In It Not Of It

But understand this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, savage, opposed to what is good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, loving pleasure rather than loving God. They will maintain the outward appearance of religion but will have repudiated its power. So avoid people like these.  2 Timothy 3:1–5

What are the last days? These are. Don’t get excited, we’ve been living in the last days for two thousand years, ever since Jesus returned to heaven. In these last days, we are told that difficult times will come. It’s not an if, but a when. Why? Because people are awful. These verses lay it all out pretty plainly. What remains then is what are we to do with this knowledge?

Our first calling is to not become one of these people. The world desperately wants us to become like this. I don’t know why, it doesn’t benefit anyone. These verses talk about becoming a lover of self, money, and pleasure rather than God. We’re not talking about a healthy form of self love here, but one that puts self above God. This type of self love says that I am more important or of more worth than God. So how does the world encourage this? How often are you told you deserve something? You deserve a vacation, a new outfit, a drink. Based on what? Why do you deserve that? What did you do to deserve that? But being told you deserve it sure does feel good, right? “You deserve a break today – at McDonald’s!” I can’t read the words to that slogan without hearing the jingle behind it. I think we would all be amenable to the idea of deserving a break, but there’s that word, deserve, again. It implies some merit on our part. I don’t know. Maybe they’re implying that merely by existing we deserve these things. But then why aren’t they giving them away for free?  It seems like if we truly deserved something, it would be given to us, we wouldn’t need to buy it. The world seems to want to feed us lines that stir up dissatisfaction, envy, and irritation. It wants to make us uncomfortable and unhappy. So why do people keep turning to the world to fill them up and bring them peace when all it has for them is the opposite? It brings us to the state we are in, and deeper and deeper we spiral.

Next, we are to avoid people like these. I think this is so that we do not become like this and so that we aren’t associated with them. “Bad company corrupts good character,” or so the saying goes. There’sa fine line here. We are not supposed to seclude ourselves away, because then, how would we share the good news? I’m not sure how many people have been saved from soap boxes, but the number can’t be high. But clearly there there must be a distinction. Do the people we spend our free time with, the people we would call our closest friends, look like the description above? If so, odds are we’re not far behind. Our human nature has a desperate desire to fit in, to pattern our behavior after those around us. We may have the best of intentions, but before long we’re making excuses for them and sliding into the same habits. 

Here's the Thing: It’s not black and white or a clear three step process. We are supposed to be in this world but not of it. We don’t want to look like the description given in these verses, but we need to be out there offering hope to those who do.