I read a scripture this morning during my devotions that has been rolling around in my head all day. I thought I'd put some of these thoughts to paper before I hit the sack. The word that jumped out at me in Titus 2 is the word "adorn."
According to Webster's dictionary, the verb adorn means "to enhance the appearance of especially with beautiful things." As you can imagine, of the 20 times that word is used in the Bible (or form of the word) it most often refers to the clothing or jewelry with which people adorn themselves "to enhance" their appearance. Our thinking goes like this...wearing beautiful things makes us more beautiful/good looking. If we are honest, none of us will deny that it really is true...what we've got on either enhances or detracts from our appearance. If you were to dress and look like you did in your high school year book we'd all silently judge you and probably talk about you behind your back. Who here hasn't watched the movie Sabrina or the show What Not to Wear and seen the beauty of someone transformed before your very eyes. It's amazing how much more beautiful someone can appear with some cool clothes, a fresh haircut, and some accessories for the ladies!
Is this shallow? Perhaps. The Scriptures do warn about over emphasizing the adornments and under appreciating matters of character such as humility and integrity. If you are going to put something good on, don't leave those two in the closet. Who you are is more beautiful than what you look like, but stick with me for a minute.
So in Scripture we read about what people adorn themselves with. We read about how homes and physical structures are adorned to enhance their appearance and make them more attractive in the eye of the beholder. But the scripture in Titus that caught my attention in chapter 2 verse 10 speaks to how our life of faith "adorns the doctrine of God our Savior." Specifically Paul was writing to slaves telling them not to be argumentative or to steal stuff from their masters. The idea here is simple...how you live will either make Jesus look like he belongs on the cover of GQ or look like he belongs on the next episode of Swamp People. The person of Jesus on the inside is the same, but the level of people's attraction to him is more up to us than we think. The slave whining and arguing with his master makes Jesus less attractive to the master. Swamp People Jesus. The slave showing his boss respect and treating the master better than he deserves makes Jesus more attractive. GQ Jesus. I don't know about you, but I think God has put entirely too much influence in our hands.
I wonder if the Apostle Paul in writing those words wished that the Jesus that appeared to him on the way to Damascus would appear to others. It was a Jesus not dependent on anyone's presentation of him. Imagine that. No one had a chance to adorn him with hypocrisy, no one had a chance to clothe him with anything else hideous that believers have been guilty of over the years. I can't count the number of times I've encouraged unbelievers to spend less time judging Christianity based on its followers and more time judging the faith based on the one we're trying to follow. In other words, bypass me and look in the pages of scripture directly to him. The problem is that they seldom do that and so what we are left with is the wisdom of the apostle, "adorn the doctrine of God our Savior." Live in such a way that our friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors are more inclined to draw near to Christ as a result of what they see in you. Is that possible? Yep, I know from experience. What does this look like? Well that's for you to roll around in your head. I'm going to bed.
