Author: Bryan Richardson

Re:Verse passage – 2 Peter 3:10-18 (day three)

…the untaught and unstable distort [St. Paul’s letters], as they do also the rest of the scriptures, to their own destruction.

Knowing a lot of Bible, memorizing large sections of Scripture, studying immense swaths of holy writ – this is all well and good, even desirable, but it does not follow that those with the most well-worn Bibles or oft-visited Bible passage websites will live the most saint-like lives. A Sunday school teacher can be a bully; a child in Vacation Bible School who knows only  “Jesus went about doing good” can be a lighthouse to the lost. There is a difference between a life padded by scripture and a life formed by scripture.

Re:Verse passage – 2 Peter 3:8-9 (day three)

The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you…

Patience gets viewed through the lens of speed. In that sense, the definition becomes “waiting for the slow person who can’t keep up.” But it has nothing to do with the pace of life, and everything to do with knowing who people are and giving them space to live accordingly. Patience recognizes when certain things – fear, anger, destructive behavior, failure – are not the person. Patience looks on a person and sees deeply, through the shortcomings, weaknesses, and frailty to fathom who this person is at the core, at the place of creation in the image of God. Patience locks in on that true being and will not move on until that being emerges. God does this with you.

Re:Verse passage – 2 Peter 3:1-7 (day three)

Mockers will come with their mocking.

The Lord has not exempted himself from your pain. Wherever you are reviled, wherever you are regarded as a pariah, wherever you are rejected, wherever you are made a laughingstock, wherever you are vilified for your devotion to Christ, he himself bears the insults with you. He who was despised and rejected submits himself yet again to the slings and arrows right beside you. Peter knew this firsthand. You will not go under alone. Jesus and his followers will all go down together. And then, you will rise.

Re:Verse passage – 2 Peter 2:17-22 (day three)

…the last state has become worse for them than the first.

Few things visit wreckage upon a soul more catastrophically than religion. (And to say that religion is not needed, only Jesus is needed, is to make enemies of two that are not enemies. Religion rightly experienced is that necessary involvement of persons of faith in a common life with one another. Jesus lived within a religion; his disciples dare not eschew it.) When religion is power, when religion is guilt, when religion is self-hatred, when religion is perfectionism, when religion is exclusivity, when religion is suspicion, when religion is contempt, when religion is judgmentalism, when religion is litmus test, when it is any of these things rather than a community wearing Jesus’s easy yoke and carrying his light burden together, it will destroy the person who would have otherwise come alive.

Re:Verse passage – 2 Peter 2:10-16 (day three)

“Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble…”

Peter speaks of people who have become numb to their feelings. Consider: trembling is the body’s response to danger detected by the nervous system. In such a case, the body is feeling and signaling the gravity of the situation. A person can over time shut down and numb that experience of the nervous system for a variety of reasons – sometimes because fear seems alien and threatening, and other things like riches or power or position can offer a distraction and an anesthetic to fear. But if a person becomes numb to feelings, he or she will try increasingly extreme behaviors in order just to feel something, anything – up to and including destructive and deceptive behavior. People who can’t feel revulsion in the presence of evil will burn themselves and others in their attempt to feel something.

Re:Verse passage – 2 Peter 2:4-9 (day three)

if he rescued…then the Lord knows how to rescue…

Peter references the reporting of God’s actions in scripture in order to provide a basis for his claim of God’s continued historical action. Peter’s argument would not have had much strength if he had said, “If a team of elite troops sworn to protect their people knows how to rescue them from an enemy, then God knows how to rescue people from temptation.” A team of special military operatives comes nowhere near God’s faithfulness and abilities. God can only be compared to God. Of course, if one doesn’t believe that God exists, then the point is moot. In such a case, one has nothing to appeal to for ultimate power and goodness and hope other than the created order. If that’s all there is, then no higher purpose exists. Humanity needs more.

Re:Verse passage – 2 Peter 2:1-3 (day three)

There will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them…

Whatever system denies that the created physical realm is good; whatever system denies that the human being is very good; whatever system that, like the world, oppresses women and calls it the natural order; whatever system leads one to believe that doubt must be repressed instead of vigorously investigated; whatever system supports and furthers injustice in the name of the law; whatever system seeks favor in the eyes of the power structures of this world – that system is a destructive heresy. That heresy’s power arises from the fact that it’s so very hard to see.

Re:Verse passage – 2 Peter 1:16-21 (day three)

…until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts…

Dietrich Bonhoeffer used to talk about “religionless Christianity.” What did he mean by that? Concepts employed by theologians often leave room for debate. But this particular phrase almost certainly envisions a world in which Christ’s presence has so totally influenced and formed the lives of his disciples that the forms of religion are no longer necessary; the systems of governance and commerce and societal interaction shall exude justice and compassion and humility and service. For now, we experience these world systems as an extension of the individual will to power over others, leading to marginalization and poverty and war. But there is coming a time when religion will no longer be necessary, when faith shall be sight, when the morning star arises within. Peter foresaw that it must be so.