Paul gets rather hard in his old age.  His second letter to Timothy has the slightest cynical side to it–the warning of those with “itching ears” and naming the folks who had been tainting the Gospel in his day.  I find I too have that tendency at times; the awareness of how far we’ve strayed, of how much is left to do.

So today we get the harsher side of Word, the wake up warnings, the slap-you-across-the-face-in-hopes-you’re-righted-in-your-head-by-it words. 

People will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.     2 Timothy 3:2-4

Amazing how much like our world this list sounds. 

For those who live essentially moral and perhaps Christian lives, we see the chaos of our world and we think the problem here is this list.  Those who are epitomized by the character of this list are the ones bringing down the bar, the reason why we are in the messes we are in today.  That’s the problem, the ‘antagonist’ in our story is the perpetrator of the ills of Paul’s list. 

We’re right. 

But before we allow ourselves to cast the blame (again today as we did yesterday and the day before) we should probably finish reading his list.

having the appearance of godliness but denying its power.    2 Timothy 3:5

Now that doesn’t sound like the unbeliever, the ammoralist, the agnostic, the atheist, the you fill in the blank.  That sounds much more like … me.

Timothy Keller points out in Every Good Endeavor who the antagonist in our story really is:

“For in the Christian story, the antagonist is not non-Chistians but the reality of sin, which (as the gospel tells us) lies within us as well as within them.”

While I might have been inclined, like a Sunday sermon oft draws us to do, to listen to the listing of Paul with eyes toward someone else, he won’t let me pass without making sure I know he’s talking to me.

We have dropped prayer meetings from our churches.  Most believers have never participated in a communal prayer time.  Our Bibles look way too new and shiny as we sit on our cushioned spectator seats on Sunday mornings–if we even bring them out of the house anymore in the name of convenience, cellphones, and sermon outlines.  Our armor looks dated and rusted and generally unused if it ever makes an appearance at all. 

We have no idea of the power of the Gospel we profess to be relying on.  Few in the western hemisphere have personal accounts of shaking houses and miraculous fillings of empty oil jars, of dead being raised or even visions of the Savior.  We have little need for His intervention, thank you very much, and, therefore, have little knowledge of it.  We are “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.” (2 Timothy 3:7). 

Our God hasn’t changed.  He can still move mountains and walk on water and turn water to wine and raise the dead.  Perhaps the reason we don’t see Him doing it often is because, like His own hometown folks, we lack the faith needed to even ask. 

If we don’t like the state of our societies, if the world seems headed in the wrong direction and we’re looking for who’s at fault, the answer is me. My sin did this and does this again every day. And I think I need to read the whole list again and see just where I fall in many of the items that come before the telling final one.

The power to change the world is the power that raised the dead. And it’s still right there within all we who profess to cling to the Gospel and yet deny it’s power.