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How to Encourage Faith in Families (Titus 2:1-10)
by Norman and Ann Bales
All About Families

Part Four: "Family Lifestyles"

In previous installments, we took a careful look at the way language and attitudes affect our attempts to encourage faith development in our homes. Today we complete the study with a look at family lifestyles. We have chosen to develop our thoughts around the framework of Paul's instructions to Titus in Titus 2.

• Faith is encouraged when family members learn the fine art of loving. Much of Paul's material is devoted to the enrichment of family life. In verse 4 he advocated a family training program to be conducted by the older women. He wanted them to train the younger women to love their husbands and children. We have been greatly misled about the nature of love. We seem to think that love is something that suddenly strikes the heart of two unsuspecting people some night when they sit together on the porch swing basking in the moonlight. We speak of "falling in love" as if there were some magic dynamic beyond our control that forces us to love another person. We also think that love between a mother and child is a natural thing. We assume that giving birth to a child somehow rids a woman of unselfishness and infuses love into her heart. As a matter of fact, there is much that such a woman may not know about loving.

  Many years ago, before diapers were designed to be thrown away after one use, they had to be washed, folded correctly and pinned on. The "pinning on" part was especially tricky because you had to make sure you neither stuck the baby nor your own finger. If there was any sticking to be done, it had better be your finger and not the baby's tender skin. Mothers had to learn how to perform this loving act. We recall a time when a neighbor called to tell us that she almost panicked when she returned home with her baby because she didn't know how to fold or pin diapers. Such skills require training. You can multiply that need for knowledge many, many times. Paul's point is that husband and children won't be loved unless someone teaches the wives and mothers how. It ought to be obvious that faith is encouraged when family members learn the fine art of loving.

• Faith is transmitted in an atmosphere of discipline. Paul went on to say that the younger women need to learn to be "self-controlled." Ditto the younger men. Families flourish in an orderly environment. As Paul saw it the Word of God would make an impression on family members when life could be organized in a manner that would make family members feel valued and honored. We live in a world in which the competition for time is enormous. While we may wish for a return to a time when the world operated more predictably with fewer time demands, we cannot realistically expect such a time to return soon.

  To some degree we'll have to learn to live with the schedules that life has given us. As we started this week, we looked at a long list of appointments on our schedule that do not occur every week. On Sunday, we were tied up with meetings at church until 4 in the afternoon. On Monday we had medical appointments. We had to buy tires for the car. We had to upgrade some medical equipment and Norman had a three-hour leadership meeting at church. On Tuesday we were scheduled to attend a dinner for our graduating seniors. We had to purchase gifts, take care of some personal errands, visit some our members who are ill and attend the dinner. Today we have two medical appointments scheduled and so it goes all week long. In addition to all of that, we had to take care of our usual recurring responsibilities. It will be the same way next week and every week of our lives. We aren't asking for sympathy because we know that every family wrestles with the clock every day. We are blessed because our children are grown, but many who read this are trying to juggle work responsibilities, church responsibilities, personal responsibilities and raise children at the same time. We know that it's a tough task. But we also believe that it is possible to bring some degree of order to all this. It is only when we make sure that order happens that we can be sure "no one will malign the word of God." Our children need to be able to see that we give attention to important values that are being ignored by the rest of the world. That may mean omitting some of the activities of each family member even if they are profitable activities.

• Positive acts of Christian service. Many years ago we read The Intimate Marriage by Howard and Charlotte Clinebell. The Clinebells suggested that some families seem to think the world is in such a turmoil that the best thing to do is to work on building an island of sanity around the family without worrying about what's happening in the rest of the world. The Clinebells suggested that you really can't develop a wholesome family unless you make some contribution to the needs of a wider world.

Paul was on that same page. Notice the characteristics of the older men. They must be "temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled and sound in the faith, in love and endurance." (verse 1). These aren't passive qualities. They must be lived out in the open. We'll never be able to pass along our faith in an environment of privatization. Privatization is the practice of keeping your faith inside your heart and never letting anyone else know about it.

Paul had no use for a faith that stays locked up in one's heart and never touches other human lives. In verses 7 and 8, he offered this encouragement to Titus, "In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching, show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us." Notice the use of words like "teaching" and "speech." While it's true that a bad example can nullify good teaching, it is not true that example can stand-alone. Sometimes it's cowardly not to speak out for the right thing. One time, while we were on vacation, we were visitors in a Sunday School Class. Our teenage son attended class with us. The teacher made some statements that were uninformed and unfounded. We usually try to behave ourselves in circumstances like that. We remember that we are guests and it's not our place to set someone else straight, but in this instance, a false impression was being made in the class. We raised a mild protest. We didn't make a scene. In fact, the man who made the erroneous statements took our correction rather well. Later at the dinner table, our teen-age son said, "If you hadn't spoke out to correct him, I was going to." What kind of faith values would we have passed on to our son if we had not spoken out. Sometimes it's necessary to go public with your faith.

We make the gospel attractive when we live with authenticity, when we honor God by the way we speak, when we display the proper attitudes and when we make an honest effort to live a Christian lifestyle. We will not make the gospel attractive through powerful programs and initiatives. We don't have to be superparents, but we must live authentic, positive, actively engaged lives.