The Christian Household as Act of Resistance and Beautiful Alternative: A Series of Reflections on Titus 2 (Part 1)

Reflections at 50

Mark A. Garcia

As I write these words, in three days (d.v.) I will reach my fiftieth birthday.

Always prone to nostalgia, and similarly vulnerable to melancholia, reaching such a milestone makes me pensive. I know I’m not alone in this, of course. In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, the character Clarissa Dalloway reflects on having just turned fifty, which prompts an exploration of how time seems to shrink, how one starts to feel increasingly invisible, even unknown. I have found myself wondering about these very things in recent months. When I stare in the mirror these days, George Orwell’s famous quip comes to mind: “At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.” Orwell’s likely intent is also rather sobering, since he suggests that by age fifty, a person’s true inner life, struggles, and character are somewhat permanently etched into their physical–at least facial–appearance. Of course, one could also share Walt Whitman’s more positive take on this. He saw “midlife” as a period of peak maturity, wisdom, and connection to the real world.

I have found myself in recent weeks reflecting often on what I’ve done so far in the years I have been given, on what I have not done, my errors and mistakes as well as apparent successes by God’s mercy and grace, what I might do with what years remain for me, and what the Church and the world might be like for my children and their children. The month of May especially drove me to reflect on the latter. My four children are all adults now, or very nearly, and within the space of about a week, I married off my firstborn daughter and watched three of the four all graduate from various academic institutions. Two of them are daughters, and two of them are sons, all entering the world as catechized young adults. That will make you think, and I have been thinking.

Something else has me thinking about turning fifty, namely, what this age meant in the days of the apostles. I’ve been reflecting again on Titus 2, and I realize I am now in the category of the “older men” he tells Titus to instruct (Titus 2:2). The term he uses here is used only two other times in the New Testament (in Luke 1:18, for Zechariah; and in Philemon 9, for Paul himself). Lifespans were much shorter then than they are now. Susan Treggiari suggests that the consensus among modern scholars regards life expectancy in the Roman Empire as falling somewhere in the range of 25-30 years, and other scholars argue that Paul has in mind here the age of about forty or fifty. Jerome D. Quinn, in his Anchor Bible commentary, divides the “older” and the “younger” at fifty years of age.

For these reasons, I read Paul’s words to Titus with a fresh interest in what he says, particularly to this class of “older men” to which it appears I now belong. Paul tells Titus that older men must be taught to be temperate, worthy of respect (respectable, honorable), self-controlled, and sound in faith, love, and endurance. I approach Paul’s words as a helpful diagnostic for my life up to age 50, and I invite other men in my general age bracket to join me in doing so: have I been (and am I now) temperate in speech and behavior in the way that Paul says must be true for Christian men? Have I been (and am I now) respected with cause rather than only because I want (or perhaps demand) to be respected? Am I self-controlled, or a devouring consumer of others or of things? Am I sound (or “healthy”) in my understanding and teaching of the Faith and in the exercise of personal faith? How about in love? Is my love well-ordered and sound or healthy, rather than impure or distorted? What about my endurance? Am I appropriately hardy, able to endure mistreatment and hardship, or am I unduly sensitive, and do I try always to avoid the inevitable difficulties of doing the right thing? Is my faith fickle, subject to popularity, feeling appreciated, being recognized, or relative ease?

Given, too, Paul’s expectation that older men should serve as exemplary sources of wisdom for younger men, what would I want to say to those who are a bit behind me on the conveyor belt of life? As a teacher and mentor of seminarians and other thoughtful Christians, I take great joy in working with those in their twenties and thirties. My mind now wanders to them. And I want to give them Titus 2. As I choose what to say, I share May Sarton’s (Journal of a Solitude) perspective on entering one’s fifties: she framed it as a liberating stage of life in which, the quest for peer approval now mostly set aside, one can speak and write with utter, absolute honesty.

The War for the Christian Household

I begin with another reason I am drawn to Titus 2: the Apostle here provides a focal point for what kinds of things a mature Christian will recognize as central to piety and faithfulness. In particular, I note that the background to what Paul says in this chapter to (in order) older men, older women, younger women, and younger men, followed by Titus himself and then slaves (Titus 2:1-10) is found in Titus 1:11, where he says that the enemies of the Church (who are tragically within the Church rather than outside her) are “upsetting whole families.” In Titus (as elsewhere, I suggest), the Christian household is a target of interest for those whose aim it is to destroy Christ’s Church. In chapter 2, Paul tells Titus that part of his responsibility as a minister is to teach, train, encourage, and–importantly–practically exhibit the truths of the Gospel to men and women. As we will see, Paul’s concern is not merely the household as such but the Church’s relationship to those same enemies and the world at large.

