WEEDS

Here's an example of a Scripture passage that got reframed for me just this week: 2 Timothy 3:1-5

1 "But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days."

First, I have always read "last days" as "final days before Jesus's return". BUT it occurred to me: this is Paul writing to Timothy.  Was Paul under the impression that Jesus was returning so soon that Timothy needed a warning about what was coming with the "last days"? 

That doesn't seem likely to me, so I looked around at a couple of commentaries and found that while many have interpreted these words as just such a forward-looking warning, others point out that "last days" very well could simply mean the entire time period between the resurrection of Christ and his return. 

In other words, we are currently living in the "last days" whether Jesus tarries another day or another millennium.

With that possibility in mind, I noticed something in the next four verses that had never clicked before:

2 "People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,

3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good,

4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God - 

5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people."

I always took these terrible adjectives to be a description of secular culture in decline (just before Christ's return). BUT it dawned on me this week that Paul is describing what many people can and will be like within the church itself. 

These are people who claim to be believers while living counter to everything that God is. And doing so kind of openly! If they were simply secular folks outside the church, why would they have "the form of godliness but deny its power"? 

In verse 8 Paul describes these people as "teachers" who "oppose the truth", and he feels it is necessary to clarify that "as far as the faith is concerned, [they] are rejected". 

This reading - that Paul here is referencing people inside the church rather than outside - seems right right to me considering Jesus also warned that an enemy would sow weeds among the good seed, right? (Matthew 13) (And God would not uproot the weeds until the time of harvest!) 

We often hear people defend the church against charges of hypocrisy or abuse by saying, "We Christians aren't perfect ... just forgiven." 

But I don't remember ever hearing other Christians openly acknowledge what Jesus and Paul both taught: that there will be some downright terrible people in many pews and many pulpits. 

Most of us know this from personal experience. I guess I am just saying that it is OK to affirm it out loud. The Bible does.