Titus 2:
11-15
11 For the grace
of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, 12 training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present
age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, 13while we wait for the blessed hope
and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. 14He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all
iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good
deeds. 15 Declare these things; exhort
and reprove with all authority. Let no one look down on you.
When we
think of how the scriptures applies to us today the temptation is to allegorise
and over symbolise the scripture to make it fit the dominant world views of our
present age. This has long been a problem in reading the bible. In our day and
age, Christians in post Christendom Scotland, do not accept slavery as an
acceptable set of social relationships either economically or socially. At one
time however, Christendom of which Scotland was part did accept slavery.
Christendom were those countries where nominal Christians formed a majority and
had their position of numerical, social dominance and cultural forms supported
and enforced by the state. The bible was often used to justify oppression. One of the most terrible scenes in the film ‘12
years a Slave’ is the scene where a slave owner is reading the bible and
enforcing a perverse religious observance based on the supposed authority of
what he is reading. At the time, various biblical passages were cited by those
who were pro slavery to support their position. This now lasts as an example of
how the bible can be made to say anything you like if you simply rip words and
narrative out of the socio-political setting of the text. This is only one
example of how the bible has been used to oppress; we could easily cite others.
However, when we take the bible seriously within its own historical context and
discern the background of the text, the meaning of the words, metaphors and
their grammatical use; when we hear the text with the ears of the various
social actors within the text and when we read the whole story we experience
emancipation from dominant world views. What is revealed when we read in this way is a liberation story
that is counter cultural, inclusive and empowering in its course of progressive
revelation of who God is and who He has created us to be. That’s why we spend
so much time in the text of scripture; we need to understand the story, all of
it, in the ‘there and then’ to have any hope of standing in front of the text
in the ‘here and now’ and knowing how to apply it.
The
early Christian (Titus) in our text was obviously under the impression that
God’s love and mercy may not be directed to all of humanity. Paul instructs him
otherwise. Paul is teaching that the disciple of Jesus may be trapped in the
social context of their period, but that is no excuse for not recognising that
they no longer live under the same values, attitudes and beliefs of the
dominant culture. Disciples are to be
living in a state of anticipation and hope that although liberation is not yet
complete the times are changing and ultimate freedom is nearer day by day. Those who know the story of Jesus and accept
it, live God honouring and neighbour valuing lives because they recognise
that’s what Jesus gave His life for.
This is no inferior way of living out the story; it’s the only Jesus
honouring way to resist oppression and violence directed towards human beings.
It’s time to take the liberation narrative of scripture seriously and find
ourselves within the text and so discover who God created us to be.
May we all repent and make amends for justifying our prejudiced and self serving ways of life demonstrated in the oppression of other human beings in our own time and space and justified through
the abuse of scripture.
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