They Loved the Praise of Men, and John Says They Believed Anyway

I could run four different versions of myself in one night and I never thought of it as lying.

There was the version for the room, which was loud and generous and quick. There was the version for the promoter, which was reliable and slightly bored, because eager costs you money. There was the version for the band, which was the closest to real and still was not it. And there was the one for my mother on the phone on a Sunday, which left things out.

None of those were false, exactly. That is what makes this hard to see in yourself. Every one of them was made of true things. It is just that no two of them could have been in a room together.

The tiredness that comes off that is very specific and I have never heard it described well. It is not the tiredness of working. It is the tiredness of a switchboard. You come home and you cannot work out which one to be when there is nobody there, and the honest answer for a long time was that I did not know, so I would put something on and wait until I fell asleep.

There is a sentence in John's gospel about people like that, and the thing I want you to notice is how gently he says it.

He says they believed. That is the first thing he says.

Here is the passage, and most people quote only half of it.

Nevertheless among the chief rulers also many believed on him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue: For they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God. (John 12:42-43, King James Version)

Start where John starts. Many believed on him. He does not say they pretended. He does not say they were fakes. He says the belief was real and the mouth stayed shut.

Then he gives the reason without any relish at all: they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God. He does not call them cowards. He does not say what they deserved. He names a preference, the way you would name a preference, and moves on.

That is a man reporting on something he understands.

You are not a fake for having a real faith and a closed mouth, and John never once says you are. John 12:42 records the belief before it records the silence, and it is His Spirit, John 15:26 called the Spirit of truth who testifies of Him, who does the testifying that a frightened mouth cannot manage yet.

Jesus asks the question underneath it

Earlier in the same gospel Jesus asks something that explains the whole mechanism, and it is a question rather than an accusation.

How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only? (John 5:44)

How can ye believe. He is not scolding. He is describing a genuine difficulty: a person whose sense of themselves is assembled out of other people's reactions has no free hand left to take anything with.

That is the switchboard problem stated theologically. If every room requires a version, then there is no version left over to be the one who receives anything, and belief needs somebody home to do the believing.

You have a hand free, and Scripture describes the difficulty rather than blaming the person in it. John 5:44 asks how a man can believe while collecting regard from one another. It is the Holy Spirit, Ephesians 3:16 strengthening the inner man, who puts somebody home in a house that has been empty a long time.

The praise that comes from God is not a bigger version of the other kind

Paul, writing to people obsessed with standing, ends a whole argument on one word.

But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God. (Romans 2:29)

Whose praise is not of men, but of God. Paul is doing something clever there that gets missed: he takes the word praise, which is the currency the whole passage has been about, and does not abolish it. He reissues it from a different treasury.

Which matters, because a person who has run on approval for years does not need to be told that approval is bad. They need to be told where the real one comes from, or they will simply starve and call it holiness.

Jesus does the same thing when He talks about giving and praying in secret. Every time, the sentence ends the same way: thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. He is not removing the audience. He is changing who is in the seat.

You are already seen by an audience of One who was never assembled out of other people's opinions. Matthew 6:1 puts the reward with the Father who sees in secret. It is the same Spirit, Romans 8:16 bearing witness with our spirit, who makes being seen by God feel like being known rather than being watched.

The name you were given is not the one you have been defending

Here is the part that finally moved something in me, and it is not a verse about reputation at all.

Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine. (Isaiah 43:1)

I have called thee by thy name. Singular. One name, not four.

The four versions I ran were all attempts to hold on to a name I was building. What I could not see, and what took losing most of it to see, is that a name I build has to be defended in every room forever, because it lives in other people and they keep changing.

A name I am given lives somewhere else. It does not need a version for the promoter. That is the whole difference and it is enormous, and it does not arrive as an argument. It arrives as relief.

You have a name you did not build and therefore do not have to defend. Isaiah 43:1 has God calling a person by name and claiming them outright, and it is the Spirit of God, Romans 8:15 the Spirit of adoption, who makes a claim like that land in a chest rather than in a theory.

And if running the versions has worn you down past what a page can reach, say it out loud to a person: a doctor, a counselor, a pastor you trust, or the 988 crisis line, which answers every hour there is. A man who does not know who to be when the house is empty is carrying something real, and it does not have to be carried alone.