May 29 - Itching Ears

May 29 - Itching Ears - 2 Timothy 4:1-5

Diane says:
Really Paul? All of this on one young man? Not only did he charge Timothy to preach, be prepared always, correct, rebuke and encourage, but he did so by invoking the presence of God, Christ Jesus AND the coming kingdom. Wow! That's a lot of weight to land on one man's shoulders.

But, for Paul it wasn't about Timothy or even himself. He knew full well that the impact of Timothy's life and ministry would carry throughout time when men wouldn't put up with sound doctrine, they would turn from the truth and listen to anything that appealed to their 'itching ears.' This charge was important and Paul felt that it was the only thing standing between truth and destruction.

Timothy was told to keep his head, endure hardship, be an evangelist and do everything that he had been called to do in his ministry. We have the same tools that Timothy was given. We have Paul's teaching and his hopes for a future filled with the grace of Jesus Christ. Can we do any less?

Rebecca says:
This verse has one of my favorite phrases in it, "itching ears." That phrase completely captures what seems to surround us in the world. Today’s society is all about pacification. We have become a society that likes to take the easy route.

I cannot tell you how many times during the day I make choices to pacify. I know that if I'm asked for an opinion at work they don't really want my thoughts but want me to agree with their thoughts.

At home with my son there are many times I don’t choose the harder thing. Many times because of my own guilt or exhaustion or fear of starting an argument I give in to itching ears and when he asks a question I tell him what he wants to hear instead of the truth.

I do it with friends and family alike and the worst part is, I often get a case of itchy earitis myself and go probing to find someone in the midst of some trying time that will just stroke my ego and tell me that I’m right.

I have a fascination with trees and it began a long time ago with an old Tanya Tucker song my dad used to play in the kitchen during dinner. It goes something like "Like a tree out in the backyard that never has been broken by the wind, our love will last forever if we’re strong enough to bend." I always loved that song and it was because of it that I started this theory that I have that God gave us trees as little visual examples of what He hopes for us to become.

Tanya was right, if we learn to bend and sway like a tree then even the hardest of storms will not break us. And if we learn to be flexible and bend our ears toward heaven and willingly twist and contort our bodies and lives in order to realign with His word then there is no gust that can tear us down.

But in today’s world with a million itching ears I think we have started to turn it around. Instead of letting God’s Word be the rod that we bend toward we have instead mistakenly fooled ourselves into believing we are much bigger and more important than we are and so we become this stiff unbendable rod and expect God's Word to bend itself into our universe and contort into whatever shape we need for the moment.

You take one verse in the Bible and I can guarantee you I could find at least 20 different sermons on it all expressing different view points and within those 20 I guarantee I could find at least one of them that would satisfy any version of my itching ear. It just seems easier and easier to be a Christian and unfortunately it is not because His yoke is easy and burden light.

Abortion is a horrific topic. I use this example because it is one of the most controversial of our time but even in Christian churches we rarely broach it. We do not say it is wrong because we don’t want to shame some poor girl who made a bad decision years ago. We continue to turn a blind eye to women in our very own congregations getting them even today. Very rarely do you see a church or a pastor get up and make a definitive statement about abortion for fear of alienating someone in the congregation.

But why? The beauty of the Word of God is that it is never wrong. If it produces shame then so be it, if it produces guilt then so be it, if it produces love than hallelujah. The only time the word of God is ever wrong is when we use it with the motivation to produce shame or guilt or even love. When we put our own rod iron weight on it and bend it to manipulate some outcome from a sermon or teaching or conversation that is the only time His word is ever impure.

But what would happen if we just let the rod exist. What if we just laid it out there, just spoke it without any preconceived notions of how it should be interpreted. What if we just shared what was laid on our hearts whether it is in school or with our kids or at our jobs and just didn’t give in to the itchy ears, and didn’t manipulate the outcome? More importantly what if we made a conscious decision to try to stop scratching our own?

The beauty of an itch is that if you ignore it long enough it will just go away, but if you scratch it, it only become worse. If we keep our hands busy, and do just as Paul said and keep our head in all situations then soon enough it will disappear. Until it does, the best we can do is just pray. Maybe prayer is like a big old bottle of caladryl ... But that is an analogy I will save for another day.