Daily Devotional • December 29
Holy Innocents
A Reading from 2 John:1-13
1 The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth, and not only I but also all who know the truth, 2 because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever: 3 Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and fromJesus Christ, the Father’s Son, in truth and love.
4 I was overjoyed to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we have been commanded by the Father. 5 But now, dear lady, I ask you, not as though I were writing you a new commandment but one we have had from the beginning: let us love one another. 6 And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment just as you have heard it from the beginning—you must walk in it.
7 Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist! 8 Be on your guard, so that you do not lose what we have worked for but may receive a full reward. 9 Everyone who does not abide in the teaching of Christ, but goes beyond it, does not have God; whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. 10 If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive and welcome this person into your house, 11 for to welcome is to participate in the evil deeds of such a person.
12 Although I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink; instead, I hope to come to you and talk with you face to face, so that ourjoy may be complete. 13 The children of your elect sister send you their greetings.
Meditation
Epistemology begins with (and for me never got much further than) the statement that knowledge is justified—true belief. That is, you can’t know something that isn’t true. We have a lot of ways to get at truth: by scientific method, by compiling statistics, by appeal to witnesses, by sheer reason, by revelation. But if you think about it for only a moment, you’ll see that all of our methods are fallible. Science is always evolving as we learn new things; Benjamin Disraeli reminds us that statistics lie—a lot; witnesses are quite often mistaken and sometimes dishonest; our reason fails us (even St. Anselm’s famous ontological argument had to be all patched up just to make sense); personal revelation is apt to be delusion, and even general revelation is open to misinterpretation. Belief and justification are relatively simple to come by—but truth?
Yet St. John, in this epistle, uses the word “truth” in almost every line! We may be wise to approach the word with humility, but it’s foolish—and un-Christian—to think we can’t know what is true. First, because God made the world and made us in it and clearly meant for us to know things, or there would be no order to the universe and no Divine Revelation at all. And most importantly, because Jesus tells us he simply is the Truth, the rule through which all things were made. If you go back and read the lesson again, try substituting “Jesus,” for “truth”—it makes perfect sense.
Elizabeth Baumann is a seminary graduate, a priest’s wife, and the mother of two small daughters. A transplant from the West Coast, she now lives in “the middle of nowhere” in the Midwest with too many cats.
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for: