you will be driven to seek proof that you are. Proof that your father is wrong about you, that you are worthy of carrying on his authority to another generation.
Proof that your mother was wrong, that you did do your best. And the more difficult it becomes to believe these things, the hornier you will become. Not because your beast craves the sensations of sex, per se; but because your soul craves the implicit approval and validation that accompanies it.
If you doubt yourself, a mate is living proof that you are worthy. If you don’t believe you are worthy of forgiveness, she is living proof that someone else believes that you are; a woman who believes that you’re good enough to make a copy of. It is hardwired into us to know that finding a sexual partner is proof that we are worthy, for this is someone who didn’t have to love us, and did it anyway – proving that we MUST have value. That dad and mom WERE wrong about us.
Men want to prove they can conquer a mate (thus deserving approval), which requires sex as proof. The hotter the girl, and the more she resists before relenting, the greater the approval earned. And the more like your mother she is, the more her validation means when she tells you that it wasn’t your fault (of course, these are often incompatible goals).
And of course, this works both ways; women want to prove they can catch a husband and tie him down to prove that their father was wrong about them – because a man does approve of her. But unlike men, women don’t necessarily crave sex so much as they crave the relationship and the security that sex buys. They are made to crave a strong soul to make them feel safe.
COPYING A SPIRIT
Men are symbolically souls and woman are symbolically spirits. And as the soul needs to be copied accurately, so it is nearly as important that the spirit is copied accurately as well. I say “nearly”, because a perfect soul can always correct an inaccurate spirit… but not the other way around. So women seek a relationship. Because God designed spirits – and women – to need the guardianship of a soul.
Because the purpose of the woman, like the purpose of the spirit in our mind, is to be a “help meet” for the soul (Genesis 2:18)… Something no beast was capable of being (Genesis 2:19-20). Every woman, of course, has her own soul in her own head. But it is less likely to be dominant in a woman than her spirit is. In men, on the other hand, the soul and/or the heart is far more likely to be dominant.
And so spirit-dominated women are wired to seek a strong, dominant soul – and they can’t always tell the difference between a confident, well fed soul… and a confident, well fed beast. This is why women are attracted to powerful men… because God knows they need someone with the power to make sure their spirit remains a faithful copy of the original spirit of God! But “strong men” can take many forms.
Those with fortune and fame are clearly targets; but women are often even more attracted to tough guys, bad boys, meat heads, whatever prideful, powerful figure seems both attainable and worthy of them is where they aim. And yet… they rarely form stable relationships with such people. On the contrary, they often wind up with someone far beneath them. Why? Because despite their instinct to be led, their spirit has become arrogant and doesn’t want to be ruled!
So in the end, they often settle for someone they don’t find sexually attractive, but who will not try to break their spirit. Because when she knows that this particular soul was lucky to get her… she can be far more secure about the relationship even as she defies the soul she was seeking to rule her! Because everyone can see that this soul/man cannot possibly do better than her!
CHILDREN
Most men are not that into babies. Children – say, pre-teen and up – maybe. But babies are not something men were built to, well, baby. Yet women were; and so women, by nature, crave children. There are exceptions, as always; exceptions which can be explained by the things you’ve already read in this lesson. But God built women to want babies because spirits need to be copied. Every generation, a worthy soul should inherit the right of his father to judge in his name.
And then he should seek a wife with a strong spirit, yet one which is malleable enough that he, and he alone, can edit it. That spirit will inevitably have errors in it; and together, they will hammer them out. And then God commanded them “be fruitful, and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). Thus men want sons, to replace them and multiply souls in the world, and women want daughters, to replace them and multiply spirits.
And yet that is not the reason most people have children today. Because, starved for soul-food as they are, they rarely have much approval and validation to spare for their own children. Instead, they take advantage of the fact that young children, in a real sense, worship their parents… who get approval and validation from their own children! When a parent tells you “my children are my world”, they mean it – because all of their approval and validation comes from them, not their own parents.
