Skip to main content

Guard Duty


Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith. Grace be with you. (I Timothy 6:20-21)

           Yesterday, I watched an interesting video that was described as deep and profound. In it, a Gray (large-headed alien) was interviewed. It turned out that he was not from another planet, but from thousands of years in Earth’s future. He had traveled back to our time, either to see what it was like or to warn us (or both.) He was what Humans evolved into after a nuclear war, and he seemed rather sad about that. In addition, he tried to explain to us a few bits of insight that his people had gained about life, the universe and everything. There is no God. There is no death. We all just experience each other’s life.  
          The most disturbing part of this is the fact that the person who shared it is a Christian. I’m sure her point was about the nuclear war destroying our world as we know it. I saw more. The first thing I noticed was very sad news indeed. A being from several thousand years in the future maintained precisely the philosophical views that are being propounded today. There is no God. There is no death. They understand the nature of life, but it has no meaning. Zero philosophical development in thousands of years, meaning that what is being taught now is correct. How sad, and yet, how realistic – since most of our philosophical progress seems to have orbited around the same ideas for the past three thousand years at least. 
          However, while philosophical progress has been at a dead stop during those thousands of years, physical evolution has proceeded at a pace millions of times faster than in billions of years preceding it. It took at least 2.2 million years for us to evolve (supposedly) from Lucy to us, but in several thousand, we become Grays.
That brings me to the part that is both sad and exciting. In several thousand years, after we claw our way up out of the rubble of the nuclear war, we discover the secret to time and space travel, making it possible to travel many lightyears and several thousand years into the past (in addition to discovering other secrets of the universe and life.) In other words, we finally make The Leap. We finally have the means of conquering the vastness of the time space continuum. Why did it take them so long? Consider the technological advances in the past thousand years. Two thousand years. Three thousand years. The Grays apparently had some access to the knowledge from before the war, so they didn’t start as primitively as we supposedly did, so it really doesn’t say much good about them that they took so long.
         The thing that is saddest is that this is the picture of the future that we seem to accept. We don’t hold to what Scripture tells us. We don’t discard the video as being a piece of poorly executed post-modern propaganda. What the Gray says is described as deep and profound. In today’s passage, Paul told Timothy to guard what has been entrusted to his care. There may be other things, but that would have included the truth, God’s Word, and the people of his church.
There are pastors who don’t do this, and we stand by. There are Christians around us who don’t do this, and we look the other way. We don’t do this, and we pat ourselves on the back for being relatable. We need to guard God’s Word in our own lives, to reject that rejects the truth found therein.
          Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life (Proverbs 4:23) Don’t let others pollute your well

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pure...

            The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. (I Timothy 1:5)   I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. (Revelation 3:15-16) I’m probably cheating - or mishandling the Bible, but earlier I was thinking about love being pure and purifying. And hatred being pure and purifying. And anger…joy…patience… fear… jealousy… courage…lust… and other strongly felt feelings, attitudes, and beliefs. Today’s verse brings purity and love together, so it’s the verse of the day, but it’s not really the focus. That means my motive for sharing it with you probably isn’t pure. As you read through my list, you   probably thought, “Yeah” about some, and “What’s she on?” about others. But consider how much hatred, anger, fear, jealousy, and lust can crowd out everything else. This is like
Post a Comment
Read more

The Right Road

          Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. (Psalm 139:7-12)                  For years before GPSes existed, I told people I wanted something in my car that would tell me, “Turn left in half a mile…turn left in a quarter mile…turn left in 500 feet… turn left in 100 feet…turn left now …You missed the turn, Dummy!” The problem isn’t necessarily that I get lost so much as I’m afraid I’ll get lost. I don’t want to have to spend my whole trip stressing over the next turn. I have the same problem with my spiritual journey.   
Post a Comment
Read more

Not Sharing

            Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, and do not share in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure . (I Timothy 5:22) Today’s is a hard one. The part about not being hasty in the laying on of hands isn’t so much the problem unless your love language is Touch. We aren’t pastors. We don’t tend to be involved in commissioning anyone. What we don’t tend to think of when we hear “laying on of hands” is that it involves relationship and approval. Our sending them away as our representatives may not seem real to us, but just think about what being seen with the wrong folks can do to a reputation. I’ve heard that Billy Graham would not be in a room alone with a woman. Others follow the same policy, or at least make sure the door is open so that anyone who wants to can see that nothing’s going on. But the hard part is not sharing in the sins of others. What does it mean? It’s comparatively easy to say that being pure means not having sex with someone who is not our spouse.
Post a Comment
Read more