December 5

Indifference to man’s opinions

“It is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment” (1 Cor. 4:3).
“Not with eye service, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men” (Eph. 6:6-7).

They who have overcome the world are no longer careful either to secure its favor or avert its frown, and the good or the ill opinion of the world is to them a small matter. “To me,” said Paul, “it is a small thing to be judged of man’s judgment.” So of every real Christian; his care is to secure the approbation of God; this is his chief concern, to commend himself to God and to his own conscience. No man has overcome the world unless he has attained to this state of mind. Almost no feature of Christian character is more striking or more decisive than this—indifference to the opinions of the world.
—Charles G. Finney.

There is no commoner danger than that of accepting the code of the society in which you live as the rule of right.
—Bishop Temple.

Strive all your life to free men from the bondage of custom and self, the two great elements of the world that lieth in wickedness.
—Charles Kingsley.

Life is simplified when our only thought is to please God. Our friends and neighbors have such varying ideas and opinions that life would be burdensome were we to try and please man. Some people are forever busy running here and there endeavoring to reconcile and straighten up false rumors. Henry Ward Beecher expressed it thus: “Life would be a perpetual flea hunt if a man were obliged to run down all the innuendos, inveracities, insinuations, and misrepresentations which are uttered against him.” How restful to leave our reputation in God’s hands. “What I must do,” says Emerson, “is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule . . . is harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.”

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