The more I read Thomas Brooks, the more I find his work to be a blessing.
From his pen flows an amazing combination of hard-hitting exhortation and
gentle pastoral counsel. (Don't we need both?)
In discussing those who recoil at the concept of pursuing holiness, Brooks
addresses the scoffer - a critic alive and well in the mid-17th century
just as much as today. Here are some selections from a few choice
paragraphs on the topic:
This truth may serve to convince those that are scoffers and mockers at holiness, of their woeful and miserable estate, 2 Pet. iii.3, Jude 18. Holiness is so high and so noble a thing, that men should rather honour it than deride it - reverence it than reproach it; they should rather set a crown of glory than a crown of thorns upon the head of it. Holiness is the glorious image of God fairly stamped upon the soul; and to deride holiness is to deride God himself. (emphasis mine, TKP) God takes all the affronts that are done to his image as done to himself; and this scoffers shall know at last to their eternal woe...Holiness is the statue of God, an dsuch as shall dare to deface it and wrong it, God will destroy. The old world scoffed and scorned at righteousness, and God sweeps them away with a flood. Ham mocked and scoffed at righteous Noah, and what did he get by it but a curse? Ishmael scoffed at holy Isaac, and what did he get by his scoffing and mocking, but ejection out of Abraham's family? And what became of those two-and-forty young scoffers that scoffed and mocked at holy Elisha? were they not cursed in the name of the Lord, and torn in pieces by two she-bears which were more fierce and cruel than others? The Jews were given up to scoffing and mocking of the messengers of the Lord, till there was no remedy: till old and young were destroyed by the sword of the Chaldees; till their temple and city were fired and sacked, and thirty of them sold for a penny, &c.,...Scoffing at holiness is a metropolitan (TKP - capital) sin, and therefore no wonder if God executes upon scoffers metropolitan judgments. Mockers and scoffers are the worst of sinners. Among the three sorts of sinners that David mentions, scorners have the chair, the chair of pestilence, as the Septuagint translateth it. Scorners are the pests of mankind. The eye of the scorner is blinded; the heart of the scorner is hardened; the judgment of the scorner is perverted; the will of the scorner is enthralled, and the conscience of the scorner is seared, and this makes the scorner fall mad upon scoffing at holy men and holy things. Look, as they are the worst of servants that will scoff and mock a child in the family, because he is his father's picture - though they take wages of his father, and live by his father - so they are the worst of sinners who scoff at holiness, which is the very picture of God, though they live by him and cannot live without him. Yet this world is full of such monsters, who count it a grace to disgrace holiness, and to lade holy ones with all the names of scorn and contempt that they can invent, or that Satan can help them to.
Holiness is a stumbling block to many - and an offense to many. Any
attempt by a person to walk as God will have him walk, to "be different"
than the world will result in scoffers taking up their weapons of words
(directly or indirectly) and the weapon of derision or shunning. Let us
look to God above for our comfort, and our brothers and sisters in Christ
for our companionship. Let us encourage one another to step aside from
the world's way, and to walk to the beat of a different drummer. The
pressures to "go with the flow" are great, but the dangers of doing so far
outweigh the inconvience of being looked upon as "weird". Fools for
Christ's sake, let us be, despite the scoffers and mockers. (or, as a wise guy once said, perhaps at this time of year, don't let the turkeys get you down)