Learning as worship

 This week's verses are 2 Peter 3:15-18:

And regard the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as also our dear brother Paul wrote to you, according to the wisdom given to him, speaking of these things in all his letters. Some things in these letters are hard to understand, things the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they also do to the rest of the scriptures. Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard that you do not get led astray by the error of these unprincipled men and fall from your firm grasp on the truth. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the honor both now and on that eternal day.

These verses are from a letter from the apostle Peter to the church in his time. It looks like people were twisting scripture to push their own agendas even back in the early church. Luckily he gives us the keys to avoid getting caught!

The first thing is reminding yourself that the scriptures can be hard to understand. There is a lot that depends on context, and a lot that depends on some experience with who God is to really be able to understand it fully.  It's easy to just swallow the first thing someone tells you, especially if it agrees with what you already believe. But that simple explanation is not always correct. You can ask yourself "is this just a little too easy to believe?" Or maybe "am I just being told what I want to hear?"

Peter says the ignorant and unstable twist Bible verses to their own destruction. When we're ignorant, we don't always have the right answer. It's dangerous to teach other people when we're ignorant. It can cause harm to both teacher and student. And when we're not grounded in God's truth, it's easy to get swept up in whatever is ideologically fashionable in the moment. So you can ask yourself, "does the teacher have a lot of experience as a Christian?" or maybe "does the teacher get swept up easily in ideological fads?"

Peter calls these teachers unprincipled. In other words, it's dishonest and immoral to twist the Bible. If you're starting with what you believe, and then taking a couple Bible verses out of context, like hired thugs, to add authority to what you're telling people, you're misusing the Bible. You should go to the Bible to learn, not for decoration ideas. It's easy to find a Bible verse that seems to fit an idea you already have. But it's difficult to update your beliefs based on the truth in the Bible. You can ask yourself, "does the teacher have any biases or profit motives that might influence how they see things?"

Instead of getting led astray by the errors being made by these unprincipled teachers, we should be growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Grace should be the center of our understanding of the Gospel. If we understand how deep God's love is for us, and how big of a debt he paid on our behalf, and how big of a game changer that forgiveness is for us, it's easier for us to detect someone who is preaching hatred, or legalism, or any other heresy that stands at odds with grace.

And a knowledge of Jesus Christ lets us know more of his character, and gives us more experience in interpreting what we read. If someone is teaching that God is in favor of X or Y, we can think back on our experience with him, and on the stories we've read in the Bible, and think whether or not what they are saying seems to fit in that context. 

And finally, Peter says that Jesus Christ should be honored now and forever. That should be one of our goals in teaching, as well as a lens through which we can interpret what we are being taught. God is awesome. We should honor him by making sure that we are not just teaching our feelings as truth. And we should honor him by checking to confirm the things that we are taught by other fallible men. If we can learn like that, our teaching and learning will also be acts of worship.