One of the realities of being a writer is that much of what a writer does is easily quantified. If your writing is online, you can get minute-by-minute reports and updates to see exactly how many people have read it or engaged with it. If you write books, you can get royalty reports to tell you exactly how many books have been sold with your name on the cover. It’s a very numbers-driven field, and necessarily so.
It’s easy, then, for writers to make popularity into a kind of idol. How can you know that you’ve made popularity into an idol? Perhaps you find yourself thinking that happiness or validation is just a few thousand clicks away. Or perhaps you are battling feelings of worthlessness and believe that value is in some way tied to book sales. Or perhaps you think God’s favor is necessarily displayed in more books sold rather than fewer. In these ways and others, you can make an idol out of popularity.
I can speak with first-hand experience to this because it is an idol I once had to fight. I had to take radical action against it. I had to take radical action because this idol was leading to jealousy and envy. I realized that I didn’t just want to be popular, I wanted to be more popular —more popular than someone else. I compared myself with others and somehow saw their success as challenging or invalidating my own. I realized the sin of envy had begun to root in my heart. When I spotted it, I was alarmed by it, disgusted by it, and realized I needed to put it to death.
For those tempted by the idol of popularity, whether in writing or any other field, here are a few matters to consider.
First, be honored that God would give you any influence at all. Know that you are an unworthy servant who has been blessed with a gift you do not deserve. Do you think it is a small thing to have other people read what you write? Do you think it is a small privilege to have been given a gift by God himself? Do you think it’s a small privilege to exert an influence over others? Far better to be like the servants in Jesus’ parable and say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.” If you cannot be content with what you’ve got, you will not be content with what you get.
If you cannot be content with what you’ve got, you will not be content with what you get.
Second, know that with much success comes much responsibility. We may think we want another person’s success, but we may not want what comes with it. It comes with scrutiny and responsibility, for God expects more of the servant to whom he gives five talents than the one to whom he gives two. If you struggle to be grateful for the little God has given, why would he give you more? If you steward that little bit poorly, why would he open the floodgates? He may be protecting you from yourself, protecting you from a catastrophic failure. God’s love for you may be more vividly displayed in withholding rather than giving.
This quote from Maltie Babcock has often proven especially helpful and challenging to me.
We often think that if we had that man’s means or that man’s ability or that man’s opportunity, we could do something worth doing; but, as we are, there is no possibility of any great thing. Yet God does not want us to fill any other man’s place, or to do any other man’s work. God wants us to improve our own opportunity with the possessions and the powers that He has given us. It is a very great thing for us to do the very best we can do just where and as we are. God asks no one of us to do more than this, nor has any one of us a right to do less.
Third, the main focus of your life should not be pursuing success but pursuing character. It is ultimately God who will decide whether you will influence hundreds or millions and there is not a lot you can do to control that. But what you can control is your pursuit of godliness. Again, God may be withholding greater popularity because your character has not developed enough to handle it. One of my constant prayers has been, “God, please don’t let my success exceed my sanctification.” To say it another way, “Let my influence rise no higher than my holiness.” I have seen far too many people gain what they could not handle and when they got what they wanted, it destroyed them. They simply didn’t have the holiness to handle it. God knows us better than we do and may be holding back what we count as success out of his love for us.
Maltbie Babcock offers this challenge:
Our business in life is not to get ahead of other people, but to get ahead of ourselves. To break our own record, to outstrip our yesterdays by todays, to bear our trials more beautifully than we ever dreamed we could, to whip the tempter inside and out as we never whipped him before, to give as we never have given, to do our work with more force and a finer finish than ever. This is the true idea, to get ahead of ourselves. To beat someone else in a game, or to be beaten, may mean much or little. To beat our own game means a great deal. Whether we win or not, we are playing better than we ever did before, and that’s the point after all—to play a better game of life.
Where the idol of popularity causes us to compete against others, it’s far better to compete against ourselves—our former selves—to live with greater skill and greater godliness than ever before. True success is not how many books you sell or how many people you influence, but how much you grow to be like Jesus. And it’s only through closeness to Jesus that you can put any idol to death, including the idol of popularity.
