Teaching Without Understanding

Teaching Without Understanding

1Timothy 1:3-7

            There is some controversy about the authorship of the letters to Timothy.  Experts tell us that they probably weren’t written by Paul, but by someone writing later and using Paul’s name in order to make the letters acceptable to the Christian community.  Let’s put that aside for the moment and accept that the apostle Paul wrote two letters to Timothy, his “true child in the faith.”  We don’t know if Paul had any children, or even if he was married, but that doesn’t matter here either.  Timothy was his spiritual son, and that’s enough for us.

            We’ve all sat in classes under teachers who didn’t know what they were talking about.  We’ve also had teachers who couldn’t teach, or who couldn’t control a classroom, but that’s a different problem.  What I’m referring to here is the kind of teacher who is talking through his/her hat. The one who hasn’t studied the material, or doesn’t know the subject area, and who has nothing of value to bring to students.  We quickly figure out that they’re blowing smoke at us, so we tune them out.

            Apparently, this is the situation that existed at Ephesus.  Those who had been appointed to teach (or who had appointed themselves teachers) were not sticking to the facts.  Paul accuses them of teaching “different doctrine,” and charges Timothy to charge them to stop. 

We don’t have a clear idea of what this doctrine might be, but Paul gives us a couple of clues.  He talks about these incompetent teachers devoting themselves to “myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculation.”  Later he accuses them of “desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.”

            Now, if anyone in the early church knew the law, it was Paul.  We know his training and his background.  We know what he was before his conversion.  If anyone could spot false teaching of the law it would be the man who began his life as Saul and who was learning how to become a leader of the Pharisees.

            We do not know what these myths or endless genealogies might have been, but Paul obviously believed they were leading believers away from the truths of the faith.  From the beginning of Christianity people were making up stuff and passing it off as the true Word of God.  Paul would have none of it.  He wanted these incompetent, unlearned teachers stopped.  Timothy was to charge them not to teach things about which they knew nothing.

            Do we have the same problem today?  Of course!  There are preachers, both in our churches and in our communications networks, who stand in front of people and say things that aren’t true—messages that supposedly come from the Bibles they hold in their hands but never open.  Even if they do open them, we know they can make the Bible say practically anything they choose just by picking Scripture apart and using small enough bits to change the meaning.  A good communicator (salesperson?) can talk us into buying false forms of Christianity by telling us what we want to hear.  Only by testing their words against the message of the whole Bible can we find out if they really know what they’re talking about, or are getting lost in “myths and endless genealogies.”

            We have to be on guard.  We don’t have Paul to protect us, or Timothy to get rid of incompetent messengers.  We have to be so well-versed in Scripture—not the Scripture that someone tells us is correct, but what we know is true because we are biblically literate—that we can spot these phonies ourselves and charge them to stop spreading false doctrines.