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.