When I was growing up, my church had a weekly evening program for kids and youth, as many churches do. I don’t remember a whole lot about it, but I *do* remember how confusing I found the program’s name - “Logos”. At that point, I had zero knowledge of ancient Greek or Johannine theology, so my child-brain fished around in my existing frame of reference for a way to make sense out of this unfamiliar word. Without putting too much thought into it and based on absolutely nothing aside from phonetics, I found myself somehow associating this weekly gathering with the interlocking bricks that have defined countless childhoods - Legos.
To be honest, adult-pastor-me kinda likes this connection. After all, logos means “word” in Greek, and what are words but the building blocks of communication? Whenever we want to share a thought or idea with another person, we first have to mentally sift through all the words we know, choose the ones that are most relevant, and then use them to build sentences and paragraphs - brick by brick, word by word - until our conversation partner can understand what we’re thinking. Kinda like verbal legos.
Perhaps more than anyone, the apostle Paul understands the importance of logos as legos. Words were his life’s work - they were the primary tools he used to share the gospel and build up the early Church. Regardless of who actually wrote 2 Timothy, this epistle certainly follows in the grand tradition of skillful Pauline rhetoric. And yet, as deliberate as Paul always was in choosing his own words, this passage makes a point to warn Christians not to get too wrapped up in them. The CEB instructs the Church, “not to engage in battles over words.”[1] I have a theory as to why 2 Timothy might have included this particular exhortation, and in order to understand it, we need to think of “logos” in terms of legos again.
The way I see it, there are two main ways to use lego bricks. The first is the way that older kids and adults tend to use legos. They buy a kit with the exact number and type of bricks needed to create a specific structure - maybe a model of the Millennium Falcon or a scene from Harry Potter. The kit comes with detailed instructions about which bricks to connect at which point in the process. And then, if the instructions have been followed correctly, they end up with a pixelated but perfect 3D version of the picture on the box. Usually, the completed model is proudly displayed somewhere prominent, with no intention of taking it apart again. There’s certainly some enjoyment in this way of playing with legos, but the process is highly regulated, and the final product always turns out exactly the same.
Then there’s the second way to use legos, the approach that younger kids tend to prefer. This is where you dump all the bricks on the table at once and just start connecting them together. No instructions, no predetermined process - sometimes even with no explicit goal in mind. You leave things open ended and go wherever your creativity leads you. Maybe you put two bricks together and later decide to take them apart again. Maybe a second person gets involved halfway through the build. Maybe you start with the intention of building something simple, but wind up creating something wildly imaginative that you never expected. The building blocks are the same as the ones found in the kits; the difference lies in HOW you use them.
Similarly, I think there are two different ways that we can use our words to share the gospel. On the one hand, we can communicate the Good News in the same way that we would build a lego kit - insisting that there’s only ONE way to talk about it, ONE correct understanding, and ONE acceptable response. From this perspective, the final product of evangelism must be a standardized, cookie-cutter version of faith. The “false teachers” mentioned throughout 1 and 2 Timothy tended towards this strategy, largely because they didn’t really understand the Good News that they were preaching.[2] They were more concerned with building something that they could control and personally benefit from than with creating Christians who had “a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith,”[3] which should have been their goal.
This brings us back to the “battles over words” that 2 Timothy warns against. When you communicate the gospel in this inflexible way, it’s inevitable that you’ll wind up in “word battles” with those who understand things differently. We’ve all seen it on social media, at protests, even in personal conversations: Christians who loudly and repeatedly insist that women in leadership are “wolves in sheep’s clothing”. Christians who point to a specific word in a language they don’t even understand to “prove” that our LGBT+ siblings are “abominations”.[4] Christians who confidently proclaim that a certain public figure is “clearly” the antichrist - or, conversely, is anointed by God. At best, these “word battles” are ineffective at sharing the gospel, but when they result in someone’s divine calling being denied, someone’s self-worth being questioned, someone’s respect for the Church being lost - all without the humility to even consider other understandings of Scripture - well, destructive seems like the right term. You can see why 2 Timothy might warn against this approach to evangelism.
