In Luke 5:1-11 we see a story of Simon coming to his senses. By acting on Jesus’s word (against his inclination) and experiencing the work of Jesus in his life, Simon came to see himself as a sinner. Up to that point this professional fisherman has likely taken himself to be a good reasonable person. He was a good fisherman. He worked hard. He supported his family. He was a good Jew. He honored God in appropriate ways. If you’d have asked him, he probably would have admitted that he wasn’t perfect – but who is? Surely God takes that into account.

As a result of this encounter, Simon learns to see himself as a sinner. In his book Good, Reasonable People (at the moment I write this, the Kindle version is on deep discount) Keith Payne writes about the “Psychological Immune System.” This is our natural human inclination to defend our root assumption that we are good reasonable people. Considering how many people have been beaten down and abused, we see that such an immune system is important. It can prevent us from despair and hopelessness. But the psychological immune system can also be a defense against gaining self knowledge and against engaging with God. In this story the breaking of Simon’s psychological immune system allowed him to discover that he was a sinner.

The result of the breaking of his psychological immune system was not the disaster it could have been. In the presence of Jesus, that immune system was reconfigured. He was able to see that he, though a sinner, was important to Jesus. Jesus loved him. Jesus invited him, sinner that he was, to join in his work. It was only after Simon came to his senses and recognized that he was a sinner that Jesus was able to work in his life.

In this era of exaggerated self-righteousness – even in the church! – there is a deep need for us to have the kind of experience Simon had. Until our assumption that we are good reasonable people can be broken down so that we come to know ourselves as sinners, we will be of no use to Jesus but instead a force for chaos and destruction in the world.