Do People Control You?

I started rereading Ed Welch's When People Are Big and God is Small today, a book for understanding and then fighting what our culture calls "peer pressure" if we're teenagers or "codependency" and "people pleasing" if we're adults, but what the Bible calls the fear of man, which is a sin.

At the heart of this sin is that we're being controlled by--we are enslaved to--other people, and not God. Here's how the author puts it:

People who fear men "are fairly sure that God loves them, but they also want or need love from other people--or at least they need something from other people. As a result, they are in bondage, controlled by others and feeling empty. They are controlled by whoever or whatever they believe can give them what they think they need. It is true: what or who you need will control you." (13-14).

I'll try to talk through this book more, but for now meditate on that description. Does it describe you? I know it does me.

As an aside: If you're interested in the book, it no longer looks like the picture above because it's been updated. I use that picture because that's the edition of the book I'm reading.