January 1, 2012 – 1 Timothy 5-6

In reading about the rules for presbyters (priest) my thoughts went immediately to the sex abuse scandal. I don’t know if that is a bad thing or not, but that is what I thought about. First I thought about the rule in reprimanding publicly who do sin. The biggest issue is that these acts occurred, which is awful. However, what made them worse is the covering up that was attempted in many of the cases. Men that were known to be doing these things were shoved into different settings, in worst cases, into settings where they might commit more harm. If, as the readings say, the sinners were brought to the public, would we still be talking about it. If at the first confirmation that acts occurred, the priest is brought to light, action is taken to stop it, aid given to the victims, and healing started, would it have been the scandal that it is. We won’t know because so much was covered up that the healing will take that much longer.

The second thing I thought about is the part was two or three witnesses should be required. There are many times when allegations may be thrown out there and because of the past, they are automatically thought to be true. People sometimes to have the wrong motivation and go about making allegations that are not true only to hurt people. We claim to be a country of being innocent until proven guilty, but this seems less and less the case (and not only when dealing with allegations like this but with politicians, celebrities, basically anything in the media.) As soon as something hits the news, most people believe it because the news is telling it to them. They do not rely on any source other than the talking head, who may not be relying on anything more than another talking head, which could be getting it from somebody who is not reliable or making it up. The reading holds both sides accountable. We are to bring the bad out into the public, but we are also to make sure that the bad is accurate.

I was also thinking about slaves. The Bible talks a lot about slavery and how to treat your slaves. Logically this implies that the Bible does not forbid slavery. You could use this to argue that slavery is ok, and I would imagine that argument was made during the 1800’s when this country fought over that issue. But the slavery that took place in the Bible seems different than what we had in our country. In the Bible there seems to be slavery either from conquered enemies or if someone became too indebted. In the slavery that we are familiar with, it was the enslavement of an entire race of people, on an entire continent for the most part. Not one that we defeated either. We bought and sold slaves from lands that other nations conquered. Not only this, but we determined that slaves were not really human, a sub-class of person. They did not have the same rights nor the ability to gain those rights. It seems to be two entirely different understandings of slavery. I don’t think the Bible in anyway supports the notion of slavery that we as a nation employed.