Love the Truth

The coming of the lawless one is apparent in the working of Satan,

who uses all power, signs, lying wonders and every kind of wicked deception 

for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.

For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion, leading them to believe what is false,

so that all who have not believed the truth, but took pleasure in unrighteousness will be condemned.

-2 Thessalonians 2: 9-12 (NRSV)

One of the problems that the progressive forms of Christianity have is that we openly admit that we privilege some parts of the Scripture over others.  I'm not just talking about wanting to ignore the parts of Leviticus that outlaw bacon and tattoos either, or even brazenly skipping over the lists of who begot whom in Numbers.  I'm talking about more subtle rejection of certain parts of the Word, like 2 Thessalonians or the books of Jude and Philemon.  Whether you take the Red Letter Christian approach (transparency: I like that one) that focuses on the words of Jesus, often printed in red letters in many English Bibles. Or you try to mostly ignore what Paul says because you can't stand that cranky dude, we all filter the Scripture. Those of us that preach from the Revised Common Lectionary, even though that's generally a good discipline, are subject to missing some stuff here and there.

So, for the purposes of this blog and for my own personal growth, I like to revert to a habit that dates back to my pre-seminary days and just sort of open the Bible and start poking around in corners that I haven't seen in a while.  The two letters to the Thessalonians are not among my most visited places, partially because while 1 Thessalonians is among the earliest letters of Paul to the churches he founded, 2 Thessalonians has some disturbing marks of perhaps being forged to look Paul-ish, and it definitely reads a lot like something a televangelist would love to get on about whilst claiming that his or her ministry is all about loving the truth and then going on to name all the agents of Satan from Planned Parenthood to the Democratic National Committee who have obviously been overcome by that "powerful delusion."

2 Thessalonians does pick up perhaps a little too directly on the apocalyptic tone of what we label as chapter 5 of 1 Thessalonians, but does not sufficiently bend it back to a life of love and communion to really seem authentically like Paul, because while he could certainly get persnickety with his flock at times, he always did try to remind them of things like he does in 1 Thessalonians 5: 15-18:

See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Modernity brought us out of the age of superstition and taught us rationality. We were taught to question things methodically and seek answers through a scientific method.  Post-modernity has taught us to apply suspicion, perhaps rightly so, to many of the suppositions of faith, and the claims that are made by many to be keepers of the truth.  But tucked away in a letter that has been largely left in the dusty closet of the canon, I read that we are not supposed to be keepers of the truth, but lovers of the truth.
Loving the truth is the key to salvation.  Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." If we love Jesus we must love the truth.  There are, in fact, many places where the disciples seem to want to be keepers of the truth, and Jesus has to correct them and tell them that they should not hide that light under a basket, but rather let it shine, let it shine, let it shine (sorry I just broke out into song, which is hard to do in writing).
You may be guessing that I'm angling a critique at the more conservative or even fundamentalist streams of Christian faith, and yes, they are guilty of being too concerned with righteousness not truth, or they may actually be too wrapped up in trying to shield the truth from supposed enemies.  They may even often assume that more progressive followers of Jesus are in fact the ones that are under the delusion, believing what is false.  I can almost hear a late night Gospel preacher on some cable network saying as much.
But it is a fact that progressives tend to get a little too wrapped up in the sort of ducking and weaving, called proof-texting that they so strongly critique in their evangelical foils.  Except instead of trying to find "clobber passages" they try to deconstruct the "clobber passages" that fly against them.
My contention is that neither sort of behavior is consistent with "loving the truth."  In fact, the sort of acrimony that grows in the Body of Christ is a cancer that is the work of the Accuser (The Satan, from Hebrew mythology).  It's just the sort of trick that the Adversary really likes, it is the twisting nature of sin, to take something that seems like holiness and righteousness and turn it into a sour, galling fit of anger and anxiety.
What we need to understand is that our Accuser thrives on our refusal to love the truth.
I sometimes get a feeling like I need to protect Michele, because I'm her husband, I want to stand up for her in some way shape or form, I want to make her life easier.  A lot of the time though, when I really get underneath all of that,  I realize I am not actually doing it out of love, I'm doing it because I'm angry, or because my sense of injustice has been triggered.  I want things to be right and fair, but I do not always completely understand her values.  She cares a lot more about people's feelings and long term relationships, and she doesn't really think that telling someone to @#$% off would be all that helpful, nor would it be consistent with who she is.
My impulse seems like love, but it is actually control, and I think that flies in the face of how Jesus taught us love should work. The truth is the truth, just like Michele is Michele, it doesn't change because I want it to.  The truth that has been included in the Canon of Scripture is the truth whether it is the red letters, the prophecy of Habakkuk, or the letter to Jude.  If it challenges your grip on what you think you know that is just doing the job it's supposed to do.  You need to learn to love it, liberal, conservative and everywhere in between: love the truth.