Some have rejected [faith and conscience]
and so have shipwrecked their faith.
—1 Timothy 1:19
Paul sent Timothy to Ephesus to mop up a mess made by scoundrels who had wormed their way into the church.
The apostle named their vices: “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Tm 3:2–4)—eighteen character flaws of these disrupters.
The culprit was love gone wrong: lovers of self, lovers of money, lovers of pleasure.
Anyone whose life is mirrored in this catalog is in a spiritual danger zone. View it as a checklist of areas that may need attention. Check the boxes.
If love of pleasure trumps love of God,
life is on the wrong track.