[BBC List] the folly of trying to please men!!!!!!!!!!

[Mike Abendroth]

Richard Baxter:

 


1. Remember what a multitude you have to please; and when you have pleased
some, how many more will be still unpleased, and how many displeased when
you have done your best. Alas! we are insufficient at once to observe all
those that observe us and would be pleased by us. You are like one that hath
but twelve pence in his purse, and a thousand beggars come about him for it,
and every one will be displeased if he have it not all. If you resolve to
give all that you have to the poor, if you do it to please God, you may
attain your end, but if you do it to please them, when you have pleased
those few that you gave it to, perhaps twice as many will revile or curse
you, because they had nothing. The beggar that speeds well will proclaim you
liberal, and the beggar that speeds ill will proclaim you niggardly and
unmerciful; and so you will have more to offend and dishonour you, than to
comfort you by their praise, if that must be your comfort.

2. Remember that all men are so selfish, that their expectations will be
higher than you are able to satisfy. They will not consider your
hinderances, or avocations, or what you do for others, but most of them look
to have as much to themselves, as if you had nobody else to mind but them.
Many and many a time, when I have had an hour or a day to spend, a multitude
have every one expected that I should have spent it with them. When I visit
one, there are ten offended that I am not visiting them at the same hour:
when I am discoursing with one, many more are offended that I am not
speaking to them all at once: if those that I speak to account me courteous,
and humble, and respectful, those that I could not speak to, or but in a
word, account me discourteous and morose. How many have censured me, because
I have not allowed them the time, which God and conscience commanded me to
spend upon greater and more necessary work! If you have any office to give,
or benefit to bestow which one only can have, every one thinketh himself the
fittest; and when you have pleased one that hath it, you have displeased all
that went without it, and missed of their desires.

3. You have abundance to please that are so ignorant, unreasonable, and
weak, that they take your greatest virtues for your faults, and know not
when you do well or ill; and yet none more bold in censuring than those that
least understand the things they censure. Many and many a time my own and
others' sermons have been censured, and openly defamed, for that which never
was in them, upon the ignorance or heedlessness of a censorious hearer; yea,
for that which they directly spoke against; because they were not
understood: especially he that hath a close style, free from tautology,
where every word must be marked by him that will not misunderstand, shall
frequently be misreported. 

4. You will have many factious zealots to please, who being strangers to the
love of holiness, Christianity, and unity, are ruled by the interest of an
opinion or a sect; and these will never be pleased by you, unless you will
be one of their side or party, and conform yourself to their opinions. If
you be not against them, but set yourselves to reconcile and end the
differences in the church, they will hate you as not promoting their
opinions, but weakening them by some abhorred syncretisms. As in civil, so
in ecclesiastical wars, the firebrands cannot endure the peaceable: if you
will be neutral, you shall be used as enemies. If you be never so much for
Christ, and holiness, and common truth, all is nothing, unless you be also
for them, and their conceits.

5. Most of the world are haters of holiness, and have a serpentine enmity to
the image of God, being not renewed by the Holy Ghost; and will not be
pleased with you, unless you will sin against your Lord, and do as they do.
I Pet. iv. 3-5, "Walking in lasciviousness lusts, excess of wine,
revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries, wherein they think it
strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil
of you; who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and
the dead." You must be counted as Lot among the Sodomites, a busy fellow
that comes among them to make himself their judge, and to control them, if
you tell them of their sin. You shall be called a precise, hypocritical
coxcomb, (or somewhat much worse,) if you will not be as bad as they, and if
by your abstinence (though you say nothing) you seem to reprehend their
sensuality and contempt of God. Among insane you must play the insane, if
you will escape the fangs of their revilings. And can you hope to please
such men as these?

6. You shall have satanical God-haters, and men of seared and desperate
consciences to please, that are malicious and cruel, and will be pleased
with nothing but some horrid iniquity, and the damning of your own souls,
and drawing others to damnation. Like that monster of Milan, that when he
had got down his enemy, made him blaspheme God in hope to save his life, and
then stabbed him, calling it a noble revenge, that killed the body and
damned the soul at once. There are such in the world, that will so visibly
act the devil's part, that they would debauch your consciences with the most
horrid perjuries, perfidiousness, and impiety, that they may triumph over
your miserable souls. And if you think it worth the willful damning of your
souls, it is possible they may be pleased. If you tell them, we cannot
please you, unless we will be dishonest, and displease God, and sin against
our knowledge and consciences, and hazard our salvation, they will make but
a jest of such arguments as these, and expect you should venture your souls
and all upon their opinions, and care as little for God and your souls as
they do. Desperate sinners are loth to go to hell alone; it is a torment to
them to see others better than themselves. They that are cruel and
unmerciful to themselves, and have no pity on their own souls, but will sell
them for a whore, or for preferment, and honour, or sensual delights, will
scarce have mercy on the souls of others: Matt. xxvii. 25, "His blood be on
us, and on our children."

