As I
urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may
command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer nor to devote
themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather
than God’s work—which is by faith. The goal of this command is love, which
comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Some have
wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk. (I Timothy 1:3-6)
When
Paul left Timothy in Ephesus, he gave him instructions that he repeated I this
letter. There were people there who were either getting off base or never were
on base. The way the passage was written, I wonder whether the false doctrine
and the devotion to myths and endless genealogies were connected. Not enough
time had passed for the genealogies to be connected to Christ or the disciples,
a la Dan Brown. The easiest explanation is that those who could trace their
lineage to Abraham or to David were claiming a special connection to God. In
some of Paul’s other writing, he deals with the idea of having to become a Jew
in order to become a Christian.
As someone who spent more than twenty years working on a family history, this passage gave me some difficulty. As far as I’m concerned, all genealogy is endless. I burned out and ran out of money before I ran out of family to trace. But I also had to come to terms with this passage. It didn’t take me long to see evidence of the danger of genealogy.
I was handed a great deal of a material on my mother’s family, and fairly quickly after I decided to expand on it, I found a genealogy that tied to a line that went all the way back to Adam and Eve. What made it even more spectacular is the fact that it traced back through Odin, king of the Norse gods, who lived in Asgard, Asia. Add to that the fact that the line went back through a son of Noah never mentioned in Scripture but supposedly born on the ark, who happened to play a role in the story of Beowulf.
It seems that during the Middle Ages, if a pagan wanted to prove his divine right to some social position, he found evidence of descent from some god. If a Christian wanted to prove the same, he found evidence of descent from someone in Scripture. My ancestors apparently covered all bases. They used worldly means to achieve their goals, and if the Church proved useful, so much the better.
Our culture is no different. The names of changed, and the lineages might not be (even supposedly) physical, but it’s the same old game. Paul described this problem in I Corinthians. Some were followers of Paul, some of Apollos, some of Peter and even some of Jesus. At one point, what mattered was whether you were Catholic or Protestant. More recently, the struggle seems to be between traditional (mainline), evangelical, Pentecostal and Emergent. People are now talking about missional churches.
There are differences among these and some of those differences are important, but I suspect most people don’t understand them. What seems to be important is just that this church isn’t like “those” churches. It’s somehow better, more exciting, more worshipful, friendlier, more traditional… different.
I don’t want to bring all these groups together because I believe there is room for multiple cultures within Christianity and because I believe that some of them are not built on the truth found in Scripture. At the same time, I believe some of the groups are doing the equivalent of quibbling about ancestry. They are more interested in marketing themselves than they are on teaching Christ.
It would really be nice if these churches wised up and got back to teaching the Word of God. Statistics are showing that youth are drawn to churches that are teaching Scripture and turned off by churches that are marketing themselves to the youth. Keep busy doing what the Church is supposed to do, and not dreaming up new buzz words to try to seem either relevant or special. We are not supposed to worship systems, we’re supposed to worship God.
As someone who spent more than twenty years working on a family history, this passage gave me some difficulty. As far as I’m concerned, all genealogy is endless. I burned out and ran out of money before I ran out of family to trace. But I also had to come to terms with this passage. It didn’t take me long to see evidence of the danger of genealogy.
I was handed a great deal of a material on my mother’s family, and fairly quickly after I decided to expand on it, I found a genealogy that tied to a line that went all the way back to Adam and Eve. What made it even more spectacular is the fact that it traced back through Odin, king of the Norse gods, who lived in Asgard, Asia. Add to that the fact that the line went back through a son of Noah never mentioned in Scripture but supposedly born on the ark, who happened to play a role in the story of Beowulf.
It seems that during the Middle Ages, if a pagan wanted to prove his divine right to some social position, he found evidence of descent from some god. If a Christian wanted to prove the same, he found evidence of descent from someone in Scripture. My ancestors apparently covered all bases. They used worldly means to achieve their goals, and if the Church proved useful, so much the better.
Our culture is no different. The names of changed, and the lineages might not be (even supposedly) physical, but it’s the same old game. Paul described this problem in I Corinthians. Some were followers of Paul, some of Apollos, some of Peter and even some of Jesus. At one point, what mattered was whether you were Catholic or Protestant. More recently, the struggle seems to be between traditional (mainline), evangelical, Pentecostal and Emergent. People are now talking about missional churches.
There are differences among these and some of those differences are important, but I suspect most people don’t understand them. What seems to be important is just that this church isn’t like “those” churches. It’s somehow better, more exciting, more worshipful, friendlier, more traditional… different.
I don’t want to bring all these groups together because I believe there is room for multiple cultures within Christianity and because I believe that some of them are not built on the truth found in Scripture. At the same time, I believe some of the groups are doing the equivalent of quibbling about ancestry. They are more interested in marketing themselves than they are on teaching Christ.
It would really be nice if these churches wised up and got back to teaching the Word of God. Statistics are showing that youth are drawn to churches that are teaching Scripture and turned off by churches that are marketing themselves to the youth. Keep busy doing what the Church is supposed to do, and not dreaming up new buzz words to try to seem either relevant or special. We are not supposed to worship systems, we’re supposed to worship God.
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