godliness

"3 If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness,4 he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions,5 and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain."

I did a search on my blog just to make sure I hadn't posted on this idea of godliness here before. I know I've run across it a few times in my Bible class days and maybe also in a youth group or two. Apparently though, it has never made it into here. The first time I looked it up I was a bit surprised. When I had heard the world godliness before, I had always assumed it meant "good like God". So I simply read it as a synonym of holiness or goodness or any other of the Bible words that simply mean "good". This fits in well with the the type of faith I grew up in. That type of faith had only 2 spiritual decisions. First: Pray this prayer. Second: Be good. It was a really simple faith and a terrible system. I didn't understand the prayer, and I couldn't always be good. But that's a rant I know I've covered before so I won't go there in this space. As a smart all-knowing Bible teacher I looked up this word godliness in a concordance just hoping to find something a little different to make a test question out of in a couple weeks. It'd probably just say "goodness" I thought, but hey, you never know. Here's what I found:

1) reverence, respect

2) piety towards God, godliness

Pretty wild if you really think about it. For me and my assumptions about it, it had always been a word that was all about ACTIONS. Yet respect and reverence are not actions, they are ATTITUDES. This changes everything. To be godly is not at its core to DO anything. To be Godly is to view God in a reverent, respectful, awe-filled way. It can be assumed that such an attitude will in fact dramatically alter and even direct one's actions, yet it is not a command to act in a certain way, it is a command to view God as... well... God. In a christian culture obsessed with image and perception and appearance, the truth of whether one is truly "godly' can be seen and known clearly only by God himself. 

With this understanding of godliness, I now have to go back into the context and read it that way. I think I'm just going to write it out that way again:

"3 If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with reverence and respect toward God,4 he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions,5 and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that reverence and respect toward God is a means of gain."

If you don't truly know God, if you haven't experienced his love and forgiveness and mercy and strength and peace and hope and all that goes with knowing him, then there's no way you can understand what those who really know God that way know. You see the excitement and the joy of those who are serving and you want a piece of that, but you never submit to God. You seek to get that in your own strength. You are seeking after God because you want to gain something. I remember some speaker in a book or video asking the question "do we want God, or just his stuff?" Now that I write that I'm fairly certain it was Francis Chan. This is the motivation of those who are associated with Christianity but don't know Christ. That is where all the fighting comes from. Isn't it clear from Paul's choice of words that these guys don't really know God? He calls them people who are "depraved in mind and deprived of the truth". That cannot be a believer. There's no way. This is tough news.

The passage doesn't even end there. There's more:

"6 Now there is great gain in reverence and respect toward God with contentment,7 for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.8 But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs."

All I ever hear from this passage is contentment, contentment, contentment, but this is as much or more about godliness. First you must greatly revere and respect God, then ... be content. Serve that ideal first, and let the chips lie where they fall. Love God, act in ways that represent that attitude, and then be content with what God places before you. This is no easy thing to even comprehend, let alone do. I am writing this today and in about half and hour I will leave to go for a job interview. Will I get it or won't I? Do I respect and revere God? Will whether I get the job or not affect either my level of godliness or contentment? I'd like to answer with a hearty no, but it's hard to say. This blog is a history of my spiritual discoveries, not necessarily my spiritual victories or accomplishments. Today may be a window into the truth of it.