Many years ago now, I heard a lively congregation in Kentucky sing a peppy old gospel song which included the line, “I don’t care what this world says about me. . . .”
Those words can encourage sincere saints to be strong and faithful, but most of the people who have sung that song over the years were only puffing themselves up in singing it, for the world wasn’t really saying anything about them. They were singing about an imaginary persecution, and boasting of an imaginary courage in the face of it.
We cannot really know whether or not we care what the world says about us until the world says something about us. Until then, our task is to do the will of God so that we earn the test of genuine persecution, and if we do the will of God, that test will surely come. And when that persecution comes, we will then, for the first time, know whether or not we care what the world says about us.
If the world has not yet said anything about you, please sing that old hymn prayerfully, asking God for grace to let those words prove true when your time comes to be tested.