04.04 | Hunting Rabbits

2 Corinthians 6:14-7:16

‘Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?’

2 Corinthians 6:14

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There’s a Chinese proverb that says, ‘The hunter who chases two rabbits catches neither.’

It’s a great proverb because it gives an image with which we have easy resonance. It presents us with a scatterbrain hunter, torn between two options, frantic and ineffective in his task due to basic indecision. It hits home to our experience, knowing that often the greatest obstacles that we face are not circumstantial ones or competency ones, but just plain old indecision. Too many things clamour for our attention. Too many tasks compete for priority. Our effectiveness decreases as our distractions increase. We’re chasing too many rabbits.

Paul uses a strange word at the beginning of today’s reading. It’s usually translated as unequally yoked. In the Greek, it’s a single word, combining the word for different (hetero) and yoked (zugos). The image is agricultural, where commonly two animals would share the same wooden yoke to pull a plough. Good practice was to have two of the same kind of animal, equalising the pulling power and direction of the plough.¹ Bad practice was to partner two different animals, where the different speed and strength of each animal would ultimately diffuse their power and sap their strength.

Different metaphor, same idea.

Simplicity leads to efficacy.

Paul, in other words, wants the Corinthians to be about one thing.

Pause a moment. We could get really unbiblical here.

Before we start ghosting all our unbelieving friends and running for the nearest monastery, we have to bring this together with other Scriptures.

We bring this alongside the Jesus who described His followers as being like salt and light. Salt is not meant to stay in the salt cellar; it’s meant to be spread through the whole dish. Light is meant to shine into the darkness; it’s not meant to be put, as Jesus says, under a bowl.² Jesus prays, not that His disciples would be taken out of the world, but that they may be in it.³ Elsewhere, Paul tells the Philippian church that they are to live their lives in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.⁴

This is a vision a stunningly countercultural simplicity mixed with a beautifully healing vocation, in the midst of a noisy and complex world.

One more metaphor. Paul points to the temple. More specifically, he points to the inner sanctuary, the Most Holy Place—the very place on earth where God’s presence was said to dwell.⁵

You, he says, stacking up no less than six consecutive Old Testament quotes, are now this temple.

A temple was about one thing.

Worship. Devotion. Being utterly focused towards the single ends of God that His goodness may break out as the only solution for the world’s pain.

So what do we do with this?

Paul tells us.

Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement.

Or, as the Message translation puts it, ‘let’s make a clean break with everything that defiles or distracts us’.

Let’s hunt just one rabbit.

Check your influences. What pulls us away from purity of devotion? What things that we watch, read, listen to? What habits, environments, or relationships that have undue influence upon us?

Purify. Simplify. Take our eyes off every rabbit bar one. He is inviting us to break off every yoke except for the yoke that binds us to Jesus.

Because the presence of God dwells among the devoted.

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Reflect:

Let your thoughts run over your influences.

What way do they lead you? Which ones lead towards Him? Which lead away?

Is there any practice you need to stop?

Is there any practice you need to take up?

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Pray:

Father in heaven,

I’m a little overwhelmed.

I cannot do this in one go.

The deeper I look, the more I see that my influences and ideas and values and thoughts

Pull me in a thousand directions.

And so, today,

I give you another little step.

To lay down a little more of those things,

That distract and exhaust and drain and corrupt,

And to pick up a little more of doing all things in your direction.

And Father,

In this humble devotion,

I welcome you to dwell in my life,

That your presence may overspill from me

Into the wounds of the world around me.

Spirit of God,

Find a resting place here.

In Jesus’ Name,

Amen

Old Testament: 

For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:

Joshua 4-6 | Psalm 44:1-8

1. The same word is used in Leviticus 19:19

2. Matthew 5:13-16

3. John 17:15-18

4. Philippians 2:15

5. The Greek has two words for temple: the hieron, which describes the general temple complex or building; and the naos, which describes the inner sanctuary, the Most Holy Place—the specific place where God was described as dwelling. Paul here uses naos: you are the inner sanctuary, the Most Holy Place.