Today we read the entire book of 2 Peter. This was one of those readings that flew by (of course the book is only three chapters long). Nevertheless, It was nice to have a shorter length of reading today, after a holiday. I hope you also enjoyed your day off for President’s Day and are ready to jump back into the work week and the completion of our second to last week of reading.
2 Peter is one of those books that is full of significant theological content, some of which has been quite controversial. One of those subjects is the difficult teaching of God’s patience toward the lost world in contraposition to His judgment over it. God is merciful, but He is also just; therefore, though He will judge the whole of mankind, He remains patient toward us in deference to our potential salvation decision. Of course, this challenges due to the clash of mercy and judgment. One would ask, Why doesn’t God just save the rotten lot and have done with it? Yet there lies the difficult nature of the question. By the way, I’m not going to answer it either. However, I am going to deal with the overall challenge of “difficult” passages.
So…here is what I got from this reading.
If you look at the picture that I posted with this blog entry, you may ask, What is John up to? Well, many people have asked me why I am so enamored with Jack in the Box tacos. Many say to me that they just cannot understand what is with that. Not only that, look at the amount of tacos that are on that tray. That’s right, Jack in the Box tacos cannot be eaten unless you fill the tray with them. There is bliss in eight Jack in the Box tacos (not to mention the fries). But not only is the number of “waiting to be consumed tacos” significant, but also their cost. You get 2 tacos for 99 cents! 99cents!
Some people don’t understand this. What’s the big deal?
The big deal is that when I was young, Jack’s was the place to go in San Diego (or at least this kid used to think so). We could get a cheese burger for 19 cents and the tacos then are the same tacos now. When I find a Jack’s (they are not here in Utah except for St. George, 300+ miles away), I purchase these tacos and instantly go back to my youth. No one understands that, because, honestly, Jack tacos aren’t so good as tacos go. But when you combine the price tag and the nostalgia, Jack’s tacos cannot be beat.
I get that people don’t understand this. Really, I do. This is a difficult thing to grasp, but it is true nonetheless.
Peter makes a similar argument about the things that his fellow apostle, Paul, writes. He says, “His letters contain some things that are hard to understand.” Peter, the rock, the leader, for all intents and purposes of the church in Rome, said that some of Paul’s writings were hard to understand. Whew, am I glad. Because I feel the same way. Paul says some difficult things to understand, but that doesn’t make them not true. There are a whole lot of things that we don’t understand in this world, but we deal with our shortcomings and carry on. I don’t know why many who confront the hard sayings in the Bible write the Bible off, when so many other things in life are just as hard to understand and they continue on without batting an eye.
The other thing that gets me about this statement from Peter is that it follows on the heels of the difficult statement that Peter relays about God’s mercy and judgment I talked about in my introduction to this blog. Sometimes things are just hard to understand for us humans, but that doesn’t nullify their veracity! Peter was acknowledging our deficiency as human beings. We cannot know everything. We cannot understand all things. We are forever running short on capturing everything that is going on around us. Yet, we still merrily go about our lives, living in the sufficiency of what we do know, what we do understand and what we can apprehend in our personal context.
Peter’s complaint, relative to Paul’s writings, is not that they are wrong, but that some would take them and twist them. Those who don’t have a context to understand completely the depth of the sayings distorted those sayings. That was Peter’s complaint.
Man, have I seen that when it comes to theological difficulties and hard sayings! People who think they have a need to clarify, sometimes make more of a problem in their effort to make it clear. Not because they are wrong in trying, rather, somethings are just beyond us. God says through the prophet Isaiah, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.” Is. 55:8-9
Sometimes things are just outside of our reach; and what I got from Peter was that is okay. Just like Jack’s tasty tacos, you may not understand, but that’s okay. We can all live with that; hard sayings and Jack’s tacos.
Join me tomorrow as we read the book of Jude. Blessings!
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