Teaching Obfuscation
From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope,
2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.
3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is faith.
5 now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, 6 from which some have strayed and turned aside to idle talk, 7 desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm.
Award-winning professor Dr. J. Rufus Fears says in his lecture series Books That Have Changed History that if we read history and feel good about it, we have probably learned the wrong lesson.
Elyse M. Fitzpatrick in Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus points memorably to the same tendency among Bible teachers. She takes her readers through an age-appropriate lesson parents can use to relate an Old Testament story to their charges which then asks the kids how they can be more like the human character at the center of the story. We miss Fears cautions, knowingly or not, the need for the Gospel. We miss, Fitzpatrick admonishes and encourages both, the real Hero at the center of the Bible's narrative.
This misdirection is both old and persistent. Paul tells Timothy that some of the teachers in his Ephesus church are also missing the point. They use the words of God's Word, all right, but Paul says they don't understand what they say. Looking behind their sanctioned rhetoric, he also diagnoses that they don't understand what they affirm. They read about and teach about the figures of the Old Testament, and they may use them to inspire confidence in Hebrew heritage. Go, and do likewise may be their charge, but they don't come to terms with the righteousness of Christ.
What we affirm as we look into Scripture with the guidance of the Holy Spirit in place of our own agenda is, first of all, our own guilt. For all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God, all the more so since that glory, that reputation of the Godhead is so clearly and compellingly demonstrated in so many different ways in the Bible. We not only fall short at our best, we rebel against the standard we can't reach. We belittle it, or we shrink that standard down to one area in which we think we excel.
Continuing to read and to seek after we experience that just condemnation, we experience the Reason for the hope the Holy Spirit re-ignites. Search the Scriptures, Jesus says, not because they codify our priorities, but because they testify to Him at precisely the point where, by grace, we realize the desperation of our need for Him. Whatever today reveals of us, either in the Bible's phrases or in the revelation of quotidian events, Jesus is the animating force, the encouragement, the One Who holds all things together in Himself. To miss Him is to miss the point. To see Him, even on our second, or seventieth, is to everlastingly rejoice.
2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.
3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is faith.
5 now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, 6 from which some have strayed and turned aside to idle talk, 7 desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm.
Award-winning professor Dr. J. Rufus Fears says in his lecture series Books That Have Changed History that if we read history and feel good about it, we have probably learned the wrong lesson.
Elyse M. Fitzpatrick in Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus points memorably to the same tendency among Bible teachers. She takes her readers through an age-appropriate lesson parents can use to relate an Old Testament story to their charges which then asks the kids how they can be more like the human character at the center of the story. We miss Fears cautions, knowingly or not, the need for the Gospel. We miss, Fitzpatrick admonishes and encourages both, the real Hero at the center of the Bible's narrative.
This misdirection is both old and persistent. Paul tells Timothy that some of the teachers in his Ephesus church are also missing the point. They use the words of God's Word, all right, but Paul says they don't understand what they say. Looking behind their sanctioned rhetoric, he also diagnoses that they don't understand what they affirm. They read about and teach about the figures of the Old Testament, and they may use them to inspire confidence in Hebrew heritage. Go, and do likewise may be their charge, but they don't come to terms with the righteousness of Christ.
What we affirm as we look into Scripture with the guidance of the Holy Spirit in place of our own agenda is, first of all, our own guilt. For all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God, all the more so since that glory, that reputation of the Godhead is so clearly and compellingly demonstrated in so many different ways in the Bible. We not only fall short at our best, we rebel against the standard we can't reach. We belittle it, or we shrink that standard down to one area in which we think we excel.
Continuing to read and to seek after we experience that just condemnation, we experience the Reason for the hope the Holy Spirit re-ignites. Search the Scriptures, Jesus says, not because they codify our priorities, but because they testify to Him at precisely the point where, by grace, we realize the desperation of our need for Him. Whatever today reveals of us, either in the Bible's phrases or in the revelation of quotidian events, Jesus is the animating force, the encouragement, the One Who holds all things together in Himself. To miss Him is to miss the point. To see Him, even on our second, or seventieth, is to everlastingly rejoice.
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