They gave up on that long ago in order to seek a captive approval machine – a baby that relies on you for EVERYTHING and desperately needs you, and therefore obviously approves of you, which makes you feel needed and important. And this works, sort of, for a few years. And then backfires spectacularly when they hit puberty. Because by teaching children that they are the center of your universe, by lavishing attention and validation on them from birth, you teach them that your validation and your judgment are meaningless and that you are their slave.
As in fact, you are. So you spend the next dozen years or so not as a parent, but as an ATM. Because if you withdraw your validation now, what little memory of approval you had from them will be savagely taken away with statements like “I hate you!”, “you’re ruining my life!”
HONOR STUDENTS
Why is it so important that a child excel in school, go to sports, dance, play an instrument, go to college, get a great meaningful job, fulfill their potential? To be sure, those things are all fine… if that’s what the child wants to do. But achieving those things doesn’t bring happiness. In fact, pursuing too many of these goals is detrimental to it. A child that has to study AP calculus instead of riding a bike will not be as happy as one who did less math, and more living (1 Corinthians 13:11).
So forcing a child to learn an instrument he will never play as an adult instead of building a tree house harms his long-term happiness, it doesn’t help it. And yet modern parents, claiming they care only about their child’s future, pressure children into overachieving in order to earn what little approval they have to offer, in the process burying them in student debt which guarantees their future unhappiness.
And so why do parents do this? For the same reason anyone does anything; approval and validation. If you don’t believe you lived up to your own potential, and if you can’t forgive yourself for that, then you can force them to live up to theirs. Not for their sake… but for yours. They do these things because people who feel themselves unworthy see in their children a chance to win their own parents’ approval by proxy. This is why bumpers stickers like “my child is an honor student at Valley High!” are so important. Because the success of a child proves the worthiness of their parents.
Given that parents have children for selfish reasons, it is no surprise that the choices they make for them are not for the children’s good. Children don’t need a college degree to be happy. They need to be able to be content with what they have (1 Timothy 6:5-6). Instead modern parents always push them for better grades, more activities, more accomplishments. Because it is not important that their child is happy.
They say it is, but these things do not lead to happiness, and deep down they know that. No, it is important that their child is an accomplishment. The child which wins trophies is, himself, their trophy. This is why people freak out when you even hint a criticism of their child; because their child is not just their child to them… their child’s existence is their best source of approval! And having a child who chooses the life you pressure upon him is proof that a brand new soul that you created believes you are worthy of copying, thus validating every other failure in your life!
APPROVAL FOR FAILURE
All of these things are simply a way that you can seek approval and validation instantly, without actually changing anything about you who are. And there’s where almost all the negative behavior in the world comes from: because people want approval for failing. And if they don’t get it, they get angry, and react in some prideful manner or other.
Elihu counselled Job that, when God didn’t give him validation immediately, he should have said… “I have borne chastisement, I will not offend any more: That which I see not teach thou me: if I have done iniquity, I will do no more” (Job 34:31-32). Yet like all of us, rather than admit that maybe your dad wasn’t being unreasonable and you just didn’t try hard enough, Job “…addeth rebellion unto his sin, he clappeth his hands among us, and multiplieth his words against God [his father]” (Job 34:37).
Because it’s not just the seeking of approval and validation that causes our problems. It’s stubbornly pursuing that approval and validation when it’s been denied because we are yet unworthy. It’s proclaiming that we don’t care about the approval, rather than humbling ourselves to earn it. All of these actions, the loudly proclaiming you don’t care about finding a spouse, or that the boss can shove it, the bragging and the complaining, you’re just seeking people to agree with you that you are right and you don’t have to change.
When, in almost every situation, deep down you fear that you are wrong and you do have to change. It’s just not a thought your heart, spirit, or soul wants to consider. So it hides behind all the obnoxious behavior we humans do – loud music, frantic activity, impatience, pride… it’s all a shield to hide or distract a little child who yearns for his parents’ love but doesn’t want to die a little bit inside in order to get it.
