Hobby | Wayfarer

But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.
1 Timothy 6:11 (NIV)

I was a bit surprised by the invitation. The person who asked me for coffee was on the periphery of my circles of influence, but they seemed pleasant and I looked forward to getting to know them better. We settled in at the coffee shop and began the normal get-to-know-you small talk.

It didn’t take long to for me to realize that this conversation was not going as I expected. I had not been invited to coffee to deepen a relationship. I’d been invited to a sales presentation. I’d been blind-sided. The individual was obviously passionate about what they were selling. They were knowledgable about the product, they had the pitch down, and they were intent on making the sale.

I didn’t buy. I didn’t hear from the person again. They weren’t pursuing a relationship with me. They were pursuing a sale and the money it would put in their pocket. It didn’t give me a good feeling.

Along my life journey I’ve observed that you can learn a lot about a person by what they pursue. I spend a lot of time in one-on-one networking meetings online. An icebreaker question I get asked all the time is “What are your hobbies? What do you love to do?”

I kind of hate that question because I don’t have a simple go-to answer. I don’t play golf or a sports related activity. We don’t camp. I don’t have a sprawling collection of postage stamps or baseball cards. I have things with which I dabble, but I wouldn’t call them regular go-to hobbies. The honest answer is that what Wendy and I really love more than anything else is sitting down to a nice meal, with good wine, and great people who like to talk about life for hours. Our friend Matthew calls it “conversations with Life.” That’s our hobby and we engage in it regularly.

In today’s closing chapter, Paul concludes his letter to young Timothy by describing the things he should flee (greed, love of money, love of things, discontentment, unprofitable arguments and controversies) and the things he should pursue (righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness).

As I meditated on this in the quiet this morning, it struck me that what we actively pursue in life isn’t a trivial matter. It’s important for me to think about what it is I am actively pursuing in life, and what it says about me, my heart, and my desires. Paul’s point is that we make conscious choices all the time regarding the things we flee and avoid the things we pursue. If I remain ignorant of what those things are and default to being led by my natural human appetites I tend to end up in not so great places.

I just know that I never want to blind-side anyone. If we ever sit down for a cup of coffee or a pint, I will be pursuing a deeper relationship.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

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Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.
1 John 5:21 (NIV)

I find it interesting how writers choose to end their letters. Some people regularly add postscripts with little bullets of thought that they realized they forgot to add in the body of the message. Some have a stock sign-off like “Sincerely yours” that might be personalized to the writers own preference. I’ve always been partial to one of Paul’s favorite phrases “Grace and peace” or the chipper sounding Brit salute “Cheers!”

So it was that John’s sign-off on the letter to followers of Jesus leapt off the page at me this morning when I got to the end of the chapter. For the entire letter John has been confronting the false teaching of gnostic contemporaries who spreading all sorts of contrary and false ideas about who Jesus was. Today’s final chapter was no different. The gnostics of John’s day that Jesus was just a man upon whom Messiah descended at his baptism but then departed before death. Therefore, the gnostics claimed, Jesus death was nothing special (and there was no resurrection). John writes that both the water of Jesus baptism and the blood of His death were essential in the spiritual sense.

Then John gets to the end of his letter and simply says, “Dear children, keep yourself from idols.”

Where did that come from?! He hasn’t written anything about idols or idolatry in the entire letter. It’s essentially a postscript thrown in without the “P.S.” But postscripts are typically important thoughts to writers. They want to get it in. They don’t want us to forget it. It’s worthy of sneaking in as a final thought.

So I’ve been thinking about idolatry this morning in the quiet. I find that it’s easy for me as a 21st century western human to dismiss the notion of idolatry. It conjures up images of ancient pagan statues and religious artifacts from art and natural history museums. I have no real connection. When I come upon an admonition to “keep from idols” I pass over it without giving it serious thought. But I looked up the definition of idolatry this morning:

idolatry [ahy-dol–uh-tree] n. excessive or blind adoration, reverence, devotion, etc.

Excessive and blind adoration, reverence, and devotion can be given to almost anything. It’s not confined to ancient statuary. Along my life journey I’ve encountered individuals who appeared to offer more reverence to the church building and/or sanctuary than to the God it was built to honor. As I meditated this morning on the things to which we offer “excessive devotion” and it wasn’t hard to think of things…

I’ve known men who are so devoted to a sport like golf that they pretty much ignore their job, their marriage and their family. It’s all they think about, talk about, and desire to do.

Just this week a person told me about a poor teen dancer in the family whose father was so blindly devoted to himself that he couldn’t show up on time nor practice the father-daughter dance for her recital. Instead he embarrassed her by simply standing there next to her refusing to participate in the actual dance.

I recently had a fellow believer who admitted that they were so obsessed with cross fit that it had begun to be all they thought about to the detriment of other areas of their life.

These are all forms of idolatry according to the definition of the term. Any hobby, interest, or activity and slip across the from a healthy life-giving piece of life into an obsessive, blind devotion that begins to have negative effect on my life and relationships. John’s postscript bullet is important. If I believe all the right stuff with my brain but my life is blindly obsessed or devoted to the wrong thing, then my adherence to some statement of belief is meaningless.

This morning, I’m taking stock of my own interests and devotions. Do they bring life and goodness to me and my relationships, or do they distract me from critical life priorities?