7. You will have rigorous, captious, uncharitable, and unrighteous men to
please, who will "make a man offender for a word, and lay a snare for him
that reproveth in the gate, and turn aside the just for a thing of nought,
and watch for iniquity," Isa. xxix. 20, 21. That have none of that charity
which covereth faults, and interpreteth words and actions favourably, nor
none of that justice which causeth men to do as they would be done by, and
judge as they would be judged; but judging without mercy, are like to have
judgment without mercy. And are glad when they can find any matter to
reproach you: and if once they meet with it (true or false) they will never
forget it, but dwell as the fly on the ulcerated place.

8. You will have passionate persons to please, whose judgments are blinded,
and are not capable of being pleased. Like the sick and sore that are hurt
with every touch; and at last, saith Seneca, with the very conceit that you
touched them. How can you please them, when displeasedness is their disease,
that abideth within them, at the very heart?

9. You will find that censoriousness is a common vice, and though few are
competent judges of your actions, as not being acquainted with all the ease,
yet every one almost will be venturing to cast in his censure. A proud,
presumptuous understanding is a very common vice; which thinks itself
presently capable of judging, as soon as it heareth but a piece of the ease,
and is not conscious of its own fallibility, though it have daily experience
of it. Few are at your elbow, and none in your heart, and therefore know not
the circumstances and reasons of all that you do, nor hear what you have to
say for yourselves, and yet they will presume to censure you, who would have
absolved you, if they had but heard you speak. It is rare to meet even with
professors of greatest sincerity, that are very tender and fearful of
sinning, in this point of rash, ungrounded judging, without capacity or
call.

10. You live among unpeaceable tattlers and tale carriers, that would please
others by accusing you. Who is it that hath ears that hath not such vermin
as these earwigs busy at them? Except here and there an upright man, whose
angry countenance hath still driven away such backbiting tongues. And all
shall be said behind your backs, when you are uncapable of answering for
yourselves. And if it be a man that the hearers think well of, that accuseth
or backbiteth you, they think it lawful then to believe them: and most that
are their friends, and of their party, and for their interest, shall be sure
to be thought so honest as to be credible. And it is not strange, for a
learned, ingenious, yea, a godly person to be too forward in uttering, from
the mouth of others an evil report, and then the hearer thinks he is fully
justified for believing it, and reporting it again to others. David himself
by the temptation of a Ziba, is drawn to wrong Mephibosheth the son of his
great deserving friend, 2 Sam. xvi. 3. No wonder then if Saul do hearken to
a Doeg, to the wrong of David, and murder of the priests. Prov. xviii. 8,
"The words of a tale-bearer are as wounds." Prov. xxvi. 20, "Where no wood
is, the fire goeth out: so where there is no talebearer the strife ceaseth."
And when these are still near men, and you far off, it is easy for them to
continue the most odious representation of the most laudable person's
actions in the world.

11. The imperfection of all men's understandings and godliness is so great,
that the differences of judgment that are among the best, will tend to the
injury and undervaluing of their brethren. One is confident that his way is
right, and another is confident of the contrary: and to how great
contendings and injuries such differences may proceed, he that knoweth not
in this age, shall not know for me. We need not go to Paul and Barnabas for
an instance (that was a far lighter case); nor to Epiphanius, Jerome, and
Chrysostom; nor to those ages and tragedies of contending bishops, that in
the eastern and western churches have been before us: every one thinking his
cause so plain, as to justify himself, in all that he saith and doth against
those that presume to differ from him. And surely you may well expect some
displeasure, even from good and learned men, when the church have felt such
dreadful concussions, and bleedeth to this day, by so horrid divisions,
through the remnants of that pride and ignorance which her reverend guides
have still been guilty of.