How this works out in Paul’s teaching will occupy us throughout this series of posts. Those who are familiar with Greystone’s “Order of Reality” work will appreciate this way of putting it: Much like the Church’s relationship to time in her sabbatarianism, and her relationship to space in her church architecture, domestic spaces, and theology of the body in general, are in both contexts acts of resistance and the commendation of a life-bearing alternative, so here with respect to the vocational realities attaching to men and women within the Christian household. Put simply, the Christian household is an act of resistance against the patterns of thought and life that characterize these nominally Christian enemies, and a beautiful alternative to those patterns, making the exceptional ways of faithful men and women a key part of how the Spirit is advancing the glories of the King’s true kingdom.

Framing the matter in this way may be somewhat unsettling for some, I admit, since the notion of a Christian household is fiercely contested territory these days, and it is also often the favorite topic of certain characters and groups who are horribly destructive of true Christian faith and life. We might be concerned, that is to say, that speaking so strongly of the importance of the Christian household falls right into their sinister hands. There is good cause for that concern, and Paul’s words to Titus in fact bring them into view (as we will discover). It is true that we must take great care here, but not in such a way that would evade either the force of the proper meaning of what Paul is teaching here or the importance he gives it.

I once stated that the worst thing that happened to genuinely abused Christian women was that abuse became a popular topic culturally. My reason for saying so is tied to a phenomenon in contemporary conservative church culture, including confessional churches. When a concern like this becomes a favorite topic in the wider culture (think of the MeToo movement, as an example), it seems to hit a nerve among many conservative Christians, which is expressed in a reactionary rejection of that concern. With the wider culture making much of abuse, when a Christian woman asks for help with an abusive marriage, she may be dismissed as exaggerating in a way that simply reflects the cultural mood. That same cultural mood may in fact create the conditions for some Christian women to truly exaggerate their troubles, which is its own legitimate problem. But the fact remains that if the surrounding culture had not decided abuse was a great societal ill requiring decisive action, counter-culture-minded conservative Christians serving in church leadership would likely not be as suspicious of the claims and requests for help from genuinely abused women. Ironically, given how many Christians think about what faithfulness looks like in relation to the world at large, the fact that the topic enjoys public interest works against them, not for them.

Similarly, I suggest that the worst thing that happened to our effort to recover and commend a biblical view of the importance of being a Christian man, of being unashamed of being a man, of true masculine virtue and strength, of the biblical teaching of a man’s responsibilities and privileges as head of his wife and protector of his home, and so on, was that “toxic masculinity” became a thing culturally. In reaction to an undeniable cultural erasure of men and masculinity, some in the visible Church have trumpeted a recovery of putative manliness and manly authority in militaristic, misogynistic, and coarse ways that most Christians recognize to be not only mistaken but dangerous and destructive. But for young men vulnerable to a model that seems to make their identity valuable, meaningful, important, even central, and on apparently Christian terms no less–and to save the Church too!–this can be strongly attractive. To the extent older men fail to teach and attend to younger men, this is only more and more likely the case, with the result that women are increasingly likely to regard attention to Christian masculinity as inherently suspect. It’s a most tragic state of affairs. These days, affirming the special importance of Christian manhood and of the Christian household may be confused with the Christian testosteronism many have lamented and encountered. This evil has turned many away from biblical teaching on the wonders of being a man or woman and, as a result, driven them to see undifferentiated egalitarianisms of various kinds as the only real alternative to evangelical misogyny.

It’s much harder these days, in other words, to do the very thing Paul tells Titus to do: teach men how to be faithful Christian men, and teach women how to be faithful Christian women, and for the very reason Paul mentions: some enemies of the truth are “upsetting whole families.” This is what the errors of our time do: they upset, even destroy the Christian household. What does Paul mean by this?

