The World Will Hate What You Make
“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.”
“If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”
The world by and large is not going to like or appreciate what you create. There’s no easy or delicate way to put that. In fact, it’s more Biblically accurate to say that the world is going to hate what you create. We were called and set apart by Jesus Christ to chase after His image, and the world really, really hates Him.
This means that we are probably not going to get much, if any, support from the world. And the support that we do get will probably be snatched out from under us the moment we are vocal about disagreeing with something the world loves. This can be incredibly disheartening. Especially when we want to share our stories and creations with those around us!
However, that also means that we get to remove the world as our target audience. They’re going to hate what we do and who we are? Well, then, their opinion doesn’t factor into our assessment of either our creation or our own worth! We are creating to honor God, so His opinion is really the only one that matters. We’re also creating for our brothers and sisters in Christ, so they are our audience.
To add an extra dimension to this: not only is the world not going to like what we do, but they are not going to understand it, either. We Christians operate under a different set of rules than they do, with different morality, different mindset, a different heart (Ezekiel 36:26). The things that we say and the values that we hold are going to be foreign to them, like trying to speak Italian in a Swedish supermarket.
Now, we can’t give up on sharing the Gospel with them and the stories we tell might be just the ticket to opening them up to receive Jesus! But we can’t expect more from them than they are able to give. To seek after their approval is going to be like ramming our heads into a stone and expecting it to crack; it does more damage to us than to the rock!
We will begin to feel worthless; we will begin to feel like our stories don’t matter, and we may even begin to think about leaving the calling that God has given us. We can’t give up on our purpose just because the world doesn’t approve of it, they were not the One who gave it to us in the first place!
The world will despise us and our stories, and that is okay, even if it hurts. Ultimately, we are still going to chase after God’s approval.
Putting it into Action: think for a moment about your target audience. Who are they and what defines them? Are they the world? Are they fellow Christians? Is it just God? Take our three audiences (the world, Christians, and God) and — honestly — organize them by how much of their opinion you value when you create your art. Does anything need to be reordered?
