Year A
Memorial Saint Leo the Great
Titus 2:1-8.11-14
Psalm 37:3-4.18 and 23.27 and 28 (R.39a)
Luke 17:7-10
BEHAVIORS OF HEALTHY DOCTRINES
Proverbs 18:10"The name of the LORD is a strong tower. A righteous person runs to it and is safe."
The righteous is the one who is always going to God. The righteous person is righteous because of God but not because of his or her own merits. The righteous goes to God for safety. But what sought of safety is this? It is the safety found in the name of the Lord.
If the righteous is to found safety in the name of the Lord, then it means the righteous is God's slave. A slave can only found safety in his or her masters name. It is his or her Masters identity that shields him or her from others. When the master identity is on the slave the slave belongs to the household of his master.
In Jesus's time, the sought of slavery that existed is different from our time, but the same idea is there. The ones that may resemble their time may be the modern child trafficking and sex trafficking. Children and Ladies are either kidnapped or sold into such slavery and they are abused of their fundamental human rights. Such evil behaviors lead to the treating of humans as objects.
Humans are not objects, the deserve to be respected. They have dignity. This sought of slavery disfigured the dignity of humanity. But aside from this physical slavery, we can talk of emotional or psychological slavery and spiritual slavery.
In like manner physical slavery can lead to emotional or psychological slavery. With the look at the world now, that which is leading to physical, psychological or emotional and spiritual slavery is technology. A lot of us are under the master technology. It has become our identity. Am not saying technological advances or technological devices are bad. What am saying is that just as the central idea of slavery is about relationship, our relationship with technological devices shows whether we are slaves to them or not.
The corrupted ideologies that we are fed with also lead us into slavery. There are a lot of people who have been indoctrinated with bad teachings; they do abnormal things contrary to human dignity. Ideological slavery is very dangerous because it is not easy to liberate a person from such slavery.
The danger however is that all these slavery including sin causes spiritual slavery. It is not only sin that can cause spiritual slavery. Whatever disturbs man's spirit and deceives man can send man into spiritual slavery. Let be careful about the ideas that we are fed with.
So Paul tells Titus in today's teach what befits sound doctrine. The advice was to all people the old and the young, males and females. Since the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men, training us to renounce irreligion and worldly passions so that we will live godly life, we must always be moving towards God as our Master or Lord.
God is Freedom, and if Freedom is our Master and we are his slave, we are truly free. If God's identity is on us, we must not fear but continue to trust in him and do good.
By Sylvester Amakye-Quayson
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