Your Mental Health
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, Titus 2:11-12 NASB
Live sensibly – Okay, first let’s be sure we read this phrase correctly. “To live” is the verb modified by all of the following adverbs (sensibly, righteously and godly). Life under the grace of God covers all these. But before we look at the adverbs, let’s notice that the verb záō is an aorist, active, subjunctive, first person plural. Aorist—a completed act. Active—performed by the subject (not by someone or something else). Subjunctive—makes an indefinite statement (general). First person plural—you, me, all of us. “To live”—you and I are alive now. How we live from this point on is the question. We’re responsible for what happens next. No one made us do what we did and no one will make us change. It’s up to us.
Now, what are the goals? What are the guidelines?
The first is sōphrŏnōs. “Sensibly.” No, more than that. Literally, “of sound mind,” and in the Greco-Roman world that meant sober, discreet, self-controlled, and humble. Now add Hebrew. All of the above plus faithful obedience to the law of Moses. This is the biblical idea of mental health. The more we depart from this kind of life, the more insane we become. That’s why the Christian theologian Berkouwer could write that sin is insanity. Sin is the active pursuit of death. It is mental, moral, and physical suicide. Sōphrŏnōs is its opposite.
When the Church began to teach that the law of Moses (the Torah) was no longer applicable, it embarked on a centuries-long pandemic of mental illness. It believed its own lies, fabricating the apostasy of the Jews, promulgating mass extermination in the name of the God of Israel, foisting pagan goddesses upon the people, incorporating syncretism at every turn, all in the name of a philosophical ideal adopted from the Greeks. This theological suicide has resulted in the complete collapse of a social morality and the insignificance of the Church at large. Why should the pagan population believe what the Church teaches when what it teaches is theologically disconnected from any semblance of divine imperative? Why should anyone believe a Church ethics that is essentially no different than being a good person, as defined by the Church? Anyone with half a brain can see the latent hypocrisy oozing under the sanctuary floor. The plain fact is this: the Church no longer has a voice because it silenced the God of Sinai. Insanity followed.
Recovery is a long, slow excruciating process. The Greco-Roman Church insanity sticks to us like tar and feathers. We’ll probably die before it’s all removed. But there is absolutely no hope if we continue to live with the insanity. For most people, this kind of critique is not only painful, it’s threatening. We want the comfort of an accommodating religion. We don’t want to be called fanatics. And we certainly don’t want people to think we’re becoming Jewish. Why is that? Could it be that instead of actually examining the moral imperatives of Judaism we (perhaps unconsciously) emulate the history of our Western assessment of the Jews? Has that insanity become so much a part of us that we recoil when someone accuses us of falling back “under the Law,” as if that’s a bad thing. Do you want to know what society looks like without Moses? Turn on the television. Oh, I don’t mean the news. That’s plain enough. Turn on nearly any program and see what’s happening to the moral values of our world. The Hebrew icing on the Greek cake is gone. Now you’ll have to eat what’s left.
Topical Index: sōphrŏnōs, sensibly, sound mind, insanity, Titus 2:11-12
