and will pay no attention to Jewish myths or to the merely human commands of those who reject the truth.
Titus 1:14
I don’t think my mom did it intentionally. That is, I never saw her reading a Bible or anything like that. I have no memories of her with Bible verses written on cards so that she could memorize them. There were no pictures around the house with parts of the Bible written on it. And while there were statues all over the place, none of them had any scripture written.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. How in the world could Chet remember all the stuff in his house? He doesn’t have a photographic memory or anything like that. What gives him the right to try and pull the wool over our eyes with all this detail about the house he grew up in.
Well, I can say all this with 100% certainty because of one thing. And it isn’t my great memory. It’s because I was the daughter my mom never had. And that meant that I worked beside her all day long. In the kitchen cooking. In the basement, doing the laundry. After going to the grocery, putting all the food away.
And one of my jobs was to clean the house. I mopped the kitchen and bathroom floors. I vacuumed the carpets and furniture. And then I did the dusting. This meant that I went throughout the house and wiped down each and everything on the tables or walls. I ran the dust rag around all four-corners of every picture. I dusted all the statues and nicknacks throughout the house. I dusted off the phonograph albums and books too.
If there had been some part of the Bible in our house, I’d known about it. I would have seen it. I’d have touched it. Heck, I’d also dusted it too. We did have one large Bible stuffed under the coffee table, but that had a really thick coating of dust every time I got around to dusting it. It never moved. It was never used.
All this goes to say that I’m still very curious about how my mom so often quoted the Apostle Paul. You see, I’d come home from school and talk about how someone had been bad at school. How they’d gotten away with something horrible and evil. Just so you know, the reason I was so sensitive to their evil actions and words is that I was so pure. I was just so sensitive to any sin or breaking of any rules. Yea, right.
But mom would listen for a while and then she’d pull this Bible quote out. I didn’t know it was from the Bible at the time, but with the way mom said it, her words certainly had the ring of authority. It sounded true, so it had to be true. It was something to be heard and obeyed.
She said, “Have nothing to do with them.” It meant that I was to stay far away from them. They weren’t to be my friends. I was to seep my distance from them. And why? Because their influence wouldn’t be good on me. They would only bring me hurt and harm.
And that’s exactly what Paul’s telling Titus about these people. He was to turn away from them. Titus wasn’t to give them the time of day. He was to turn away from them and their teachings. Their lies. Their false view of life and reality. There were two kinds of people that Paul warns Titus about. And we’re warned about them too.
Jewish myths. There were teachers and all sorts of people that had taken the truths of God and twisted them for their own purposes. Usually, it gave them power over the people. It put them up front to judge the lives of everyone else while they lived in luxury.Today, we have people just like this. They take the truths of God from the Bible and mash them up into a pile of spiritual spaghetti. You can’t make heads or tails of it, but they use it to put everyone else in their place. Where the teachers are lifted up with respect and make lots of money.
Merely human commands. And then there are people that just make up their own spiritual stuff. They create their own view of the world and the universe. They make up fairy tales and sell them as a direct revelation from God. And since God chose them, they’re in power over all their followers.With the blessing and curse of instant, worldwide communications through the internet, any wingnut with a cell phone can spread their own twisted views to every person on the planet. Once we only had to listen to the people in our towns. But now, everyone is a potential target.
I can’t tell you how many of these kinds of people I’ve listened to over the years. How God came down and revealed himself to them. Gave them a special anointing and revelation. And now, it was their calling to preach it to the world. To spread God’s new, fresh word.Sorry, I only have one word to say to them. “Bunk.” Think about it for a minute. We know that God has spoken to us through the Bible, and that God cannot change. So, how could God suddenly change his mind if he’s unchangeable? How could he go back on the words he’s said in the past? Answer: he can’t.
Noodling Questions
What are three things that are easy to pay no attention to. Why?
Are myths or human commands easier to ignore? Explain.
What attracts us to the people who give us this false information?
Comments