EPISODE SIX: LATCHING ON

…you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

What should a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own possession look like? Well, let’s just say that a lifetime is needed to cover all THAT subject. In his letter to the scattered saints, Peter mentions a few items. I assume that, because he mentions them, they were somehow applicable in a specific way to the people he was addressing.

1 Peter 2:1-3

Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.

There are so many things that shouldn’t define a follower of Jesus. Why are these five significant to Peter in this letter?

One huge clue is that little word “therefore.” In our Bibles, chapters and verses divide the messages in these letters. Those didn’t exist in the original document. These verses are connected to what came before them.

Peter has just instructed his readers to love their brothers and sisters in Christ deeply and genuinely because of Christ and the teachings of the Word, which endure forever. So, we can say that these five items are the ones Peter has chosen to unwrap as important to the theme of loving deeply and genuinely.

He states these negatively.

Malice: spitefulness, spite, malevolence, maliciousness, animosity, hostility, ill will, ill feeling, hatred, hate, bitterness, venom, vindictiveness, vengefulness, revenge, malignity, malignance, evil intentions, animus, enmity, devilment, devilry, bad blood, backbiting, gall, rancor, spleen, grudge; informal bitchiness, cattiness; literary maleficence. ANTONYMS benevolence.

Deceit: deception, deceitfulness, duplicity, double-dealing, fraud, fraudulence, cheating, trickery, duping, hoodwinking, chicanery, underhandedness, deviousness, slyness, cunning, craftiness, craft, wiliness, artfulness, guile, dissimulation, dissembling, bluff, bluffing, lying, pretense, artifice, treachery. ANTONYMS honesty.

2 sham, fraud, pretense, imposture, hoax, fake, misrepresentation, blind, wile, artifice, Trojan horse; trick, stratagem, device, ruse, scheme, dodge, maneuver, contrivance, machination, deception, subterfuge, cheat, swindle, confidence trick.

Hypocrisy: sanctimoniousness, sanctimony, pietism, piousness, affected piety, affected superiority, false virtue, cant, humbug, pretense, posturing, speciousness, empty talk; insincerity, falseness, falsity, deceptiveness, deceit, deceitfulness, deception, dishonesty, dissembling, dissimulation, duplicity, imposture, two-facedness, double-dealing. ANTONYMS honesty; sincerity.

Envy: jealousy, enviousness, covetousness, desire; resentment, resentfulness, bitterness, discontent, spite; the green-eyed monster. ANTONYMS generosity.

Slander: defamation, defamation of character, character assassination, misrepresentation of character, calumny, libel; scandalmongering, malicious gossip, muckraking, smear campaigning, disparagement, denigration, derogation, aspersions, vilification, traducement, obloquy, backbiting, scurrility; lie, slur, smear, untruth, false accusation, false report, insult, slight. ANTONYMS acclamation, praise.

Take note of what these five things become when these believers love deeply and genuinely:

Malice becomes benevolence

Deceit becomes honesty (I would wittle that down to truthfulness here)

Hypocrisy becomes honesty and sincerity

Envy becomes generosity

Slander becomes acclamation and praise

The simplest way to distil all of this is: Deep and genuine love for others is about not acting like the rest of the world. If we were to examine all the synonyms for these five words, we could all come up with ways these are expressed in the world we live in. Examples are endless, and we can even find at least some of them in our own lives!

But Peter doesn’t linger (or wallow) on these five words or on how they might be defined or expressed. He knows his readers will understand. He moves on and tells them to do the same.

What he writes next is close to one of the astonishingly common references in the Bible to “mother-things.” Peter now tells his readers to approach their spiritual growth as a baby might seek a mother’s milk. I can hardly imagine big, gruff, rough Peter using this imagery, but Peter has grown spiritually too since those early days as a disciple of Jesus.

