“But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.”
Jude 10

It’s “The Lord of the Flies.”

If you only take a moment and look at the world around us today, you’ll see it too. We live in a time of unnamed wars – wars on poverty, wars on terrorism, wars on ideologies – and these wars have left generations unhinged from social order. We see organizations rise to bring about social justice, only to descend into chaos, hostility, and absolute barbarism. Our streets are filled with riots, protests, fires, and looting; all to cast off a system of old oppressive power in favor of new oppressive power. The conch, the symbol of society and order, is shattered, and the hunting fires have been lit.

Is this not also the description that Jude gives of the false teachers that crept into the Church, twisting the grace of God into sensuality, rejecting the Lord and Master, Jesus Christ? Here in Jude 10, Jude says that they blaspheme – that is, slander or abuse – what they don’t understand. They don’t understand the powers of spiritual forces (the glorious ones), and so they make them out to be nothing, presuming to speak blasphemous words against them. They don’t understand the holiness, the righteousness, the judgment of God, and so they discount God altogether.  They are like those described in Psalm 10:11 who say, “God has forgotten, he has hidden his face, he will never see it.” They don’t understand, so they cast it off.

But what does comes naturally, instinctively, what they understand like unreasoning animals, the base and sensual desires, this will lead them to destruction. Jude says they had turned God’s grace – His unmerited kindness towards sinners – into a license for sensuality. They encouraged the pursuit of pleasure over piety. It was the first century version of “Your Best Life Now.” And it was as destructive then as it is today.

It’s Church version of “The Lord of the Flies.” 

And it still happens today. Where is Jude 10 still alive? We see it in the rejection of the faith that has been entrusted to us because it seems out-dated, irrelevant, or traditional all to encourage the pursuit of what “feels right.” We see it in the substitution of the authority of God’s Word with whatever the current or popular thinking might be. We see it in the casting off of sound doctrine for an “experience of the divine” (which is nothing more than subjective sensuality). We see it in the trading of God’s approval for the world’s acceptance.  We see it in the abandoning of reverence for a casual familiarity.

Jude’s letter is full of warnings about the false teachers who would lead us away from genuine faith in Jesus Christ.  Let us beware of those teachers, but also of the tendency of our own hearts, that we might hold fast to Christ our Lord and Master and contend for the faith.

SDG