Charles Simeon - humiliation and adoration

I listened to John Piper's talk, Brothers We Must Not Mind a Little Suffering, on Charles Simeon yesterday and again today.

Charles Simeon (1759-1836) endured decades of hostility from his own church and did not give up. This kind of spiritual backbone seems to be a rare thing today. In the light of that, Piper had some very astute comments about 20th century America.

"I think we live in a very emotionally fragile time, and I am a child of my times much more than I wish I were. When I am honest with myself, the things I hate about about my culture, I see evidences of in myself."

"By emotionally fragile, I mean that we are easily hurt. We pout easily. We mope easily. When I say we, I mean the American culture today, inside and outside of church. We break easily. Our marriages break easily. Our faith breaks easily. Our happiness breaks easily. Our commitment to the ministry and to the church breaks easily. We are easily disheartened and discouraged. We seem to have very few resources and little capacity for thriving in criticism and opposition."

"We don't see a lot of models of people who live out the rugged words, "Count it all joy, brothers, when you fall into various trials" (James 1:3). I think that when historians write about the character traits of the latter quarter of the twentieth century, words like commitment, constancy, tenacity, endurance, patience, resolve, perseverance won't be on the list at all, not even at the bottom. At the top of the list will be an all-consuming interest in self-esteem. Subpoints under that list will be self-assertiveness, and self-enhancement, and self-realization. And if you think you're not a child of your culture, then I suggest that you just test yourself and ask how you emotionally respond when significant people in your life reject your ideas."

"We need help here. We are surrounded in a society of emotionally fragile quitters, and a good bit of that ethos is in you and me. "

Piper traces the source of this ability to persevere through decades of suffering to Simeon's massive doses of meditation and prayer, and his growing downward in humility before God and upward in adoration of Christ.

"Now those two things, growing downward in humility and close communion and adoration of God are not separated in Simeon's life. And this is the remarkable thing and this is what will stun some of you, perhaps, as you hear him talk about how he maintained his strength. Simeon was utterly unlike American Christianity in this regard. Utterly out of step with contemporary American Evangelicalism because he did not think it was helpful or appropriate to get rid of feelings of vileness or of unworthiness as soon as he could. For him, adoration grew in the freshly plowed soil of humiliation. "

I have continually had such a sense of my sinfulness as would sink me into utter despair, if I had not an assured view of the sufficiency and willingness of Christ to save me to the uttermost. And at the same time I had such a sense of my acceptance through Christ as would overset my little barque, if I had not ballast at the bottom sufficient to sink a vessel of no ordinary size. (Moule 134f.)

"Now what does that mean? What it means is that he never ever thought we should throw the ballast of humiliation overboard. After he had been a Christian forty years he wrote,

With this sweet hope of ultimate acceptance with God, I have always enjoyed much cheerfulness before men; but I have at the same time laboured incessantly to cultivate the deepest humiliation before God. I have never thought that the circumstance of God's having forgiven me was any reason why I should forgive myself; on the contrary, I have always judged it better to loathe myself the more, in proportion as I was assured that God was pacified towards me (Ezekiel 16:63). . . . There are but two objects that I have ever desired for these forty years to behold; the one is my own vileness; and the other is, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ: and I have always thought that they should be viewed together; just as Aaron confessed all the sins of all Israel whilst he put them on the head of the scapegoat. The disease did not keep him from applying to the remedy, nor did the remedy keep him from feeling the disease. By this I seek to be, not only humbled and thankful, but humbled in thankfulness, before my God and Saviour continually. (Carus, 518f.)

Now if he is right, vast portions of contemporary Christianity are dead wrong. And I can't help but wonder whether one of the reasons we are emotionally capsized so easily today and are so vulnerable to winds of criticism or opposition - is that in the name of forgiveness and grace, we have thrown the ballast of our boats overboard."