12. You have men of great mutability to please; that one hour may be ready
to worship you as gods, and the next to stone you, or account you as devils,
as they did by Paul, and Christ himself. What a weathercock is the mind of
man! especially of the vulgar and the temporizers! When you have spent all
your days in building your reputation on this sand, one blast of wind or
storm at last doth tumble it down, and all your cost and labour are lost.
Serve men as submissively and carefully as you can; and after all, some
accident or failing of their unrighteous expectations may make all that ever
you did forgotten, and turn you out of the world with Wolsey's groans, "If I
had served God as faithfully as man, I had been better rewarded, and not
forsaken in my distress." How many have fallen by the hands or frowns of
those whose favour they had dearly purchased, perhaps at the price of their
salvation! If ever you put such confidence in a friend, as not to consider
that it is possible he may one day prove your enemy, you know not man; and
may perhaps be better taught to know him, to your cost.

13. Every man living shall unavoidably be engaged by God himself, in some
duties which are very liable to misconstruction, and will have an outside
and appearance of evil, to the offence of those that know not all the inside
and circumstances. And hence it comes to pass, that a great part of history
is little worthy of regard; because the actions of public persons are
discerned but by the halves by most that write of them. They write most by
hearsay; or know but the outside and seemings of things, and not the spirit,
and life, and reality of the case. Men have not the choosing of their own
duties, but God maketh them by his law and providence: and it pleaseth him
oft to try his servants in this kind: many of the circumstances of their
actions shall remain unknown to men, that would justify them if they knew
them, and account them as notorious, scandalous persons, because they know
them not. How like to evil was the Israelites' taking the goods of the
Egyptians! and how likely to lay them open to their censure! So was
Abraham's attempt to sacrifice his son: and so was David's eating the
shew-bread, and dancing almost naked before the ark; Christ's eating and
drinking with publicans and sinners, Paul's circumcising Timothy and
purifying in the temple; with abundance such like, which fall out in the
life of every christian. No wonder if Joseph thought once of putting Mary
away, till he knew the evidence of her miraculous conception; and how liable
was she to censure, by those that knew it not! Oh, therefore, how vain is
the judgment of man! And how contrary is it frequently to the truth! And
with what caution must history be read! And oh how desirable is the great
day of God, when all human censure shall be justly censured!

14. The perverseness of many is so great, that they require contradictions
and impossibilities of you, to tell you that they are resolved never to be
pleased by you. If John use fasting, they say, "he hath a devil," if Christ
come "eating and drinking," they say, "Behold a gluttonous person, and a
winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners," Matt. xi. 18, 19. If your
judgment and practice be conformable to superiors, especially if they have
admitted of a change, you shall be judged mere knaves and temporizers: if
they are not, you shall be judged disobedient, refractory, and seditious. If
you speak fair and pleasingly, they will call you flatterers and
dissemblers: if you speak more freely, though in a necessary case, they will
say you rail. If I accept of preferment, they will say, I am ambitious,
proud, and worldly: if I refuse it, (how modestly so ever,) they will say, I
am discontented, and have seditious designs. If I preach not when I am
forbidden, I shalt be accused as forsaking the calling I undertook, and
obeying man against God: if I do preach, I shall be accounted disobedient
and seditious. If a friend or kinsman desire me to help him to some place or
preferment which he is not fit for, or which would tend to another's wrong,
if I should grant his desire, I shall be taken for dishonest, that by
partiality wrong another; if I deny it him, I shall be called unnatural or
unfriendly, and worse than an infidel. If I give to the poor as long as I
have it, I shall be censured for ceasing when I have no more: they that know
not whether you have it to give or not, will be displeased if you do not;
and if many years you should maintain them freely, it is all as nothing as
soon as you cease, either because your stock is spent, or because some other
is made the necessary object of your charity. If you be wronged in your
estate, if you go to law, they will say, you are contentious; if you let go
your estate to avoid contention, they will say, you are silly fools or
idiots. If you do any good works of charity to the knowledge of men, they
will say, you are hypocrites, and do it for applause; if you do it secretly,
that no one know of it, they will say, you are covetous, and have no good
works, and though you make a greater profession of religion, you do no good;
and others shall be censured so also for your sakes. If you be pleasant and
merry, they will censure you as light and vain: if you be more grave and
sad, they will say, you are melancholy or discontent. In a word, whatever
you do, be sure by some it will be condemned; and do or not do, speak or be
silent, you shall certainly displease, and never escape the censures of the
world.

