What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us. (II Timothy 1:13-14)
Keep and guard. As a writer of fantasies, I tend
to like the ideas of castles and dragons. Both are all about keeping and
guarding. Of course, the things kept and guarded by castles and dragons tended
to be physical things, things that would be depleted if they were shared. “No,
you can’t have my gold, my silver, or my books!”
But sound teaching is a different matter. Something
Thomas Jefferson said comes to mind: “He who receives an idea from me,
receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper
at mine, receives light without darkening me.” The danger for sound teaching
isn’t that others will deplete it, but that they will dilute it, distort it, or
destroy it. Rather than receiving light, they snuff out the candle or add something
to it that makes toxic smoke billow out instead of light.
So how do we know whether the teaching
is sound and deserving to be kept? It needs to fit in with the other teaching we
know to be sound. It’s part of a pattern. There are lots of patterns of
teaching that people proclaim to be sound. If someone wants to think that their
pattern of thinking is sound, that’s their right. But the key here is not to
mix the two patterns. Rather, it is to decide between them or at least to
carefully compare to find where the patterns differ. For any pattern, there are
elements that are essential and non-negotiable. It’s wise to know where those
are.
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