UNDERSTANDING THE TIMES

When we have security and money and survival is no longer an issue, we look for ways to spend it on our pleasures. However, our traditional beliefs get in the way. Therefore, we search for a more user-friendly spirituality, one that will not judge us but will affirm and enable us to feel good about ourselves as we pursue our pleasures. In regard to this, the Apostle Paul prophesied to Timothy:

·       For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4 (ESV)

We will no longer be interested in the demanding God of the Bible. Instead, we invent myths, user-friendly God-substitutes. As a result, we have created:

·       Moral Relativism – The belief that the only moral truths are those that we create. However, this belief sets us in conflict with our conscience which informs us that there are moral absolutes.

·       Naturalistic Evolution – This belief has replaced the Creator with an inadequate creator and sustainer and naturalistic explanations: a Big Bang, chance, natural selection, and random mutation. However, this belief has degraded us into an unintended intelligent animal, without any intrinsic purpose or meaning, leaving us parentless in an uncaring world.

·       Secular Humanism – The belief that we humans are at the top and are self-sufficient. We are to trust and hope in ourselves. We must simply decide what is right and wrong, just and unjust. However, we find that we will not be able to bear such a weight.

·       A “Virtuous” and “Truthful” Life - while denying that virtue and moral/spiritual truth exist apart from our own mental constructs. We attempt to live in harmony with our conscience and make-believe that it is more than just an adaptive biochemical machine that conveys truth.

·       Naturalism – the belief that everything is predetermined by the laws of science. Consequently, this belief denies the possibility of free will. Nevertheless, we make-believe that we are “freethinkers.”

However, these God-substitutes do not serve us well. Paul detailed the results:

·       For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. (2 Timothy 3:2-7)

What is happening? The more we violate our God-given moral nature, the more we must harden our heart against the results of this violation – guilt, shame, and confusion.

Why “lovers of self, lovers of money?” By rejecting God’s truth, there is nothing left to restrain our lusts. What remains? A cost/benefit analysis of what serves us best – an inadequate defense against our sinful impulses!

Why “proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit?” As we indulge our passions, we must harden our conscience against knowing that we have done wrong and feelings of guilt. In turn, this hardness enables us to commit even greater immoral offenses – a psychological and moral implosion. Elsewhere, Paul had written that, eventually, God allows us to depart and to pursue the desires of our rebellious heart (Romans 1:24-28).

Why would we then cling to the “appearance of godliness?” This is just another way to assure our conscience that we are morally okay and not under God’s condemnation (Romans 1:32; John 16:8). In His place, we invent gods and goddesses and make-belief that they love us and everything we do.

Nevertheless, as our inner conflicts rage and overflow into our deteriorating relationships, we try to convince ourselves that we have found freedom. However, unless we turn to God, we “go from bad to worse” (2 Timothy 3:13).

However, those who reject God often have very admirable traits, leaving us to question to question if, “They really are as bad as the Scriptures portray them to be.” However, we all wear masks and have even succeeded in deluding ourselves about our true status. Therefore, it is little wonder that those who have rejected God appear to be sincere. They even seem to be seekers of truth and virtue. However, Paul writes about them: “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7).

Why is truth so difficult to obtain? The Book of Proverbs describes wisdom as calling out in the marketplace for any takers (Proverbs 1:20-21). However, when we reject God, it is like buttoning our shirt by starting with the wrong hole. Consequently, every subsequent button is out of place. Sadly, we refuse to return to examine the first button. When we reject God, we suffer from what we have sowed:

·       Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the LORD, would have none of my counsel and despised all my reproof, therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way, and have their fill of their own devices. For the simple are killed by their turning away, and the complacency of fools destroys them. (Proverbs 1:29-32)

We only need to turn back to God. If you have trouble believing this, just try God out:

·       Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! (Psalm 34:8)