appropriate

I guess I’ve always thought that doctrine was about belief. I don’t think I ever really considered the question, but it just seemed right. Now, reading in Titus, I realize that it also has to do with behavior. I’m wondering which is more significant.

Titus 2:1-6 says, “You, however, must teach what is appropriate to sound doctrine. Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance. Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God. Similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled.”

Paul urges the teaching of what is appropriate to sound doctrine, and then gives a list not of things to think but of ways to live, of behaviors. Temperance, self-control, business, kindness . . . These sorts of things, Paul says, are appropriate to our doctrine.

This means that there are also behaviors that aren’t appropriate. I know that, but this is a new reason for me: some things are inappropriate because they don’t match my doctrine. 

I think of doctrine as what I believe to be true about God and what he expects of me. Theology is knowledge of God; doctrine goes beyond that and describes what that means for life. I think of the doctrine of election, for example, which describes how Christians are drawn into a relationship with God. Or the doctrine of the Trinity, which reconciles for us the persons that God reveals in himself. 

So what’s the link between those beliefs and my behaviors? I guess there has to be consistency through all of it. A person who believes the right things will live the right things. A person who doesn’t live the right things calls anything he believes into question. 

It’s kind of weird to think that my angry words can compromise the catechism, but I guess it’s so. It reminds me that there is a lot at stake in the words I let escape my mouth, and the things I let myself do.