15. There is among men so great a contrariety of judgments, and
dispositions, and interests, that they will never agree among themselves;
and if you please one, the rest will be thereby displeased. He that you
please is an enemy to another; and therefore you displease his enemy by
pleasing him. Sometimes, state differences divide kingdoms into parties, and
one party will be displeased with you if you be of the other, and both if
you are neuters, or dislike them both; and each party think their cause will
justify any accusations they can charge you with, or odious titles they can
give you, if not any sufferings they can bring upon you. Church differences
and sects have been found in all ages, and you cannot be of the opinion of
every party; when the world aboundeth with such variety of conceits, you
cannot be of all at once. And if you be of one party, you must displease the
rest; if you are of one side in controverted opinions, the other side
accounteth you erroneous: and how far will the supposed interest of their
cause and party carry them! One half of the Christian world, at this day,
condemneth the other half as schismatical at least, the other half doing the
like for them. And can you be papists, and protestants, and Greeks, and
every thing? If not, you must displease as many as you please. Yea, more; if
mutable men shall change never so oft, they will expect that you change as
fast as they, and whatever their contrary interests require, you must follow
them in; one year you must swear, and another you must unswear all again:
whatever cause or action they engage in, be it never so devilish, you must
approve of it and countenance it, and all that they do you must say is well
done. In a word, you must teach your tongue to say or swear any thing, and
you must sell your innocency, and hire out your consciences wholly to their
service, or you cannot please them. Micaiah must say with the rest of the
prophets, "Go, and prosper," or else he will be hated, as not prophesying
good of Ahab but evil, I Kings xxii. 8. And how can you serve all interests
at once? It seems the providence of God hath, as of purpose, wheeled about
the affairs of the world, to try and shame man-pleasers and temporizers in
the sight of the sun. It is evident then, that if you will please all you
must at once both speak and be silent, and verify contradictions, and be in
many places at once, and be of all men's minds, and for all men's way. For
my part, I mean to see the world a little better agreed among themselves,
before I will make it my ambition to please them. If you can reconcile all
their opinions, and interests, and complexions, and dispositions, and make
them all of one mind and will, then hope to please them.

16. If you excel in any one virtue or duty, even that shall not excuse you
from the contrary defamation, so unreasonable are malicious men. Nothing in
the world can secure you from censorious, slanderous tongues. The perfect
holiness of Jesus Christ could not secure him from being called a gluttonous
person and a wine-bibber, and a friend of publicans and sinners. His
wonderful contempt of worldly dignities and honours, and his subjection to
Caesar, could not secure him from being slandered and crucified as Caesar's
enemy. The great piety of the ancient Christians excused them not from the
vulgar calumny, that they met together for filthiness in the dark, nor from
the cry of the rabble, Tollite impios, "Away with the ungodly," because they
were against the worshipping of idols. I have known those that have given
all that ever they had to the poor except their food and necessaries, and
yet (though it was to a considerable value) have been reproached as
unmerciful, by those that have not had what they expected. Many a one hath
been defamed with scandalous rumours of uncleanness, that have lived in
untainted chastity all their lives. The most eminent saints have been
defamed as guilty of the most horrid crimes, which never entered into their
thoughts. The principal thing that ever I bent my studies and care about,
hath been the reconciling, unity, and peace of Christians, and against
unpeaceableness, uncharitableness, turbulency, and division; and yet some
have been found, whose interest and malice have commanded them to charge me
with that very sin, which I have spent my days, my zeal, and study against.
How oft have contrary factions charged me with perfectly contrary
accusations! I can scarce remember the thing that I can do in all the world,
that some will not be offended at; nor the duty so great and clear, that
some will not call my sin; nor the self-denial so great, (to the hazard of
my life,) which hath not been called self-seeking, or something clean
contrary to what it was indeed. Instead therefore of serving and pleasing
this malicious, unrighteous world, I contemn their blind and unjust
censures, and appeal to the most righteous God.

17. If you have a design for a name of honour when you are dead, consider
what power a prevailing faction may have to corrupt the history of your
life, and represent you to posterity perfectly contrary to what you are; and
how impossible it is for posterity to know whose history is the product of
malicious, shameless lies, and whose is the narrative of impartial truth.
What contrary histories are there of particular persons and actions written
by men of the same religion: as of Pope Gregory VII and the emperors that
contended with him; and about Pope John, and many the like eases, where you
may read scores of historians on one side and on the other.

