Sometimes one wonders why God decided to come down to us a human person when He could have simply decreed our salvation from heaven. One of the common answers is that He wanted to show us how much He loved us by being like us in all things. But another important reason is that He wanted to be our teacher in the person of Jesus. Most of the public life of Jesus was devoted to teaching. This was necessary to guide people on the path of true religion and correct approaches to life.
It is a fact that false teachers constitute one of the great menaces of the Church and society in every age. False religious teachings come in various guises. They can emanate from ignorance, as the first reading of today points out or from hypocritical tendencies, which Jesus condemns in the Gospel of the day. In whichever guise, these false teachings harm the psychological lives of individuals and communities, and they destroy the peace and unity of any community or society, while spreading false information and misleading ideas about life and religion.
False Teachings about the End of the World
The first reading from 2 Thessalonians 2 exposes the misleading ideas about the second coming of Christ, which was spreading like wild fire within the new Christian community in Thessalonica. At the heart of the erroneous teaching was the view that the second coming of Christ was about to take place, specifically in the lifetime of the hearers. Consequently, a good number of the Christians stopped working and remained idle while waiting for the end. Some even claimed that this was a prophetic revelation or the teaching of Paul himself. In fact, the entire letter was written, primarily, to clear the raging misunderstandings and to tell the Christian community that this was not the original message that Paul and his coworkers preached.
In the part of the letter read in today’s liturgy, Paul admonishes the Christians not to be shaken or be alarmed by any message coming from a “spirit” or attributed to him, Paul, regarding the imminent coming of the Lord. He urges them to stand firm on the sound teachings and authentic traditions they had originally received. It is ironical that every age produces its own false teachings and teachers regarding the end of times. Many religious movements in the present day society are based on false teachings and misleading ideas about the second coming of Christ and the end of the world.
Menace of Hypocritical Teachings
Jesus is known to have always upbraided many religious teachers of his day because of their hypocritical teachings, as they either taught what they themselves were incapable of practicing or falsely postured themselves to win praises and accolades from people. In today’s Gospel from Matthew 23, he singles out the Scribes and Pharisees and calls then hypocrites and blind guides. He accuses them of externalism, inconsistency and corruption.
They like to put emphasis on the externals and neglect the weightier matters of the law as justice, mercy and righteousness. They busy themselves with the externals of the cup while inside they are filled with filth, greed, extortion, self-indulgence and many other forms of corruption. This remains, equally, an indictment on many religious teachers of our contemporary society.
Growing in Sound Teachings about the End of Times
It is incumbent on every true believer to remain rooted on the authentic teachings of the faith. Much of the confusion in the Christian life, today, can be traced to ignorance, emanating from false teachings of the faith or lack of interest to learn the truths of the faith. As regards the end of times, no one knows the time. What is clear, as the Psalmist of today says, is that God comes to rule the earth with justice (Psalm 96). We look up to the era of perfect justice to be brought about by the second coming of Christ. His coming will bring about the definitive transformation our universe into a new heaven and a new earth. The Christian life is a gradual journey into this new era, which is the Kingdom of God. It is realized through the continuous practice of love, mercy, justice and righteousness. Every believer is summoned to be ever ready with good works as no one knows when the end will be. This means living a convinced Christian life and following the authentic traditions of the Church at all times.
