But there were also false
prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They
will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord
who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow
their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their
greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their
condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not
been sleeping. (II Peter 2:1-3)
The
other day I saw something on Facebook about why there are crackpots that
associate themselves with a respectable group of people. Of course, if you pick
any respectable group of people, there will be those who say that they are not
respectable, that the whole group is nothing but crackpots and lunatics, but I
don't believe that's true. Statistically
speaking, 68.2% of people fit into what might be considered the norm. Yes,
they're "normal." Another 27.2% fall within the next bracket. Pareto said
that 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Very likely, that 20% comes from the
27.2% bracket. I'm tentatively going to call them leaders. Of the remaining,
4.2% fall into a third category, and 0.2
into a fourth, each more extreme than the category before it.
With
those statistics in mind, here's another consideration. The more influential or
inspiring, the more powerful or active,
or the more well-known a group is, the more likely it is to attract people who
are seeking power, significance, inspiration, purpose, riches or fame.
What does this mean for us? It means
that of course there are going to be lunatics and crackpots claiming
Christianity, Islam, Atheism, Liberalism, Conservatism, and any other -ism you
can think of. There will be crackpots and lunatics among guns rights advocates,
civil rights (or civil privilege) advocates (including BLM and the various LGBT
groups), ecological advocates, Pro-Life or Pro-Abortion advocates, and any
other rights advocates you may think of. It's easy to identify any group based
on the third and fourth categories, or even based on the more extreme of the
"Leaders," but the vast majority of any group is made of people you
would probably consider fairly normal, or "fairly normal except that one
little eccentricity."
Peter
warned us of the third and fourth category folks. He told us there would be
false prophets and false teachers. The first thing we need to do is to know what
the group in question really, really, really stands for, so that we can tell when someone is not
really part of it. The next thing we need to do is to figure out what to do
about those who aren't part of us but who are likely to be seen as our
spokesperson. We must expect such people to exist, but I know I haven't been
cautious enough about attributing to a whole group the characteristics of the
crackpots and lunatics.
Peter
says that many will follow false teachers and their made up stories, but their
destruction will be swift. As I think back, it seems to me that there are quite
a few stories of "big names" who seemed to be on top of the world,
whose careers, ministries or lives came crashing down around them because they
lived at the extremes...they were part of that 4.4%.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On The Calendar:
Constitution Day
In The Sky:
Harvest Moon
(Moonrise 7:37 EST in Erie, PA)
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