Reminding Titus to not be “wild at heart.”

Titus 3.1-7.

Back in the 1990s there were two popular fads among American men. There was Promise Keepers, an organization started by football coach Bill McCartney as a way to encourage Christian men to be faithful husbands, good fathers, and to fight racism. And there was the Mythopoetic Men’s Movement, founded by poet Robert Bly to help men “restore” what they felt were their “deep masculine” traits and urges—abandoned by our egalitarian society, rejected as toxic masculinity. (And to be fair, a lot of the things men call our “masculine urges” are really works of the flesh, repackaged to be socially acceptable, but the only people that fools are fleshly men.)

Bly’s movement is pagan; his proof texts come from Greek and Norse mythology, and European folk tales, which he claims are ancient descriptions of how men really are. But author John Eldredge wrote a bestselling book, Wild at Heart, which repackaged the principles of Bly’s movement with Christian labels, and borrowed out-of-context scriptures as its proof texts. Thus Eldredge encourages Christian men to be wild, virile pagans—but, y’know, not capital-P pagan; just virile warriors who are tough guys like we see in Mel Gibson and Clint Eastwood and John Wayne movies. Be fighters; God made us fighters. Forget all this “turn the other cheek” crap; what soft, domesticated she-male taught us that?

I’m still a big fan of Promise Keepers. Not at all the Wild at Heart bushwa, which is total depravity disguised as Christianity. The reason it resonates with so many Christian men is ’cause it encourages us to be boldly, unrepentantly, fleshly. To defy Jesus’s teachings to be kind and patient and love one another; instead fight everything we don’t like, ’cause God meant us to be wild donkeys, in hostility with all our brothers. Ge 16.12 That God’s happy with this.

It’s a devilish spin on the scriptures, and the very same behavior Paul warns Titus against in today’s passage.

Titus 3.1-3 KWL

1 Remind the people about rulers, about powers—

to be submissive, to listen to authorities,

to be ready for every good work.

2 To never slander. To not be “tough guys.” Appropriate.

Showing every humility to every person.

3 For at one point we were just as stupid—

unyielding, wayward, slaving for desires and various pleasures,

spending our lives in evil and envy,

hated and hating each other.

Y’notice it’s not just the people of Crete, whom Titus is ministering to, whom Paul is writing about. In 3.3, Paul points out both he and Titus used to be that way.

Because these traits aren’t “deep masculine” characteristics we need to rediscover and revive. They’re basic human depravity. Before we followed Christ, they were our fleshly human nature. We’re supposed to reject them in favor of the new, godly human nature the Holy Spirit is trying to develop us; in other words his good fruit. But if we won’t resist the temptation to indulge in our “lost wildness” and savagery again… well, we’ve made ourselves unfit to live in God’s kingdom.

Good luck telling the “wild at heart” bullies any such thing.

Submitting to authorities. Not constantly fighting them.

Titus 3.1 tends to get pulled out of context on a frequent basis by people who wanna convince Christians to obey them. Really, they do this with any verse which talks about submission to authorities—and of course they’re the authorities who wanna make people obey.

So I remind you: ὑποτάσσεσθαι/ypotássesthe, “to be submissive,” does not mean to obey. Submission, in the scriptures, is about taking other people into consideration before we act. We’re meant to live in harmony with our spouses and children and fellow Christians, and that means submitting to one another Ep 5.21 instead of unilaterally deciding for everyone. Or for ourselves, and screw what anyone else thinks.

We’re meant to live in harmony with the people of our church, with church leaders, with civic leaders, even with government leaders. We’re meant to take their needs and desires under advisement, and not antagonize them unnecessarily. If the government says, “There’s a pandemic going on, and we think skipping church services for a few weeks might help stop its spread,” we’re not to respond with the knee-jerk, “Screw you; I wanna go to church; you’re infringing upon my liberties!”

Whereas your average Christian jerk not only doesn’t care about other people’s considerations, especially if they think they’re pagan: Sometimes we intentionally go out of our way to bug them. Just to show off our own independence. Just to rub it in their faces.

Is this behavior in any way Christlike? Well, many a Christian jerk will claim it absolutely is. Didn’t Jesus defiantly cure people on Sabbath? Sometimes right in the middle of synagogue? Just to bug self-righteous Pharisees who said he shouldn’t?

True, Jesus knew it’d bug them. But Jesus had regularly taught them, both before and after that point, their interpretation of Sabbath was wrong. You can absolutely help the needy on Sabbath; we might take the day off, but need doesn’t. Assuming Sunday is your Sabbath: Hospitals don’t need to close on Sunday. Police don’t need to ignore crime on Sunday. Shelters don’t need to refuse victims on Sunday. Same as if your Sabbath is Saturday, or Friday, or any other day of the week: If it’s your day off, but someone’s in dire need, you don’t prioritize your day off!

And if the Pharisees were right, the Holy Spirit shouldn’t empower any miracles on Sabbath!—yet he did. And still does. Jesus’s motives are never about being a self-righteous dick. Ours are. But of course we project our unrighteous motives upon Jesus, and claim we’re all the same. We’re not. At all.

The proper Christian attitude is to not automatically presume we know better than the people in charge. True, we might definitely know better. I’m thinking specifically about the infectious disease experts (many of whom are outspoken Christians!) who advised the American president during the 2020 pandemic, whom the president kept ignoring because he cared more about what the voters wanted—and didn’t care that his dismissive attitude was killing off his voters.

