1 Timothy 1:6-7. "Certain persons by swerving from these have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make assertions."

When Paul warns against swerving from "these" things, the things to which he is referring are "love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith." (1Timothy 1:5). Paul sees too many followers failing to make these things the foundation of their lives, and thus swerving away from good teaching and worthy pursuits. They "occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies which produce speculations" (1Timothy 1:4), leading them to teach "different doctrine." (1Timothy 1:3).

Paul is describing the rabbit holes we can go down and the danger, to mix metaphors, of focusing on the trees and forgetting about the forest. Our faith really is so deep and rich, there are many aspects of it that can fill us with wonder and awe, and that is a beautiful thing! But if we devote ourselves to one or two aspects of these mysteries without being firmly grounded in love, good conscience, and sincere faith, we can become a danger to ourselves and others, coming to believe our own interpretation of things, and teaching that as doctrine. We can become hyper-focused on the mythology or genealogies, as Paul describes, or, to expand his list, the art, the liturgical structure, the mystics, the demonic, or any of the vast wealth of treasures and teachings of our faith. We can begin to be led astray, even by these very true, real, interesting or beautiful things. We can forget about love and how to treat our neighbor. We can forget that God holds all things together in harmony, and start thinking that our task is to interpret, teach, and preserve the thing with which we have become overly enamored. We can start layering our own interpretation on these things, thinking we have become "expert" without listening for the voice of God in them, or remembering that only God fully understands them and their place in His Creation.

This is a danger into which I have found myself drawn at times and realized I needed to take a step back. I needed to stop reading and thinking about certain things in which I had great interest for a while, and re-center myself in the big picture. When I do that, peace always returns and I realize that my hyper-interest in the thing I was pursuing had thrown me off balance. I had been swerving, and wandering into vain discussions. It is always so good to shake those things off and climb out of the rabbit hole to see the forest.