KEEPING THE TRADITION – The challenge to put legs to prayer and actions to faith has plagued nearly all religious groups—including Christianity. As the NIB states,

In his famous "I Have a Dream" speech (1963), Martin Luther King, Jr. asked his government to live up to its economic promises, which had by then defaulted for many of its citizens. He challenged the United States to act on its commitments to all of its people, to allow its deeds to match its ideals. The same concern to match one’s words with one’s deeds was a serious consideration in the first century CE. In that age charlatans—not sages—acted in ways that did not match their words or thoughts. Accordingly, the writer of 2 Thessalonians addresses not only the correct convictions or words that his church should espouse, but the correct actions as well. [1]

connections

A study on the American work ethic was recently completed that reported that a major difference between the generations—the Boomers, Busters, and Gen Xers—is that the oldest of the three generations, the Boomers, work longer hours and take much less vacation time or sick days. The study also indicated that the younger workforce spend more time with their kids—taking them to soccer, basketball, concerts, and games—than any previous generation has.

How would you describe your ethic of work? If you could change anything over the past decade of your own work, what would you change?

gambits

"Stay away from any Christian who __________." How exactly do we fill in the blank? What is the behavior pattern that the writer is warning about? If translators are any indicator of syntactic precision, then the answer is as not as obvious as we may think: "Idleness" (NLT/NRSV) "a lazy life" (TEV), "idle habits" (NEB), "undisciplined" (Phillips), "unruly" (NASB), "walk disorderly" (KJV), "people who loaf around" (CEV).

Ataktos, (the verb form, ataktein, means literally, "to be out of order" [2]) our word in question, is used by Thucydides (Histories 3.108) in the 5th century BCE and Philo in the first century ACE, with the idea of "insufficient inclination to disciplined work in a disorderly or an irresponsible manner." [3] The word also appears in Xenophon (Cyropaedia 7.26)and Demosthenes of military indiscipline or desertion, and then in various writers of undisciplined or irregular conduct in general. [4]

Calvin on 2 Thessalonians 3:6—"Those who lived disorderly among the Thessalonians are chastised in such a way as to be invited to repentance." [5]

Bill Bennett on Discipline—"We learn to order our souls the same way we learn to do math problems or play baseball well—through practice . . . We can enlist the aid of trainers, therapists, support groups, step programs, and other strategies, but in the end, it’s practice that brings self-control." [6]

This lesson should be heard within the sounds of 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12, where the writer of a presumably earlier letter describes the received paradosis, "tradition," that had been faithfully handed on to this community:

This should be your ambition: to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we commanded you before. As a result, people who are not Christians will respect the way you live, and you will not need to depend on others to meet your financial needs.

Such actions—inactivity, laziness, being out of order, stepping over the boundary of the tradition, and sloth—stands opposite the apostle’s personal example lived out among them at an earlier time. Such ataktos does not help the larger community and so the writer appeals to "the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ" (verse 6).

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[1] The New Interpreter’s Bible XI (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), page 768.
[2] Word Biblical Commentary 45, F.F. Bruce, commentator (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1982), page 205.
[3] Walter Bauer and F.W. Gingrich and Frederick Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament & Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1957, rvd. 1979 ), page 119.
[4] Word Biblical Commentary 45, page 205.
[5] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV.i.26.
[6] William J. Bennett, The Book of Virtues (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), page 22.