I was unaware of how many times God and the things of God are referenced as having maternal qualities. This is not the place to go through all of those, but there are numerous ones in the Old Testament. Here are a few: Isaiah 66:13, Isaiah 49:15, Isaiah 42:14, Deuteronomy 32:18, Hosea 11:3, 4.

A friend of mine and I are reading Scripture together daily, and we are currently going through Isaiah as I write this post—specifically Isaiah 42:14. I just have to share it with you.

“I have kept silent from ages past; I have remained quiet and restrained. But now I will groan like a woman in labor; I will at once gasp and pant.” Of all the images God could have used to describe how He feels, He chooses one women will relate to. That is validating on many levels. This understanding was part of what drew religious women in past centuries to focus on the suffering Saviour in their meditations. They felt that Jesus understood them and that they could understand Him in His sufferings on the cross in ways men couldn’t.

The picture most of us are familiar with appears in Matthew 23:37 (Luke 13:24), where Jesus expresses His desire to gather His people as a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings.

I have never been a mother, so I can’t testify to this, but I understand that breastfeeding is the most emotionally intense and fulfilling experience of motherhood. I can hardly imagine Peter fully understanding the meaning of his reference, but most women would. I almost hesitate to say this, lest it be misunderstood, but God delights in His children “latching on” to Him and to His Word just as a mother delights in giving her milk to her child.

I’m sure there are many scientific explanations for what a baby feels when latching on to its mother. Among them is the calmness that comes from skin-to-skin touch. A baby’s heart rate and breathing steady. The child relaxes because he or she is satisfied. The child bonds, stress levels drop, and he or she feels safe and secure, gaining trust.

These believers were relatively new to the faith. Their circumstances sometimes made it difficult for them to gather and grow together in a stable community. They didn’t have the Bible app on their laptops or even a copy of the Old Testament that they could pull out of their backpacks. The New Testament hadn’t been compiled yet! But Peter encourages them to “crave” God and His word as a baby would crave his mother’s pure milk.

One of the things that attracted and encouraged the women of the Scriptures and those who followed them would have been these kinds of references. In a patriarchal society, even when that society might have been less rigid and confining, as sometimes it was, references that connected a woman's instincts and character traits to God would have been hugely validating. While men might refuse to show those traits in themselves, considering them weaknesses, and denigrate women for those supposed “weaknesses” that come with being female, maternal instincts are part of God’s character and His qualities. God truly understands women because who they are is a reflection of Him. Personally, I think that was one reason God made the first woman, not out of the dust of the earth but out of man. It should be a reminder that the (wo)man, or the “she-male,” as it would be translated, is a part of him just as he is a part of her. To denigrate her is to diminish himself.

And since we are doing definitions in this episode:

Crave: long for, yearn for, hunger for, thirst for, dream of, aspire to, set one's heart on, have as one's aim, have as one's goal, seek, be bent on; desire, want, hope for, hanker after, wish for; sigh for, pant for, pine for; covet; informal have a yen for, itch for, be dying for; archaic be athirst for, be desirous of.

I am reminded of the psalmist’s words: As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul longs after You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, the living God. (Psalm 42:1, 2a)

The imagery continues. Peter uses the word “taste” in his final phrase here. They have only tasted this “milk” since coming to Christ. There is so much more. And he encourages them to grasp it with all that they have.

My takeaway here might have been one shared by those early believers. There are always circumstances in our lives that keep us from “latching on” as fully as we might like. I accept that there are often excuses for not spending more time in the Word, time in searching the Scriptures. But there are also legitimate demands of life that curb our ability to do what our souls thirst to do. That is one reason I admire the Beguines, the anchoresses, and even the contemplative orders of nuns who were able to dedicate time and space in their lives to worship and meditation on God. The believers to whom Peter was writing had reasons they were unable to spend time in the Word. Their lives, often on the run and keeping a low profile, were complicated. Still, Peter calls them, and us, to find a way, even an imperfect one, to satisfy the desire that only time with Him can address.

The LORD is good, and just a taste is not enough.