18. Remember that the holiest saints or apostles could never please the
world, nor escape their censures, slanders, and cruelties, no, nor Jesus
Christ himself. And can you think by honest means to please them better than
Christ and all his saints have done? You have not the wisdom that Christ had
to please men, and to avoid offence. You have not the perfect innocency and
unblamableness that Christ had, you cannot heal their sicknesses and
infirmities, and do that good to them to please and win them, as Jesus
Christ did; you cannot convince them, and constrain them to reverence you by
manifold miracles, as Jesus Christ did. Can you imitate such an excellent
pattern as is set you by the holy, patient charitable, unwearied apostle
Paul? Acts xx.; 1 Cor. iv. ix.; 2 Cor. iv. v. vi. x. xi. xii. If you cannot,
how can you please them that would not be pleased by such unimitable works
of love and power? The more Paul "loved" some of his hearers, "the less he
was beloved," 2 Cor. xii. 15. They used him "as an enemy for telling them
the truth," Gal. iv. 16. Though he "became all things to all men," he could
"save but some," nor "please but some," I Cor. ix. 22. And what are you that
you should better please them?

19. Godliness, virtue, and honesty itself will not please the world, and
therefore you cannot hope to please them by that which is not pleasing to
them. Will men be pleased by that which they hate? and by the actions which
they think accuse them and condemn them? And if you will be ungodly and
vicious to please them, you sell your souls, your conscience, and your God,
to please them. God and they are not pleased with the same ways. And which
do you think should first be pleased? If you displease him for their favour,
you will buy it dearly.

20. They are not pleased with God himself; yea no man doth displease so many
and so much as he. And can you do more than God to please them? Or can you
deserve their favour more than he? They are daily displeased with his works
of providence: one would have rain, when another would have none. One would
have the winds to serve his voyage, and another would have them in a
contrary end. One party is displeased, because another is pleased and
exalted; every enemy would have his cause succeed and the victory to be his,
every contender would have all go on his side. God must be ruled by them,
and fit himself to the interest of the most unjust, and to the will of the
most vicious, and do as they would have him, and be a servant to their
lusts, or they will not be pleased with him. And his holy nature, and his
holy word, and holy ways, displease them more than his ordinary providence.
They are displeased that his word is so precise and strict, and that he
commandeth them so holy and so strict a life, and that he threateneth all
the ungodly with damnation: he must alter his laws, and make them more
loose, and fit them to their fleshly interest and lusts, and speak as they
would have him, without any difficulties, before they will be pleased with
them (unless he alter their minds and hearts). And how do you think they
will be pleased with him at last, when he fulfils his threatenings? when he
killeth them, and turneth their bodies to dust, and their guilty souls to
torment and despair?

21. How can you please men that cannot please themselves? Their own desire
and choice will please them but a little while. Like children, they are soon
weary of that which they cried for: they must needs have it, and when they
have it, it is naught, and cast away; they are neither pleased with it, nor
without it. They are like sick persons that long for every meat or drink
they think of, and when they have it they cannot get it down; for the
sickness is still within them that causeth their displeasure. How many do
trouble and torment themselves by their passions and folly from day to day!
And can you please such self-displeasers?

22. How can you please all others, when you cannot please yourselves? If you
are persons fearing God and feel the burden of your sins, and have life
enough to be sensible of your diseases, I dare say there are none in the
world so displeasing to you, as you are to yourselves. You carry that about
you, and feel that within you, which displeaseth you more than all the
enemies you have in the world. Your passions and corruptions, your want of
love to God, and your strangeness to him and the life to come, the daily
faultiness of your duties and your lives, are your daily burden, and
displease you most. And if you be not able, and wise, and good enough to
please yourselves, can you be able, and wise, and good enough to please the
world? As your sins are nearest to yourselves, so are your graces; and as
you know more evil by yourselves than others know, so you know more good by
yourselves. That little fire will not warm all the room, which will not warm
the hearth it lieth on.

 

Charis, 
  
Mike Abendroth 
  
"Make us choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to
be contented with half truth when whole truth can be won.  Endow us with
courage that is born of loyalty to all that is noble and worthy, that scorns
to compromise with vice and injustice and knows no fear when right and truth
are in jeopardy."

 - West Point Military Academy Cadet Prayer 

 

HYPERLINK "http://www.bbcchurch.org"www.bbcchurch.org 
  

 


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