For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (the first week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.
As we continue our look at the Top 12 Blog Posts at Covered in His Dust, we’ll now look at my eleventh-most-viewed post of all time. This one happens to be titled “3 JOHN: Diotrephes,” which I wrote on September 29, 2016. Obviously, the post is about the third letter of John, and the big idea is the interaction of truth and love — two persistent elements of all three letters. You can read the post here.
In this series, as we look at each post, I want to ask three questions: why, what, and what else. Why do I think this post got so many views; why were others drawn to this post? What do I hope people found when they got here; what do I hope they heard? Finally, what else have I learned about this; what else would I say about these ideas?
WHY THIS POST?
To be honest, I’m a little surprised this post (and the next one we’ll look at) made the list. I’m assuming there were an awful lot of Bible teachers or students doing a study on 3 John and my Google-based blog jumped to the top of their search results. But I could be wrong. I’ve never ceased to be surprised at the posts that people resonate with and enjoy.
It could be that people found a post that talked about the preeminence of love and its importance — even in the midst of truth.
WHAT DO I HOPE THEY FOUND?
I think the last two paragraphs of the post emphasize what I hope readers took away:
The letter of 3 John always serves as a reminder to me of a couple realities. First, there have always been and always will be people who oppose the work of the gospel and our call to be people of love in the world. For whatever reason (and there are often many), there are those who stand opposed to work that would kiddush HaShem. But second, this letter reminds me, yet again, that the way of truth is not truth because some abstract, absolute truth exists. The way of truth is truth because it is the way of love.
I know it’s very popular to say that “truth without love isn’t truth and love without truth isn’t love.” That may be true, but the Bible does not teach this idea directly. Yet the idea is undeniably evident, especially in the writings of John, that love is the foundational element, and you will find truth within love. Love always has truth in it.
I hope people found a little bit of encouragement not to give up or grow weary in the way of love. The Theology Police and Truth Mongers can be a brutal bunch, making sure that our desire to love our neighbor as ourselves is held in check. Love is fine, they say, as long as we never compromise on the truth that comes first. But this isn’t what John teaches us, nor what Jesus called us to. We are to love. He commanded it, explained it, modeled it, and triumphed with it. May we never forget it.
I chuckle when I think of the last paragraph because of how my editors and I labored over the wording of the last two sentences. I still love the idea! People hold truth and love in perfect balance. “You can’t have one without the other,” they assert. But this isn’t what I see when I read teachings like 1, 2, and 3 John (or even Paul, for that matter). While it is entirely true that truth must have love in order to be true, I still believe the scandal is this teaching is that if you have love, you will always have at least some truth, because love is truth.
WHAT ELSE WOULD I SAY?
I want to touch on why I think this idea is so uncomfortable for us westerners. For Greek, western thinking, if I asked you where the power lied — in the truth or in the medium — we would say that the power lies in truth. Let me take the use of words as an example. Is the power in the words, or is the power in the truth the words are communicating? We would say the truth; the words are simply the medium, the conduit, the vehicle for the thing with the power. We have sayings in our culture, like “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” I mean, words are just words — they have no power.
And yet, two seconds of reflection proves that statement to be asinine. Words do hurt me. Words are more than just conduits — they are powerful. Easterners (particularly the people of the Bible) saw the question differently. They believed the power lies in the medium itself. They point to the creation of the world and they point out how God spoke the world into existence. Words — they insist — have incredible power. The vehicle matters more than the passenger. It’s not that truth doesn’t matter at all, it’s that truth means nothing if it’s not taken there through an empowered conduit.
This is begging to become a piece on the power of word (or Word), but I digress. The same point is in play here. Does the power lie in the truth or the love? Again, I think we find that the power lies in the conduit of that truth. In fact, just like the Word of God, the medium (love) can cover a multitude of sins (truth/misunderstanding). In a theological world that has been on a truth tirade since the dawn of postmodernity, I think the teachings from John couldn’t be more timely.
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