For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. Galatians 1:10
Everybody tries to be pleasant with other people, right? Yeah, right, I hear you say! We all know some folks who make no attempt to be the least bit pleasant unless they want something. I remember one grouchy man who lived with his mother near the river. He would glare at us and scowl when we walked past or rode our bicycles past their house on the way to the wharf. He never nodded or smiled or raised his hand in greeting, and he never responded when we bid him a good morning. Once, when the ball I was playing with bounced onto his lawn, and I rushed over to pick it up, he snarled at me to stay off. But one day, his mother was outside, and she called pleasantly to us to come and speak with her. She wanted to arrange for us to mow her lawn. Instantly, her son transformed into a pleasant and accommodating person, pulling out lawn chairs for each of us, and speaking politely to us. As we chatted with his mother and made arrangements for the mowing, it was obvious to us that her son didn’t really care about us, it was his mother he was seeking to please. Whatever made her happy was good with him. Maybe as Christians, we could be a little more like that man, minus the grumpy part.
We all know enough to be pleasant and polite to people. It just makes sense to get along with those around us. But we also need to set our priorities in the right order. Being polite to people around us does not require us to accommodate them at the expense of our responsibilities and and our devotion to our Lord. For example, there are few occasions when being nice to others requires us to miss meetings of the Assembly. We should not let the interests of folks around us to keep us from those things that are important to God. A neighbour’s request to share a morning cup of coffee might be OK once in a while, but it becomes a problem if that coffee time replaces the time we should be reading and praying. There are all sorts of examples of ways in which we need to be careful about pleasing those around us at the expense of our relationship with our Lord.
It all comes down to what is the most important. Is our goal to have people happy with us, or to please our Lord? We know the answer to that question, but we don’t always act as if we do. So, what can we do to keep our priorities focused on what is the most important? Only by focusing our attention on the Lord Jesus can we keep His interests foremost in our life.
Pleasing men might at best gain us their passing gratitude. Pleasing God will at worst gain us an eternal commendation. -Jim MacIntosh