Avoid godless chatter, because those who
indulge in it will become more and more ungodly. Their teaching will spread
like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have wandered away
from the truth. They say that the resurrection has already taken place, and
they destroy the faith of some. (II
Timothy 2:16-18)
The Greek word
translated “godless” above (bebhvlou") can also be
translated worldly, profane, irreligious. I believe it’s related to the word
Babylon, and to the Greek word from which we get barbarian, a word that came
from the notion of their language sounding like the bleating of sheep. The
example Paul provides is a pair of men who claimed the resurrection had already
taken place. According to the notes in my study Bible, this was apparently an
early Gnostic teaching that made the resurrection merely a spiritual thing.
One of the problems of
Gnostic thinking is an underlying belief that the spirit was good and the body
bad. It didn’t matter what the body did, it couldn’t contaminate the spirit.
The parallel in modern thinking isn’t difficult to find. In our society, we are
all “good.” There is something wrong with the system in which we live and if
the system could be adjusted in the right way, all our problems would be over.
We are all “good” and everyone is going to Heaven, so it doesn’t matter if we
do what we want, when we want, where we want, with whom we want, as long as no
one gets hurt and we define “hurt” in very narrow ways.
One reason why this
philosophy is so bad is because sin always separates. It separates us from God.
It separates us from life. It separates us from ourselves, just like the
teaching. We aren’t designed to be two separate beings. We are designed to be
an integrated whole. It may be convenient to use models of ourselves that had
distinct parts, but they aren’t separate. What we do with ourselves, and to
ourselves matters to our whole selves, not just part. If you hurt your left
leg, it interferes with your whole life.
Another
version of this is what I’ll call the “natural” argument. If it is connected to
nature, it must be OK. So, since we find what we describe as “homosexual”
behavior in nature, it must be OK. Don’t look to closely at what is described
as homosexual behavior in nature. If you mention “dominance behavior,” you won’t
like the responses. Perhaps you shouldn’t mention that cannibalism and the
killing of (usually male) mates is also found in nature. Society frowns on
those activities. Breast feeding is natural, therefore it’s OK to do whenever,
wherever, no matter who is around. Of course, vomiting, defecating, sex and
some measure of personal hygiene are all just as natural, but we don’t tend to
like people at the next table to engage in nose picking, pimple popping or any
of the other functions in public. While there may be justifications for one or
more of these behaviors, “It’s natural” is not sufficient. Neither is “it’s
beautiful” because beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
As
I noted before, Gnosticism separates. It divides spiritual from physical and self
from self. It divides natural from artificial, and artificial always seems to
mean “man-made.” It divides group from group. Those special few who understand,
they are the elite, the enlightened, the Brites and what they proclaim must be
accepted as fact. It’s interesting how often their teachings separate one from
God. Paul tells us to avoid such empty chatter
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