All children like to make noise to call attention to themselves – craving approval. This is normal – and parents should take advantage of it and teach them that the approval is given upon doing the will of the parents. When they want attention, give them something to do so that they can earn it. Playing quietly means playing without attention, and thus without constant approval. So children who cannot play quietly do not believe their parents truly love them, therefore they are constantly needing it reaffirmed.
And since their soul is starving for that bread, every day it loses its grip on their ever-increasingly needy beast. So when you see a child that can’t stop demanding attention, they are, in a very real sense, horny. Just too young to express it sexually – but victims of the exact same starvation that his teenage self will soon express very differently.
And if you don’t want that to get out of hand, you should follow the advice in Proverbs 29:17-19. Children need correction, and boundaries, in order to give your soul/their father rest. And they need to understand what they’re supposed to become; just how they are going to carry on your legacy, so they can have a reason to keep your laws and be happy.
Just yelling at them, like you would a servant, won’t help; for though they understand… they won’t answer (Parent: “why did you do that???”, child: “I don’t know”). They need to know, through the combined action of both parents, what is expected of them and the path back to your approval – and to be assured that the path is possible to walk, for their young heart will already tell them it isn’t.
I WASN’T WRONG
As a case study, I know someone who was raised by her ultra strict German grandmother. And she never measured up – in that situation, some would have humbled themselves, and tried harder. Maybe they would have earned the approval, maybe not – parents can be unfair. Other children would have rebelled, or run away from home.
But this person chose to rebel internally. She endured the constant criticism, telling herself that it didn’t matter because it wasn’t true. The unfortunate and life-altering side effect of this was to set up a habit in her spirit that, when corrected, she would try to deflect it, laugh it off, change the subject, make excuses, but no matter what happens, at the end of the day SHE WASN’T WRONG.
Her spirit hardened in such a way that, to this day, she believes she has never been wrong once in her life. I mean, in principle sure, she’ll say she must have been – because that’s what people say. But when pressed for a specific example, there is not a single thing she has ever done which was 100% her fault. And yet she is the most incompetent person I’ve ever known because she has never learned from a single mistake, never having believed she made any!
And no matter how clearly she screws up, it is quite literally impossible to get her to admit that she was wrong without her adding a “but” afterwards. Because if she admits that she was wrong about this, then every other thing she was ever accused of might be called into question! She has built her entire life around the stubborn thesis that her grandmother was wrong about her. And if she’s wrong about this thing, today… she might have been wrong about that. And if she were, then quite literally who she is would unravel.
And if they were actually right, and all she had had to do to get their approval was to humble herself and change… then her entire life has been wasted pursuing a stubborn, angry yearning for an approval never once earned. She has spent her life telling her soul that she deserved the approval, but she didn’t get it because THEY were wrong. She has been, in effect, self-validating. But validation should be given after repentance… since she never, ever repented, yet validated herself anyway… she perpetuated every selfish thing that was ever inside of herself.
Our lives are not purely, or maybe even primarily, the result of our own mistakes (John 9:2-3). We’re not to blame for the cards we’re dealt (Ecclesiastes 9:11). But we are to blame for how we play those cards, and how we react to those setbacks in life. This particular person’s life has been an unending sea of drama, and this fundamental character flaw, her unbroken spirit, played no small part in it.
And the only way to ever really help her, and the only way for her to ever start to build a better life, is for her to reach the point where she can say, without qualification “I was wrong, my grandmother was right not to love me, and I forgive her.” Only then will she no longer feel the need to defend every decision she has ever made – because in defending all these other decisions, she was really only trying to justify that one.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
We all want approval for our successes, and we all want validation for our failures. And this is not wrong. But like everything, it becomes wrong when you follow these lusts into hurting your fellow man. And that is unavoidable as long as you think you are these lusts. When you say things like “I’m just a shy person”, that isn’t true. You are a damaged person who is afraid of making mistakes (lacking validation).
