springs without water

Boy, Peter really didn’t like false teachers. Anyone who argued a different way of life than following Jesus was a bad person in Peter’s book.

Look at the names he has for them just in 2 Peter 2: followers of corrupt desires, bold and arrogant, blasphemers, unreasoning animals (born only to be caught and destroyed), blots and blemishes, experts in greed, an accursed brood, springs without water, mists driven by a storm, slaves of depravity, dogs that return to their own vomit, sows that return to wallowing in the mud.

Is Peter too hard on people? Because we’re more tolerant than that. We call them unfortunate and misguided. We say they’re just followers of a different lifestyle, making different choices than us. We say they have illnesses or disadvantages. But we would never use harsh terms like the ones Peter used.

I can put a name to drunks and partiers, to idolaters and adulterers, to atheists and syncretists and greedy people and power-mongers who live their lives unchallenged as part of our churches and communities. It’s probably OK that we don’t challenge unbelievers in the community, but I wonder if we shouldn’t be bolder calling out sin in the church.

Because isn’t that a courageous form of love? Peter not only is right, he points out in verses 4 through 10 of 2 Peter 2 how God has judged unrighteousness in the past. Do we really not love each other enough to want to save each other?

Because Peter isn’t saying sinners aren’t worthy of love. He says God’s wayward people are so precious that anyone who lures them away from God through bad teaching or bad examples is an especially heinous person. Peter is against all those voices in our culture who, like the woman Folly in Proverbs 9, lure others to join them in their sin.

Here’s the thing I’m wrestling with this morning, though: when we as the church wink at sin in the church, we may not be encouraging it but we aren’t discouraging it either. So when have we crossed the line and become springs without water ourselves?