We can all think of examples of stupid, corrupt politicians. That’s even more true of the Roman Empire in which Paul and Titus lived. The Roman senate wasn’t elected, y’know; it was like the United Kingdom’s House of Lords, in which you get to run the country because you’re a noble, not because the people chose you; certainly not because you’re qualified. The Romans likewise chose leaders and governors because they were family, or because they were connected, or because they gave ’em big huge bribes. Paul himself spent extra time in prison because he never bothered to bribe the Judean governor. Ac 24.26

But sometimes, sometimes, politicians are actually thinking of their country. Some are actually trying to be helpful. They see something that’ll benefit us all, and push for that. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, as the old cliché goes.

Too many Christians take their bad attitudes about government officials, and have those very same bad attitudes about church leaders. Even though far more church leaders than not are legitimately trying to follow Jesus. But every time they do something we don’t like, our cynical knee-jerk response is to suspect they’re also doing something selfish and corrupt—and if we’ve convinced ourselves Jesus thinks exactly the same way we do, we’ll presume Jesus doesn’t like it either. We’ll presume they’re trying to flex their power, or they’re mixed up in some legalism, or this is just a smokescreen to cover up some secret sins.

“The reason Pastor’s been preaching about adultery so much is because that’s her particular temptation. Deep down she wants to cheat on her husband, and she’s slamming the church about it all the harder because she’s really preaching to herself.” And let’s be honest: Often there’s something legitimately to that. I probably denounce the things which tempt me much harder than I do the things which don’t. But is she wrong to denounce adultery? Not at all. Now, she’d be wrong to randomly accuse people of it, or claim it’s happening everywhere despite a lack of evidence. Witch-hunts are always inappropriate. Warning us about sins we’re unknowingly in real danger of falling into?—that’s actually good leadership.

And let’s not be afraid to say sins are sins. Certain Christians actually criticize Paul and Jesus for calling out certain sins: “Wait, I thought God’s all about love and grace.” He is love, and definitely does grace. Thing is, part of being gracious is to warn us when we’ve gone wrong. Actions have consequences, and contrary to popular belief, consequences don’t always come from God! He wants us to stop sinning before the natural consequences kick in—“Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.” Jn 5.14 KJV Our authorities, often the corrupt ones, usually the Christian ones, are trying to mitigate chaos. (Some are certainly trying to sow chaos, and God expects us to use our heads, and the Holy Spirit’s guidance, to know which are which.) Help them mitigate chaos. Stop sinning. Discourage those who keep sinning.

But don’t take the legalist extreme of outright trying to ban sin. Too many self-described Christians try to gain power so they can pass laws against sin—specifically their least favorite sins (or their favorites, as a smokescreen)—and this isn’t how we fight sin. People have to change their hearts and minds, not their laws. People have to voluntarily pursue goodness and rightness. Otherwise it’s just more hypocrisy, and we only have the illusion of righteousness—an illusion which shatters the second there’s no more law enforcement.

“Remember when we were that way?”

Verse 3 isn’t really insight into Paul’s background, because we know used to be that way; Luke described him that way in Acts before he met Jesus. Paul was an angry young man, who thought it was his duty to be angry at heresy, and destroy heretics. And plenty of Christians are the same way. Lookit all the Christian apologists who wanna debate Jehovah’s Witnesses and atheists and Hindus—and if it were legal they’d even drive them out of the country, just like the medieval Spanish did with the Jews and Muslims.

Paul described a bit of the fleshly “fruit” to Titus:

• That unyielding attitude (Greek ἀπειθεῖς/apeitheís, “not persuadable”) which refuses to admit we might be wrong, or—even when we know we’re wrong—to confess it, or obey. Just out of pure bilious principle.
• That wayward attitude (πλανώμενοι/planómeni, “roamers”) which make it easy to get sidetracked towards irrelevant things instead of sticking to the real issues.
• That hedonistic attitude (δουλεύοντες ἐπιθυμίαις καὶ ἡδοναῖς ποικίλαις/dulévontes epithymíes ke idonés pikíles, “slaves to lusts and motley pleasures”) which hypocrites try our darnedest to keep secret. Our fights are either to disguise the fact we indulge in the very same things, or to make others pay attention to our “noble battles” instead of our indulgences: “My obsession with having frequent kinky sex with my wife isn’t the real problem; it’s the queers!”
• That malicious attitude (ἐν κακίᾳ καὶ φθόνῳ διάγοντες/en kakía ke fthóno diáyontes, “on evil and envy, spending days”) in which we spend way too much time plotting how we’re gonna confound and antagonize our enemies. Way too much time plotting dirty tricks, or things that’d just hurt people—just for the evil fun of it.
• That envious attitude, in which we’re annoyed and jealous about how much freedom and power our enemies have, and covet it.
• That antagonistic attitude (στυγητοί, μισοῦντες ἀλλήλους/styití, misúntes allílus, “hateful, hating one another”) which keep us not just attacking our enemies, but everyone. Especially those who don’t fight our enemies as hard as we do, or actually love our enemies—for “if you’re not for me you’re against me,” a quote based on something Jesus said Mt 12.30 which haters love to pull out of context. Hence they’re usually at war with every other Christian, just like a cult.

We don’t know Titus’s backstory, so we don’t know the ways he indulged in this kind of behavior. Maybe Paul encountered him as an angry young man, saw himself in that, and encouraged him to turn to Jesus like he had. Maybe Paul encountered him after Titus met Jesus, and Titus shared his conversion story, and Paul responded, “Dude, I was just like that!” Maybe one or the other or both of them slipped up, fell back into some of that old fleshly behavior, and encouraged each other to stop it and follow Jesus. God knows. But we should all encourage one another to stop it and follow Jesus.

And not use the godless excuse, “But God made me that way. Made all men that way. We’re meant to be that way.” No he didn’t; no we aren’t. We’re to be like Jesus: Not wild and unruly, but civilized, self-controlled children of God and citizens of New Jerusalem.