Or a damaged person who doesn’t feel like you can achieve something (lacking approval). Maybe both; but the statement “I’m just a shy person” is simply an excuse which justifies failing… to you. But not to God. These definitions of yourself as a person are treated as static: “that’s just the way I am”. And no one, not one person on Earth, is “just the way they are”. They are the result of a lifetime of choices, of abuse, of trauma, of unearned flattery, disappointment, and dreams.
And nothing about that cannot be changed by a soul who is aware of why it makes the choices it does. It’s not wrong to miss your dad. It’s not wrong to love astronomy. It’s wrong to think you love outer space when you actually just miss your dad and subconsciously it reminds you of him. Because then you’re lying to yourself – and that will end in you making bad decisions that won’t make you happy. And that is wrong.
It’s not wrong to love heavy metal music. It’s not wrong to be angry at a world that has abused you. It is wrong to think “heavy metal is the greatest music ever!” when it’s really just an outlet for your unapproved and unforgiven (and probably unrepentant) soul’s frustrations. It’s not wrong to want children. It’s not wrong to seek to please your parents. It is wrong to think that you want children, when in fact they want you to have them (or you just think they do), and you just want to earn your parents’ approval.
And so on and so forth, for literally every stupid thing any human being does. We spend all of our lives desperately working to procure that bread which is not bread (Isaiah 55:1-3), desperately seeking that approval which is not approval, and that validation which will not truly validate us. Because the approval of friends, family, the world, all of this is food for our soul. But that bread leaves us hungry again afterwards. Because while it strengthens your soul for now, their approval cannot strengthen your soul enough for eternal life because it is leavened! (Matthew 16:5-12, Mark 8:15).
The one scripture for this lesson is Proverbs 27:7, because it contains all these lessons within it. Those who have the approval of the world are not interested in risking it to seek God’s approval. Their soul is filled with approval, and that is why God does not call the wise, the noble, the mighty – because their souls are too full even to chase the honeycomb that is God’s approval (Psalms 119:103).
But to the castoffs of society, the failures, those who hate their parents or whose parents hate them, to these people every bitter thing is sweet. So even the hard things God asks of you seem easy, because your soul has so little approval to begin with that even the crumbs are worth fighting for (Mark 7:28). And on a more practical level, when children receive proper approval and validation from their parents, they don’t need to desperately seek it at school, from dating, from their looks, jobs, money, houses, cars, and so on.
But to the hungry soul who lacks that honeycomb, they will pursue every form of approval out there – so desperate are they to eat SOMETHING. They don’t even care that it will turn to bitterness in their belly later (Ezekiel 2:8-3:3). It’s not clear what was written on that scroll, exactly. But whatever it was, it tasted good to his beast… but it gave him a stomachache. Well, when you are praised by men, the words taste sweet (Proverbs 16:24, John 12:43), but they leave you hungry later (Proverbs 13:25).
All of those successful people in this life who do their good deeds to be noticed are well-fed. And that gives them confidence, and some of them actually are happy, for they truly believe they have done mighty works in God’s name. And yet in the resurrection… Isaiah 29:8. And so to conclude, let’s go through (Psalms 143:1-8). God deliberately left the identity of the “enemy” vague. Because which particular enemy this is – the heart, spirit, devil, parent, evil corporation, it doesn’t matter. This is true for all enemies.
Whoever, whyever, and however it happened, your life has led to an unvalidated, unapproved soul who was imprisoned in darkness, and left for dead. And because there was no soul leading them – even though they may have been the very rebels who caused this – the heart and spirit were desolate and overwhelmed. Because, though they talk a big talk, they can’t cope with life the way a strong soul could.
And maybe, just maybe, after one too many depressing failures, your fractions might all remember that it was better when your soul wasn’t quite so sidelined. And maybe you’ll all finally realize that the only way out of this is to seek God’s approval, not your fellow man’s. And to get Jesus’ validation, and not your fellow woman’s.