This is the second of a four-part series on “everyday faith,” based on the instructions Paul gives in Titus 2:1–6. Gospel-centered folks are often allergic to “instructions,” so it’s important to keep in mind that Paul lays these out as our response to the gospel—not as a way to gain acceptance. “Because of what God has done for you,” Paul says, “your lives will look different.” Be sure to read part one (older men), part three (younger women), and part four (younger men).
Yesterday we tackled Paul’s instructions to older men: don’t give up. Today we ask, What does Paul point out for older women? “Teach the older women to be reverent [or respectful] in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good” (Titus 2:3).
Years ago, one of my seminary professors, Dr. Keith Eitel, said something about this verse that my wife and I have never forgotten. He was talking about that word “reverent” (or “respectful”), and he said, “Older women can sometimes quit caring what people think, so they lose their filters on speaking their mind or talking badly about people.” He went on, “When you’re young, you have two things that can mask quite a bit: your natural physical beauty and your filters. But when those two fade—as they do with age—then the masks are gone, and if you have an ugly spirit, it’ll show.”
The problem isn’t unique to old women, either. We don’t have much of a filter when we’re really young, but most of us learn pretty quickly how to hide our true selves. We learn how to be polite, how to avoid offense, how to keep from getting on everyone’s nerves. (Like I said, most of us.) But every now and then, something breaks through and our filter doesn’t catch it. We say something nasty. We respond to someone with spite and hatred.
What happens next? We immediately start to justify: Oh, that’s not the real me. But what if we’ve got it backwards? What if that nasty thing you said when you were caught off guard was the real you—the real, unfiltered you? As C.S. Lewis said, if you turn the lights on in a basement and see mice scurry away, the lights didn’t create the mice. They just revealed them. You may hide things well 99% of the time, but what comes out of you when you’re shaken up is who you truly are.
As we get older, that experience becomes more and more the norm. So if we have an ugly spirit, it shows through with every passing year. There used to be physical beauty and conscious filters. Now they’re gone, and if we’ve got metaphorical mice in our heart’s basement, people will notice. Getting older didn’t create the ugly spirit; it simply exposed it.
It doesn’t have to be like that. I know some older women who are so sweet that they seem more beautiful in their old age than they did when they were young. Why? Because their beautiful character shines through. We’ve all heard it, but so few of us believe it: character is more beautiful than physical charms. (Incidentally, if just half of the 20-year-old men in our church got this simple truth, the number of absurd relationship questions our pastoral team answers would drop dramatically.)
What might it look like if all others could see of you was your spirit, unmasked by your physical beauty, your charm, or your savvy verbal skills? Would others see a person touched by grace or filled with malice? As for my wife and me, we want to be sweet, beautiful, gracious old people. (She is in decent shape, but I’ve got some ground to cover. Very few people describe me as “sweet!”) But it doesn’t come simply by wanting it. It comes by cultivating character shaped by the gospel, by focusing on what you’re doing to your spirit much more than your body. Because you can’t really take credit if you’re beautiful at 20; just about everyone is. But you have no one but yourself to blame if you’re ugly at 80.
