Pursuing Praise

She seduced him with her pretty speech. With her flattery she enticed him. Proverbs 7:21

While spending time with Jim and Sally Conway, our mentors in ministry since seminary, Jim told me, “Pam, people who have been wounded, like us, from homes like ours, often make decisions based on sickness, not health. It is as if you have a tube inside you. You receive a compliment, and it feels so good going down, but the bad thing is it is a bottomless tube, so the positive praise goes right out the bottom. We constantly need more praise. We easily fall into the trap of making our decisions based upon what will bring us the most praise, the most public applause, and the greatest possibility for compliments. But because the tube is bottomless, it is self-defeating. You can’t fill the tube.”

I responded back to Jim, “Like Solomon says, ‘Vanity of vanities, it is all vanity.’ No amount of praise will do, so I need a different standard of decision making, right?”

“Right,” said Jim. “Because our wounds make us vulnerable to praise, we can also be easily manipulated and sell ourselves to anyone or anything, just to get some praise.”

“Like selling our birthright for a pot of stew?” (In Genesis 25:31-34, Esau sold his birthright to his brother because he was hungry and too impatient to cook his own dinner.)

I smiled. I knew exactly what Jim was talking about. I had been aware of this “tube” in me for a while.^a

Look at your own praise quotient. What lengths do you go to for a little bit of praise?