Modern people reading about the past can blur people together into a uniform, faceless crowd of strangers. It's hard to visualize individual people you read about.
Actually, the people Paul addressed were as diverse as those you might meet on the streets of Los Angeles today. Consider Crete, an island populated by five fiercely independent ethnic groups. Its main knowledge of the outside world came through pirates and coarse sailors. Add to that mix a large community of straight-laced Jews, and you can see why the Cretan church was born amid conflict.
Titus the Troubleshooter
When problems erupted in this stormy congregation, Paul dispatched Titus, his trusted associate of 15 years. The book of Galatians (2:1-5) introduced Titus as proof that a non-Jew could become a fully acceptable Christian.
When Titus' name occurs in the New Testament, he is usually seen serving as Paul's troubleshooter, the one called on to deal with local crises. Twice he was sent on a diplomatic mission to the rowdy church at Corinth. This letter indicates he faced an equally challenging task on Crete. Paul wrote the book of Titus as a set of personal instructions on how to handle a difficult assignment.
Because he was writing to people who knew the local circumstances well, Paul rarely bothered to give background for us years-later "over-the-shoulder" readers. But we can gain insights into the conditions by reading between the lines. For example, when Paul tells Titus to search for a leader "not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain" (1:7), that description implies somthing about the |
