A Heuristic Apathy (2 Timothy 4)
A personal encounter with God can’t take place in a cognitive vacuum, yet one of the things most people like to do least, vacuum, has become a common heuristic in their faith and belief system. One might say a heuristic apathy has been propagated.
In psychology, “heuristics are simple, efficient rules, learned or hard-coded by evolutionary processes, that have been proposed to explain how people make decisions, come to judgments, and solve problems typically when facing complex problems or incomplete information”
What is occurring in evangelical circles is an increasing heuristic apathy that is revealing itself as spiritual, cognitive laziness and fear. The church when faced with responding to questions on nationalism, secularism, racism, violence, sex, marriage, theology, family, etc. turns on the vacuum and hopes it will passover, avoids the conversation via topical feel good messages and never deals with them. It seems to be satisfied with turning the flock over to themselves to search for answers among other cultural and religious mountebanks or in most cases relaxes as King David did when it was a season for kings to be at war, and in their own laziness and fears cast their eyes on what arouse their minds (2 Samuel 3) rather than struggle, pray and study through these complex issues.
The result is a sea of religious institutions, denominations, churches and groups posting and authoring subjective answers based on feelings and experiences through social media, living rooms, class rooms apps and from pulpits. The Apostle Paul writes a letter to his protege, Timothy, about a time that he foresaw on the horizon and Timothy likely lived through its rise and set, but now sounds eerily like our horizon:
3For the time is coming when people will not endure sounda teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. 2 Timothy 4:3-5).
What needs done to keep the church from drifting from the objective truth? Where does our hope come from? It comes from God’s Word and Paul resources the church today in these same verses:
1)Find teachers who will preach and teach all of scripture unobstructed by the itching ears and other obstinate hearts. “Paul continues on in this same passage to say, 16All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17that the man of Godb may be complete, equipped for every good work “(2 Timothy 3:16).
2) Stay on course. When you are tempted to wander off after what sounds too good to be true, remind yourself it’s too good to be true and continue to work through the rest of the passage.
3) To be sober in mind and in body, according to the definition of the Greek word in the Bible, is: … to be dispassionate–not warped, prejudiced, swerved, or carried away by passion or feeling; judicial; calm; composed; … to have a moderate estimate of one’s self; … to be circumspect–that is, to pay attention to all circumstances and probable consequences … to be sane. When we read a lot of what is posted on social media it is not sober-minded because it is based on feelings, subjectivity, hurts and anger. To stay this Find someone to work through your thoughts, to pray through them. Search Scripture with someone who can help you exegete Scripture. Search out teachers who have a high value of Scripture.
4) This next one is a hard one. Learn to suffer well. When I was traveling overseas I asked a young man why he remained so silent when it came to politics in public. He told me, “here one can lose their life if they speak against the political leadership”. My followup question was, what would he tell others to do then? He said, we need to learn to suffer well. The same words from a young man that was spoken by Paul. In our culture of entitlement, nationalism and pluralism suffering is a bad thing. Paul says, it is what keeps us sober.
5) Do the work of an evangelist. I wrote about being a tiny vessel with a big net in an even bigger ocean. When we are casting our nets and hooks into the water to share the gospel with those who don’t know Christ it keeps our ears from itching because the sound we are looking for is a repentant heart praising their savior. Our laziness in sharing the gospel to unregenerate hearts has created an obstruction in our ears to hearing the truth. Learn the gospel story. Learn to share it and start sharing it in everything you do with every breath you make.
6) Finally stay on task with the ministry, your calling, your purpose that God has for you. It is so easy to become distracted wanting what we want, chasing what others want for us. We can easily become discouraged and stop pursuing what God has place on our heart because the suffering is too great, the time is too long. Paul is instructing us to stay on course we must fulfill our ministry. If you are in a place where you can’t fulfill your ministry then find the place where you can. Maybe you’re in a place of sober suffering and it’s not time to depart. Hang in there! Trust God. Something beautiful is already underway.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.