Keep reminding God’s people of these things. Warn them before God against quarreling about words; it is of no value, and only ruins those who listen. (II Timothy 2:14)
If
you know me, you can probably guess that I’m struggling with today’s passage.
Warn them before God? That’s not just “it’d be a good idea…” It’s important.
But…but… quarreling about words? Words are important. They are key. The
first rule of any discussion or debate is to define your terms. At the same
time, I’ve had discussions in which someone whose purpose was somewhere in the playing
games to gaslighting range, and I know how useless those conversations are. I
have also encountered people from the Gnostic tradition, who maintain that there
is salvation, and then there is salvation, and others who hold that
words have no meaning, or only the meaning that the person hearing it understands
it to mean.[i]
So,
I agree with Paul even though I disagree with him. It doesn’t really matter
whether I agree or not, as this is Scripture – God-breathed. So, let’s draw on
a good example of not quarreling about words in the church-environment. Baptism.
Does it mean immersion, or is sprinkling sufficient? Personally, I don’t see
the sense of sprinkling under normal circumstances, but how about when there’s
a pandemic and we’re trying not to spread the virus? Do we not baptize at all?
Or do we adjust to do it in a way that reduces the likelihood of contamination?
I have a friend had an illness (not the pandemic) after which the doctor told
him he couldn’t safely be baptized by immersion. The pastor didn’t “sprinkle” –
he poured a pitcher of water over him, but the idea is the same.
It
might seem that baptism is such a small thing to argue about, but my mother
explained to me that she could not join the church at which I was a member, because
in order to be a member, she would have to be baptized by immersion and
effectively claim that her whole life had been a lie because she had been baptized
by sprinkling when she was young. Wasn’t that sufficient? Was she not a
Christian because she had done a ceremony wrong? Was the evidence of her life
meaningless?
Back in the day that Paul lived, there
were those who claimed you couldn’t be a Christian until you became a Jew first,
and unless you followed the Law. Nothing Paul says suggests that “Christian”
can mean anything you want it to. He certainly argued in favor of what God had
shown him about the meaning of the term. And he didn’t argue for ten minutes
and walk away. But at some point, he shook the dust off his sandals, as it
were, and moved on. We need to learn when to keep arguing, and when to stop –
and I suspect it has something to do with whether or not the person with whom
we’re discussing things is understanding the meaning of what we’re saying.
Otherwise, we’re wasting our breath or worse.
[i] It’s
curious. If they use offensive language and you take offense, the fault is yours
because you have given the meaningless term a negative meaning, but if you use
a term they consider to be offensive, the fault is yours for being so offensive.
One Way Road (OWR) again.
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