Itching Ears

2 Timothy 4:3 --- “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”

“The time will come. . .”  Well, the time is here.  More so than at any other time in my half century of living are we able to carve out a niche of preferences to “suit our own desires.”  The Internet exacerbates the problem as each search engine is tailored to track our queries, to follow our patterns, and then to feed us information that some algorithm has formulated for our specific interests.  When my wife enters a search for “shoes,” on her laptop she gets entirely different results than I do on mine, even if we are using the same search engine, because these search engines have been tracking every other search we’ve ever done.  How convenient to have everything shaped around our preferences!  And how spooky, too!

I received a newsletter from one of my congressmen recently, giving the report of a survey he had conducted among his constituents.  Not surprisingly, the survey resulted in opinions that supported his political positions.  After all, his emails go out to his supporters.  Thus, he now feels justified in his positions even though his survey was already skewed --- it gave him the results “to suit his own desires.”

Unless we exercise some intentional effort to glean information from many different sources, including opinions counter to ours, we run the risk of becoming more and more entrenched in our attitudes, with less and less openness to hearing counter arguments.  So, if you get all your news from FOX, and your neighbor only listens to MSNBC, the two of you will tend toward argument rather than conversation. 

We do have “itching ears,” in preference for teachers who tell us what we want to hear.  Much to our loss.  Leading to the increasing polarization of our society.

To have the courage to listen to opinions that vary from our own is a sign of maturity in individuals and in communities.  A government that fosters civil discourse is what our U.S. constitution is intended to provide, though our legislators are straining against such civility these days.

As a Christian, I see the polarization of churches, too.  We are not immune to the effects of incivility in discourse.  But, at least we should know better.  We are all one in Christ Jesus.  Among splintered churches, is it any wonder that the world doubts our gospel?

I am grateful to be a Methodist.  At our best we continue to respect one another’s differences in theology and Biblical interpretation.  We even show grace toward our sisters and brothers of other religions, most of the time.  The church, in fact, is one of the few places where people of opposing political viewpoints might actually interact and find commonality.  We may still have “itching ears,” but our hearts long to reach out to others, and Christ Jesus calls us to "bear with one another."  In a society that is hell bent on demonizing our opponents, we could use more tolerance, more mercy toward one another.  Jesus leads us in his way.  Let’s embrace this as good advice  --- “In essentials unity, in nonessentials charity.”  May our ears be willing to listen even to those with whom we disagree.  We might learn something. 

Doing Less in Order to Live More

This is about simplicity – finding that “one thing” that is needful in our lives. 

My preaching professor taught me to be ruthless in excising everything from my sermon that did not have to do with my central message:  getting rid of parenthetical paragraphs, getting rid of three points and a poem, in order to make one key point, one key word.  That same focus would serve our lives, if we could be ruthless in excising everything that gets in the way, or is an obstacle to our one thing that God wants for us, the one thing that God has called us to be and do, we would find greater joy in the doing, --- doing less and living more.

I find we are trying to do it all, and it is killing us.  We think we’re going to miss something, so we never fully attend to what is in front of us.  We listen to a tune on Youtube, but wonder if there’s a better tune out there and we are searching for another before we’ve fully engaged in the tune that is sounding in our ears.  We’re trying to do too much, and in an attempt to live life to the full, we are actually living marginally, superficially, with short attention spans, never fully digesting the experience we are in.

If we could do one or two things very well, with enjoyment, with depth, how much more satisfying would it be than doing a dozen things with the barest of competency? And in saying “no” to these other good things, that may open the opportunity for others for whom these good things are their “God-things,” for which they are uniquely gifted – perhaps in a way we could never be.

If we say yes to God’s call in our lives, and have a firm grasp on that “ONE thing,” we may with greater peace and conviction say “no” to other good things, which may not be the things we need to be doing.

If we learn to say “no” to more “opportunities,” we may be able to say “yes” more often to the thing things that enrich our lives and the lives of others.

If we do fewer activities we might actually enjoy the activities we do with greater pleasure.

If we work fewer hours, that leaves room for work to be done by others, thereby addressing the high unemployment rates.

We need to do less in order to live more.  I think you know exactly what I’m talking about.

“There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” --- Jesus in Luke 10:42

Life is a journey

While preparing for a course in spirituality, I was reminded of Walter Brueggemann’s description of the various experiences of spiritual pilgrimage:  1) Orientation, 2) Disorientation, and 3) Reorientation.

We begin our journey with some basic idea of where we are headed.  In my spiritual journey that began in childhood.  Learning the Bible stories in a Christian environment, I was oriented toward Christ as the “pioneer and perfecter of [my] faith (Hebrews 12:2).”  My journey was not a straight path as I sometimes ventured off the proven trail from time to time, but I did not stray too far until my late teens.  By that time I began to chafe at the disconnect between the faith of my childhood and my maturing intellect.  I began to question many things I had been taught, eventually casting aside the particularity of Christian spirituality. 

I became disoriented.  I chose no particular spirituality whatsoever.  I dabbled in atheism, but tend to think of myself during that time as agnostic.  I simply wasn’t sure whether there was a God, and for a while I didn’t care.  I had no plan, no direction, and no perception of divine purpose.  That seemed okay for a while, but I eventually grew despondent and morose from my lack of resolve.  I think it is a basic human need to find meaning, and I had none.  I was disoriented.

In my 20’s, I became reoriented through the simple hospitality of people who welcomed me and my wife into a new community.  They were Christians and their loving welcome led me to relook at the spiritual path I had once been on.  And, armed with a new spiritual hunger, I began to read once again those Bible stories of my childhood faith, but with a new capacity to read below the surface, to find that these stories were dealing with the deeper questions of meaning – these stories were leading me to consider what makes life really worth living.  And I became reoriented, and my path in life became clearer.

Since then I have had many periods of disorientation, and have needed to be reoriented time and again.  I see the same pattern in Jesus’ life.  As Reuben Job puts it, “Jesus knew intensely personal communion with God . . . But he was not immune to struggle, disappointment, or the sting of rejection from friend and foe alike (Companions in Christ, Upper Room Books, 2006, p. 19).”  We cannot possibly comprehend the depth of abandonment that Jesus felt at Gethsemane or Golgotha. 

But in Jesus we see someone in whom we can identify regarding our own periods of disorientation, and discover that such times do not have to define our lives.  The resurrection is a witness that the ultimate meaning of our lives is not controlled by the darkness but by light, not by despair but by hope, not by death but by life.

We have all experienced the disillusionment of broken promises, disappointment in people, and discouragement at not being able to obtain our goals.  Perhaps we have despaired of the path we’re on when our ideal vision is not matched by the reality of our experience.  Such periods of disorientation may actually prove helpful, as we then discover something about ourselves and of God.  Sometimes we discover what God is NOT, and that may move us toward a more mature understanding of who God IS.  And in doing so, we gain greater clarity on who we are.  And we are reoriented toward that life which is really worth living.

I pray you are on the path that leads to life.  My path involves carrying a cross.  It’s not easy.  Sometimes it weighs heavy.  But it feels truer with each step I have taken.  I hope you will join me.