Hopefully, by the time you read this post, I will have been to Geneva on my sabbatical. So, I will have taken some of the same steps as Calvin.
Geneva in mind, Tim Keller helps us learn about popularity from Bruce Gordon’s biography of Calvin:
For much of his life, John Calvin had two close friends — Farel and Viret. Farel was very hot-headed and out-spoken, while Viret was of very mild temperament, an instinctive peace-keeper. Farel often came to Geneva and stayed at Calvin’s home, where, sometimes with Viret, the friends would have long talks about theology and current events over a glass. Calvin delighted in the company of his zealous friend. Nevertheless, as time went on he came to see that Farel’s inflexible nature made him a doughty defender but a limited propagator of the gospel. He often sent his own discourses and letters to Viret, whose job was to moderate his language. Calvin himself had been more hot-headed as a young man, and he worked to curb his own tongue.
After Farel inappropriately denounced a prominent woman in Geneva from the pulpit, which turned her whole family against him, Calvin wrote him a remarkable letter:
"When you have Satan to combat, and you fight under Christ’s banner, he who puts on your armor and draws you into battle will give you the victory. But…we only earnestly desire that insofar as your duty permits you will accommodate yourself more to the people. There are, as you know, two kinds of popularity: the one, when we seek favor from motives of ambition and the desire of pleasing; the other, when, by fairness and moderation, we gain their esteem so as to make them teachable by us. . .”
More here.
I thought that Bruce Gordon’s Calvin biography was very good. I am glad to hear that Tim Keller and I are reading the same books.