Irreligious myths

As we listen to today’s first reading (2 Timothy 4:1-8), we hear much that resonates with our experience of the world today.

For the time will come
when people will not tolerate sound doctrine
but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity,
will accumulate teachers
and will stop listening to the truth
and will be diverted to myths.

That last word might strike some as a little out of sync with today’s world, if we think only of religious myths. After all, it seems impossible that anyone today may turn away from Christianity to the worship of Zeus.

While it does happen that people may fall away from Christ and embrace a non-Christian religion (may God have mercy on them), there are also strong temptations in today’s world for people to fall away from Christ and embrace irreligious myths: from existential hedonism to the unscientific tenets of scientism to the subtly illogical beliefs of atheism.

Irreligion, false religion, and heresy have always afflicted the world, but there has never been a time when the world has more needed the word of God and the saving truth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Thus, what Saint Paul wrote in today’s first reading, he writes to us:

I charge you in the presence of God
and of Christ Jesus,
who will judge the living and the dead,
and by his appearing and his kingly power:
proclaim the word;
be persistent
whether it is convenient or inconvenient;
convince,
reprimand,
encourage
through all patience and teaching.