On the other hand, we can communicate the Good News like a colorful bin of legos dumped out on the floor, teeming with possibility. The “lego kit” crowd scoffs at this approach, claiming that it proves we don’t actually believe in anything, but that’s not what it means at all. It means that we approach the gospel with joy and curiosity instead of legalism and rigidity. We leave room for the Holy Spirit to correct us and to change our plans. We invite others to join in the conversation so that we can continue learning even as we evangelize. We recognize that we’re not just repeating a message - we’re building understanding of the gospel. It would be arrogant of us to assume that we alone have perfectly interpreted God’s word - so even as we share what we know, we keep ourselves open to the delight of unexpected divine revelation.[5] This way of sharing the Good News is messy, disruptive, and unstructured - but it’s also achingly beautiful and surprisingly effective.
The gospel itself is simple and unchanging: Christ died for our salvation and was raised from the dead. That’s it. That’s the whole message. It’s not hard to find the right words to communicate this idea. What makes the message compelling is *how we use* those words, the way that we present the message. Many Christians today believe that the gospel must go hand in hand with doctrinal expectations, but that’s not how it was originally intended to be shared. Paul certainly had opinions, but there was no such thing as official orthodoxy or doctrine until the Council of Nicea three centuries after the Church began. In the beginning, Christians shared the gospel simply by expressing the joy and hope that they’d found in Christ’s love and by helping others explore what this could mean for their life. No rules; no agenda - just Good News.
When people try to make the Good News something that it’s not - when they inject their own potentially erroneous assumptions into it - they aren’t actually sharing the gospel message. They’re attempting to hold it hostage. They’re imposing instructions on a bin of legos that didn’t come with them. They’re trying to force all of humanity, in its glorious diversity of existence, to understand God in the same narrow way that makes sense to *them* in *their* context. And even though this does unfathomable harm to God’s children and Christ’s Church, they’re unwilling to communicate the gospel in any other way.
But while this approach isn’t going away anytime soon, it won’t have the final word. 2 Timothy 2:9 tells us, on no uncertain terms, that God’s word *cannot* be imprisoned - even by Jesus’ most zealous fans. The Holy Spirit will break through the limits that they try to place on the gospel, and she’ll call new voices to proclaim the unbounded message of truth. Through them, she’ll make sure that the gospel is once again proclaimed the way it was and is meant to be.
Friends, we have the opportunity to be those voices. So while I normally wouldn’t advocate destroying something that someone else has built, I think I can make an exception in this case: whenever you encounter a version of the gospel that demands everyone else follow the same instructions in the exact same way - knock it down. Don’t let it stand for another moment. Pull it apart brick by brick, and dump all the pieces on the ground. Speak the gospel as YOU know it, without shame or hesitation: there’s joy to be found in Christ, there’s freedom to be found in faith, there’s hope to be found in God.
Make no mistake - this isn’t gonna solve everything. The lego kit crowd will keep rebuilding their gospel of conformity over and over again, no matter how many times you knock it down. But if you really believe in the Good News that you proclaim, keep speaking up. You never know who might be listening, whose heart might be ready to change, and who might be open to a new way of encountering the gospel. So don’t give up. Keep sharing the Good News faithfully, and your words just might become the building blocks of someone else’s new life in Christ. Amen.
--------------------------------------------
[1] The Greek actually uses a compound word that only appears once in the entire New Testament - logomacheó, literally meaning something like, “to word-quarrel”.
[2] 1 Timothy 1:7.
[3] 1 Timothy 1:5.
[4] As if anything that God so lovingly created could be an abomination!
[5] This is one of those times when I think the CEB falls short. It says that our task is to “[interpret] the message of truth correctly.” This sounds a lot like building the same lego kit that leads to unhelpful word-battles, only doing a better job of reading the instructions. But at least nine different versions of the Bible (English Standard Version, New American Standard Bible 1995, New International Version, American Standard Version, Berean Standard Bible, Hebrew Names Version, Douay-Rheims Catholic Bible, Revised Standard Version, World English Bible) choose to translate this strange idiom as “accurately handling the word of truth,” suggesting (to me, at least) that the technicalities of the message itself matter less than what we do with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment