Editorial: Doing good when we disagree on the definition

I know it’s the middle of Holy Week, and I probably should write an editorial about Easter, but I’m not going to today. Not directly, anyway.

Today, I’m thinking about Titus, the letter.

It’s a short letter, stuck in many Bibles to the back of 2 Timothy. A person can be forgiven for not knowing it and Paul’s even shorter letter to Philemon are there just before Hebrews.

These days, most of the attention Paul’s letter to Titus receives is to see what Paul had to say about church leadership—specifically, elders.

For that reason and others—such as Paul’s instructions about how slaves should please their masters and “the people” should obey their rulers—Paul’s letter to Titus, which is shorter than this editorial, is at the center of more than one controversy.

“Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not talk back to them,” and so on (Titus 2:9).

“Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient,” and so on (Titus 3:1).

And, of course, “An elder must be … faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe,” and so on (Titus 1:6).

How’s that for starting a fight?

And that’s just my point. We give so much attention to these controversies that we overlook another controversy altogether.

Paul was intent on Titus teaching Christians in Crete “to do whatever is good” (Titus 3:1).

What’s the controversy in that? The fact followers of Jesus almost 2,000 years later continue to disagree about what exactly is good.

An example where we disagree

I could use many examples to demonstrate my point, but I’ll use one that’s a live issue as I write—school funding. We at the Baptist Standard are actively following the 89th Texas Legislative Session as the Texas House considers and votes on school funding bills this afternoon.

Some Christians support passage of education savings accounts, seeing ESAs as good. Others oppose education savings accounts, seeing opposition to ESAs as good. Both can’t be right. And there’s the rub.

Whether we believe we’re doing good by supporting or opposing education savings accounts—which sure look like mutually exclusive goals—we agree on a more fundamental thing: It’s good to educate our children.

We also agree we want our kids to receive a good education. But what is a good education? How quickly we reach our points of disagreement.

A friend of mine who supports education savings accounts and school vouchers—which are similar but not identical—gives as one reason for his support his strong opposition to progressive ideology in public schools. I may have just opened a can of worms, but we’re just going to let them wriggle around.

In my friend’s case, he believes it is good to make it financially easier for parents to place their children in private schools that teach the Christian values with which he agrees—even using public funds to do so.

Those who oppose education savings accounts and school vouchers, such as myself, believe it is good for public funds to be restricted to public education, that private—often religious—education not be publicly funded. There’s another open can of worms. Just let them wriggle.

Defining ‘good’

In my example, both groups are Christians. Both read Paul and consider him more than instructive. They consider him authoritative. They read Paul’s repeated instruction in Titus and elsewhere to love and do what is good, and they want to do just that, very much. But they disagree significantly among or between each other about just what is good.

Maybe if we knew what Paul meant by the word “good,” it would help.

Using BibleHub’s interlinear Bible, we see the original Greek word agathon translated “good” in Titus 3:1 describes something “beneficial in its effect.”

According to Strong’s Lexicon, agathos “primarily denotes that which is good in its nature and characteristics [and] is used to describe moral goodness [and] virtue. … In the New Testament, ‘agathos’ often refers to the intrinsic goodness that aligns with God’s nature and his will.”

But here’s my favorite description of the word, also taken from Strong’s Lexicon as found on BibleHub: “good whether it be seen to be so or not, the widest and most colorless of all words with this meaning.”

Nope, a simple word study will not be helpful for arriving at a clear definition of “good” on which we all can agree. As I tell those I teach how to read the Bible, to know what Paul means by “good,” we need to read more than one verse in Titus. In fact, we need to read more than Titus. If good is what aligns with God’s nature and will, then we need to read all of Scripture.

And while we’re doing that, there are decisions that need to be made, actions that need to be taken. We can’t put all decisions and actions off until we’ve thoroughly studied the whole counsel of Scripture. What are we to do then?

An uncomfortable pause

I don’t know. And at the same time, the best we can. But one thing we should do far less of—if we must do it at all—is fight about which definition of “good” is the right one. I think we can agree our fighting about what is good isn’t beneficial in its effect, and much of it doesn’t come close to aligning with God’s nature.

It’s here that I get back to Easter. I wouldn’t have written this editorial, you wouldn’t be reading it, and we wouldn’t be trying to sort out what Paul meant by “good” if Jesus hadn’t risen from the dead. But he did. And that’s the best good there is.

In light of that, we need to figure out how we’re going to do good, even if we can’t agree on the definition.

Returning to one of the controversies in Paul’s letter to Titus: One great good was ending the scourge of chattel slavery in the United States. Slavery in other forms still exists throughout the world, including in the United States. It would be a great good to end it in all its forms everywhere.

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at eric.black@baptiststandard.com. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.