HOW I HANDLE PEER PRESSURE AS A CHRISTIAN

Clinton Chibueze Uzoukwu

No matter how great our home training is, there will come a time when all we learnt from home – and even the church - will be attacked. And this is one of the best strategies of attacks there could ever be as we don’t see it coming. It is different from when one nation rises in war against another – at least the nation under attack knows who and what they are up against. But this one, no one ever knows what form it may take, the time it will strike or when it will end. Wherever a human being is, there you would find it.

As Christian young people, we were admonished to stay away from immoralities such as sex, drugs, alcoholism, abortion, theft, greed etc. however, when we go out, we begin to hear the arguments other young persons who do these things put up in their defense. Basically, it always goes along this line: ‘this is the 21^st century, those things no longer count. Wise up!’ They end this by laughing at the so called ‘innocent ones’. I remember sometime in 2019 when a friend told me how her colleagues at work laughed at her because she told them she was still a virgin.

So how do you protect yourself against this? How do you fight this?

You’re reading this because you want to know how to overcome peer pressure. And to do this, you must be able to distinguish between right and wrong.

But first, where does right and wrong come from? Who determines it? On what must we base our judgment of right and wrong?

Right and wrong comes from God and not from us or any other human being. That something makes us feel good and we enjoy it does not necessarily make it right. In describing this, the venerable Fulton Sheen puts it this way:

Once my idea of morality is just as good as your idea of morality, then the morality that is going to prevail is the morality that is stronger. As it has been put: Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight, but roaring Bill, who killed him, thought it right.[1]

Hence, God determines what is right and what is wrong. And we find these in the Scriptures. Hence, we ought to base our actions on what God wills.

Another dangerous argument goes along this line: ‘well, it is my body. I can do whatever I want with it.’ Imagine you wake up one morning and you see your phone inside a bucket of water. Now, you are the only one in the room and you are sure that you kept it in your wardrobe before sleeping. And while wondering how the phone got into the bucket of water, you then see a suicide note which the phone left you saying, ‘I’m tired of this life so I decided to take away my life. I want to say sorry, but it is my life and I can do whatever I want with it.’ Tell me, how would you feel?

You would be filled with rage and in your mind you would shout, ‘I own you. You have no right to do that!’ Good, now you know how God feels when you misuse your body and life.

To overcome peer pressure, there are two things you must know and ask yourself:

1.      Is it right? When your friends or celebrities encourage you to fornicate, masturbate, get drunk, etc. ask yourself, is it right? Does God approve of this? When they tell you that everyone does it, even the Pope, ask yourself again, if everyone does it, does it make it right? Even if the Pope does it, does it make it right? Should I do this because someone I respect does it?

When we look up to God and not man as the yardstick for our actions, then we will have a good chance of overcoming peer pressure.

2.      Have God’s standards changed? Whenever I hear the argument of, ‘come on, we are in the 21^st century’, I say in my mind, ‘Let us ask God to revise His Commandments; let us ask Jesus to come down on earth again and change his teaching on adultery or let us ask Paul to rewrite his letters to the Romans, Corinthians etc.’

In the eyes of humans, the world changes. We have new technologies and methods of doing things. NEVERTHELESS, no matter how civilized we become, no matter how sophisticated our technologies are, no matter how evolved we become, the standards of God will not change till the end of the world. And so, because we change, because we amend our laws, does not mean God changes or amends His laws, for that will make Him an imperfect God.

Peer pressure is a reality and it does not always present itself as harmful. It comes in ways that make us think our friends have our best interest at heart. And indeed, they often do. Oftentimes, they themselves do not even realize they put pressure on us. Sometimes, it is just a word they say in passing. At other times, it is just their actions and they actually ram it down our throats.

When we recognize this, then we will be able to tear the veil and see the truth face to face. As we pray, we must also watch. We watch by constantly seeking God’s will, reading good books, having good circles of friends and imitating the saints who are no longer prone to human imperfections.

 

---

[1] Guide to Contentment, p. 28