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Petty Gods


          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)

          We’re in the midst of what might be called a French-style revolution. The revolutionaries want to throw off all the shackles that bind them to the autocrats and aristos of the past, rejecting all that came before in their struggle to initiate a utopian, equitable new world. While it’s true that they haven’t pulled the guillotines out of the mothballs, the point (for me) is that they are at least as autocratic and elitist in their new laws as the old aristos were.
          Let me give two examples of this perspective: a revolutionary cries that a person, and that person alone, has the right to dictate which pronouns should be used to refer to that person. Another revolutionary insists that no one has a right to disagree with what they post on their social media page/site/wall. If someone disagrees, they announce, “my body, or my wall, my rules.”
         To this, as an antidisestablismentarian[1], I say “My thoughts, my perceptions, my beliefs, my rules. Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion.”
Both the revolutionary and I demand godhood of a sort. Perhaps it would be clearer to say that we demand petty (or petit) godhood. We insist on the right to be gods at least over our tiny domains. One difference is in the size of our domains. For the revolutionary, the domain extends beyond the revolutionary. They believe they have a right to dictate how others should treat them and their domains. No one may contradict them about themselves, and no one may do so in their echo-chamber. They have the right to dictate your behavior and words with regard to them.
         On the other hand, I insist that I have the right to believe as I choose to believe and the freedom to speak even if it contradicts them. The differences are fairly simple. Their godhood demands that I bow to their godhood. My godhood demands that I do not. I will try to convince others of my perspective, but their perspective is their choice. Their godhood doesn’t permit that.
          Technically, my “godhood” isn’t godhood. It is free-will. The revolutionary does not grant free-will. Oh, we are free to do whatever we want, as long as it is consistent with the revolutionary’s rules. On the other hand, you are welcome to believe whatever you wish about yourself. You simply don’t have the right to dictate my beliefs about you to me. The revolutionary is not my god, he/she is my equal.
          So, what does all of that have to do with today’s passage? Paul’s instruction to Timothy was antidisestablishmentarian. He told Timothy to hold on to the pattern of sound teaching. Christianity was and is a revolutionary concept in the sense that it turns the world back right-side-up. It draws revolutionaries who want to use it to empower themselves and it draws counterrevolutionaries who want to destroy it. Paul told Timothy that Timothy was not to bow to the revolutionaries but to keep what he had learned from Paul as his pattern of sound teaching – teaching he had accepted of his own free will.  
         I have yet to find any point at which Paul imposes his teachings on anyone or asks anyone to bow to him. At many points throughout Scripture, and in this teaching of Paul’s, I find godly men and women who refused to bow to the petty gods around them.

[1] I didn’t think I’d ever have an opportunity to use that word, let alone use it in reference to myself. It means that I am against those who wish to destroy the establishment, AKA an anti-revolutionary.

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