Older Women - Avoiding Slander and Much Wine
Paul's letter to Titus has advice for everyone. Chapter 2:2 spoke of the older men, and the next verse goes like this: “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.”
Dangers of Gossip
There are two potential vices that Paul warns against here. The first is gossip or slander. In South Africa we would call it skinner.
Let me ask you, does the thought of hearing some juicy skinner just make your heart beat a little faster? Gossip is delicious, isn't it? In fact, Proverbs 18:8 says, “The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to the inmost parts.” It's like we love to just gobble up any gossip we can find.
The problem is, rumours quickly get repeated wrongly. Do you remember that game, broken telephone? One person whispers something into the ear of the next person, and they pass the message along in whispers, and by the end of the line, the message has usually changed. It's the same with gossip and slander. Stories get wildly exaggerated or just plain wrong, and it actually causes great hurt.
So when Paul said, "Teach the older women not to be slanderers," let's all learn from that today. Let's all be reminded not to talk behind people's backs, but to be careful with our words. I think what Brenda Payne wrote is correct. She said, "When it comes to gossip, we must be fire extinguishers, not high winds that fan the flames."
Freedom from Overindulgence
The second vice that Paul warns of here is of drinking too much wine. The stereotype in our culture is of men and their beer, women and their wine. It's a really bad stereotype, but that seems to be the way it is.
In fact, I recently read an article by a woman who'd quit drinking and was finding it quite hard because the cultural pressure to drink wine as a woman was hectic. She said she would post a picture on Facebook of her sitting on a couch at home or whatever, and all the replies would say, “Where's the wine?” “You just need wine!” “Bring on the wine!”
Or she'd go to buy a card for a friend, and all of these cards said things like: "Wine is to women as duct tape is to men. It fixes everything." Or, "I'll make wine disappear. What's your superpower?" Or, "Lord, give me coffee to change the things I can and wine to accept the things I cannot."
And funny little jokes as they are, she struggled. She said that there's this expectation that she was supposed to be drinking wine, and there was no way to cope with life without it. Now there's nothing evil about wine or alcohol, but it's when we abuse it and become too reliant on it that we have a problem—much like anything in life.
We Have Jesus
So the point here in Paul's little message to us today is this. As followers of Christ, we don't need gossip or slander to make us feel better about ourselves or superior to others. We don't need wine or beer to numb ourselves to the pains of life.
We have Jesus.
We have the Holy Spirit living in us. And Paul, in fact, likens being filled with the Spirit to being drunk, by the way.
So, friends, let's not be slanderous. Let's not overindulge in wrong things. Let's show by our lives just how precious Jesus is and how He alone is all we need.