Upsetting Whole Families

Since 1:11 is the backdrop to the focused areas of concern in chapter 2, we ought to begin with select, brief observations about those who are “upsetting whole families.” The words of v. 11 belong to a complete thought found in vv. 7-11. Titus, as an example of what will be expected of any faithful episkopos, must be above reproach, humble rather than arrogant, not quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain. He must be hospitable instead, and a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined (vv. 7-8). He must also hold firm to the received Word so that he can instruct and rebuke (v. 9). Who must Titus instruct and rebuke? We will learn some of this in Titus 2. But for now, Paul says that he must instruct and rebuke, “For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. They must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach” (vv. 10-11). We observe:

They are insubordinate. Paul used this word for “insubordinate” back in v. 6 to describe what a minister must not be, and now he tells Titus that this is what these enemies of the Church are. We learn that there are “many.” They display the opposite character of what Paul has said a minister must be like. “Insubordinate,” according to BDAG, has to do with “refusing to submit to authority, undisciplined, disobedient, rebellious.” They are rebellious, “flouting the official rule of the church” (Guthrie), “unwilling to be subject to God and his law” (Knight). It is one thing to disagree humbly, and in a dignified and respectful way, with a church judgment rendered by fallible men. But it is quite another thing entirely to be insubordinate, rebellious, obstinate, or pugnacious, even flouting that disagreement.

For Christian young men who are somewhat attracted to groups of this sort in our own time, there are sober notes sounded here. In our day, it’s not uncommon for the enemies of the Church’s homes to claim it is the Christian home they are in fact here to save, to reject the disciplinary judgments of the Church regarding their teaching or conduct or both, and then to reject the Church’s judgments by further acts of rebellion, sometimes including (particularly in America) starting another communion that will faithfully reflect their own image and likeness. The narcissism is real, but so is the irony: these men often trumpet the importance of wives obeying their husbands “in everything” (interpreted as exhaustive) because Christ has placed husbands over wives, but when their own authorities in the Church render judgments, they do not submit in everything (or possibly anything) but regard themselves as persecuted and their exit in a state of unrepentance as valid. Paul says such insubordination belongs to the enemies of the Christian home.

They are empty talkers and deceivers. “Empty talkers” is a term also used in a different form in v. 6. Such men are disobedient to the teaching of Christ in such a way that it leads others into disobedience. They do a lot of talking, to be sure, but it is vapid, empty, vacuous. And yet these men are influential among those who are vulnerable to their mode and message. As deceivers, they mislead, which means they claim to be following and defending the way and Word of Christ and undoubtedly can point to chapter, verse, and favorite figures from church history or contemporary church media, making their message intriguing and appealing for some young men on the front end, but on the back end there is only death. It is characteristic of heresy that it looks and sounds a great deal like the truth, and that it purports to rectify an error or at least an imbalance in what is conventionally taught or confessed. It would not be dangerous to the church if it were not at least somewhat persuasive as a counterfeit. But beneath the Christian shell is a poisonous reality. Paul says this is true “especially of the circumcision party” in Titus’s day, suggesting that these are Jews within the context of the visible Church who are teaching that their views on (in context) Jewish myths and genealogies, sex, marriage, and food are the hills for real Christians to die on as a matter of allegiance to Christ. Presumably, those who disagree are not real Christians, not serious enough, not devoted enough, and guilty of capitulating to the wider Gentile world by refusing these markers of genuine piety. It is sadly not difficult to find analogues to this kind of reasoning in our time.

Paul is unsparing. These troublemakers must be silenced (literally, “whom it is necessary to silence”). This responsibility falls to Titus and other church leaders who must act judicially to extinguish these enemies from the church’s midst. It belongs to their care for families, to their being faithful (if you will, proper biblical masculine) men who protect the people of God. Through such faithful leaders, the Good Shepherd protects his sheep from wolves; the true Groom protects his beloved Bride. For Paul, these false teachings are not mere adiaphora or matters of relative theological indifference. They are “upsetting whole families.” How? In 1 Timothy 4, Paul records that false teachers were prohibiting marriage and the eating of certain foods. It is possible, especially in light of 1 Corinthians 7, that some or all of these teachers had pressed their case successfully enough with others in the church who had tender consciences that their teaching had led to the termination, without good cause, of existing marriages. This teaching was continuing to destroy families, and under the guise of real, genuine, serious piety.

Imagine in our day if a pious Christian woman is told erroneously by a church leader or social media voice that a “real” Christian man will look like or do x, y, and z, even though those features are not in fact consistent with Scriptural requirements or teaching. Now that woman looks at her husband and sees that he does not quite fit the profile. She wants to be godly. She wants to be faithful. She wants her husband to be godly and faithful, too. She believes this false teacher, and is now vulnerable to becoming resentful of her husband, a problem that can move quickly and quietly from bad to worse, ending perhaps with the tragic and unnecessary dissolution of the marriage. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul is pastorally getting ahead of this very problem: newly converted Christians found themselves, by definition, in a mixed marriage. Their spouses are not (yet?) converted. Should they divorce their husbands in order to be faithful, holy, and undefiled? Does not ongoing union with their unbelieving spouse pollute them? They ask Paul what he thinks about this problem. Putting to rest the false teaching of others, Paul explains why the answer is “no.” In our time, false teaching about a “real” Christian man can sow the seed of horrible calamity from house to house, all the while sounding like a concern for genuine devotion.

