Turning Aside to Myths

For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

2 Timothy 4:3-4

Surely this is descriptive of our own day. It indicates a time when people will forsake a Christian consensus, an undergirding of the institutions of social life by Christian principles. This is the time in which we live: They will not put up with sound doctrine. Sound doctrine is that which leads to wholeness, teaching that permits human beings to live at peace, to develop themselves and enjoy life. But men and women will turn away from that and refuse to hear it.

They will do this because truth requires the admission of human weakness, which people do not like to admit; the restraint of passions, which they do not like to do; and submission to the authority of God, which they dislike and reject. They turn away from the truth; they will not even give it a hearing. It is not that they will listen to the truth and then decide whether it is right or wrong; they do not even want to hear it. They do not want you to say anything in this direction, and they resist every attempt to introduce the truth into any kind of situation.

Then, since they will not listen to teachers of truth, they will look for others who will teach them what they want to hear. There is a disease, widespread in our day, called itching ear disease. This is an ear that wants to be entertained, that is always looking for something new, that wants constant affirmation and does not want to hear anything negative. People who have this disease look for teachers who will scratch that itch, and the result is that they turn aside to myths.

What do these teachers teach? They teach attractive lies, speculative philosophies from the minds of men with no basis in fact. There are many of these myths abroad today. Take the myth of reincarnation. Many people believe that lie, which has no basis in fact. Or take the lie of human autonomy. We hear that man is the measure of all things; our destiny is in our own hands. Or take the myth that science can solve all our problems. Yet if you look at the record, all the technological advances of which we are so proud today have resulted instead in the dehumanization of people, the pollution of our atmosphere, and the increase in threat to the welfare of the world. This is the record, yet it is all set aside in the face of a lie.

We have been saturated by a world that is committed to falsehood. That is why we must proclaim the truth as it is in Jesus. Paul reminds us that the most effective thing is to preach the Word. We are all called to advance that work. Do not let anybody tell you that your life as a Christian does not count. It is the most significant thing taking place on this earth today.

Lord, grant that I will commit myself afresh to be a purveyor of the truth, preacher of the Word, herald of the good news that is in Jesus Christ. Amen.