“For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4).
We have come into an odd age in human history. Perhaps we have been here for more than a moment, but to me the shift feels sudden. We are no longer to agree upon truth or facts, nor can we all say together what is reasonable or logical. Instead, we have become impassioned creatures addicted to wild emotions, simple narratives, and tribal mentalities.
If you are liberal you may easily head over to “your” news channels, outlets, and websites. And, if you are conservative you may do the same with your news media. Social Media companies are having to release statements so that people know how to spot fake news. We de-friend or stop following people because they spout off a different belief system than ourselves. We have reached the time when people are not putting up with sound doctrine, for we all have itching ears and are accumulating for ourselves teachers that suit our own desires. Call it a silo or an echo chamber, but regardless these segmented areas of life feel awfully crowded, they are incredibly loud, and in the end I believe they provide only empty promises.
What I notice standing out about the trajectory of conversation and communal life in the United States revolves around a need for a simple narrative that proves one side right and another wrong. Thus, we all yearn for myths that explain away any sense of nuance or grey area. We occupy a zero-sum system in which no compliment may be paid to someone on the other side of an issue for fear that it would give that person some leverage. This way of existing makes me so disheartened. We have seemingly forgotten that we are not islands unto ourselves. Instead, we persist in digging our heels in deeper, as we exacerbate the problem of a binary worldview.
The first step in addressing any problem comes in acknowledging that we are in denial about having a problem in the first place. We have a problem in how we relate to one another across all the constructed boundaries of race, creed, color, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, or any other category. Of course, we are not the first to have this problem.
Today we celebrate the martyrdoms of St. Peter and St. Paul. Two men who gave their lives because they would not renounce their radical belief that a man named Jesus was the Son of God. In those days when the Roman Empire controlled where Peter and Paul lived one had to profess a belief that the Emperor was God or the Son of God. To believe anything else was treasonous and punishable by death. While we celebrate these two saints separately on different days in the Church Year, today we remember their collective self-sacrificing in the face of the temptation to keep on living by renouncing their belief in Jesus as the Messiah. Make no mistake this is what we celebrate today; however, another aspect of this day stands out.
Peter and Paul did not see eye-to-eye. They followed the same Lord, but went about their mission of spreading the Good News of Christ Jesus in drastically different ways. At times this meant that they butted heads. Their journeys took them on different paths. Often factious were created. And yet, in the end they both met the same fate—death by execution—in the same city—Rome—at the hands of the same Emperor—Nero. Seemingly the Scripture chosen for these two men—the words of Paul in his second letter to Timothy and words about Peter in John’s Gospel account—also share a theme, namely telling the Truth in the face of denial, persecution, and even death.
Paul wrote to Timothy to urge him onward in his ministry. Others would seek out teaching that merely led to proving their point. Paul understood something greater. The prolific Epistle writer knew that even if he had to face suffering what matters in the end is sharing the Truth, keeping the faith, and running with perseverance the race set before him. He would not deny the Truth. Peter had to learn this lesson in humiliating fashion.
When Jesus faced his torturous death Peter watched on from a distance. People questioned whether he was a follower of Jesus. In the face of these questions Peter denied his belief in Christ Jesus. John’s story of the undoing of these denials with affirmations of love help us to see the healing that took place and can take place when we acknowledge our disowning the Truth. In Christ denial is overcome through love. This is the hope that we must take forward.
Our world appears to be burning with a desire to separate, hate, and isolate. Many live in denial that we are all connected to one another. So we seek our own teachers to provide myths that fit how we see the world. Christ came to unite us. The cure for these sins that disconnect us from God and one another does not reside in proving others wrong or outsmarting one another or yelling louder than anyone else, but instead in loving one another as we serve and serve with those with whom we have disagreements.
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