It is therefore difficult to exaggerate the importance of church leaders (and other influential voices in the church) attending to the tenderness of a Christian’s conscience with passages like this in mind. In my experience, the vast majority of Christians sitting in the pews of Reformed churches are there for real reasons: they sincerely love God, believe in Christ, and want to be faithful in every way God would have them to be. They only want to be taught what that way is. They only want faithful guidance. And they will trust their leaders to provide that. Into that precious situation come destructive teachers like these, with whom Paul has no patience precisely because he loves Christ’s sheep. The “shameful gain” they seek may not be money (but it also may be money). It may instead be the feeling of belonging to a community of like-minded men, having social media followers, or easing their own consciences regarding how they treat their own wives or children. It may be none of these. It may be all of these. It may instead be rooted in the gain of compensation for a massive hole in their lives, having missed out on having a good father or mother (or any father at all) in their own early years. Because that is the situation more and more young men find themselves in these days, we must not discount that possibility. We ought instead to work deliberately to come alongside young men early on, when they can still be reached and led away from these destructive teachers. While we cannot be certain what the “gain” is in each man’s heart, we can be sure that it is illicit.

In v. 12, Paul goes on to say that these enemies of the Church are Cretan-like. This is another ironic turn in Paul’s words to Titus. In the first century, Cretans were known for their gross immorality, deceit, and gluttony. Epimenides, a 6th-century BC Cretan speaking about other Cretans, is here quoted to that effect: “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” (While the work is no longer extant, Epimenides is named as the author by Clement of Alexandria, Chrysostom, and Jerome.) The irony is that these false teachers are ostensibly pushing Christians in the direction of their forms of counterfeit piety and theology by arguing that embracing these forms is the way for the Church to be distinguished courageously from the pagan world, including presumably the Cretan world. But Paul says these false teachers are behaving like Cretans, and stereotypically so. We should take note, then, when the rhetoric and behavior of those in our social media feeds and fellowship contexts look and sound more like the toxic masculinist world of men like Andrew and Tristan Tate than the strong humility, valorous self-control, and hospitable mode of life that Paul requires of Christ’s servants and people. They claim they are concerned for the church’s faithfulness over against the world, but in fact they sound like that world, act like that world, and thus belong to that world. For Paul, while a well-ordered life in speech and behavior is not a guarantee of sound theology, a disordered life in speech and behavior places even the best theologian among the wolves, not the sheep. Our way of life, especially our speech, must be eloquent for the truth in mode and not only in content, for from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

Onward, to Titus 2

These remarks on Titus 1 set us up to hear how Paul will instruct Titus regarding men and women in Titus 2. Are we ready to hear them? At fifty, one is supposed to start feeling the shrinking of time, the approach of the Day of judgment, and to gain a sense of proportion as well as urgency about the truly important things. Titus 2 pertains to some of those really important things, but what the Apostle says there can just as easily fund greater destruction as it can foster wonderful fruitfulness and joy. The history of interpretation, and the contemporary use of these words in certain contexts, bears that out. The difference between destruction and fruitfulness is not in the words but in the hearer, in us. How might Scripture read us, as we endeavor to read Scripture? Only the humility Paul requires of Titus will make a life-giving reading possible. As we gaze humbly into the life-giving Christ of Scripture, the Spirit will transform us from the core, inside out, until we one day “have the face we deserve,” the face of one fitted to live forever in the presence of the glorified Savior.

At work in Paul’s words, then, will be not only fascinating features of Scriptural teaching regarding gender, singleness and marriage, the home, and the dynamics of Christian fellowship, but also, and most fundamentally, Paul’s firm conviction regarding the difference the Spirit makes in the lives of God’s people. Next, our Lord willing, we begin our reflections on Titus 2. I hope that young men and women, and all of us in general, will hear in Paul’s words to Titus that there is a better way than the two paths that enjoy so much of the public attention in our time–a better way that is God-glorifying, Church-strengthening, and glorious.