Smooth Talkers and Unstable Women

Backwoods Belief

Don’t be naive. There are difficult times ahead. As the end approaches, people are going to be self-absorbed, money-hungry, self-promoting, stuck-up, profane, contemptuous of parents, crude, coarse, dog-eat-dog, unbending, slanderers, impulsively wild, savage, cynical, treacherous, ruthless, bloated windbags, addicted to lust, and allergic to God. They’ll make a show of religion, but behind the scenes they’re animals. Stay clear of these people.

These are the kind of people who smooth-talk themselves into the homes of unstable and needy women and take advantage of them; women who, depressed by their sinfulness, take up with every new religious fad that calls itself “truth.” They get exploited every time and never really learn. These men are like those old Egyptian frauds Jannes and Jambres, who challenged Moses. They were rejects from the faith, twisted in their thinking, defying truth itself. But nothing will come of these latest impostors. Everyone will see through them, just as people saw through that Egyptian hoax.

Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of 2 Timothy 3:1-9 is pretty great. On this episode we're talking about how Paul's caution to Timothy explains our cultural moment as we look at the feminine version of The Made to Order Man failure.

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Mentioned in the Episode (and must-read, despite Roberts' later compromises): A Crisis of Discourse - Part 2: A Problem of Gender by Alastair Roberts