The second task is a more difficult one, for the challenges are many and continuously reimagined, combined and reintroduced to thwart God and his message. To refute those who contradict, one must be aware of the problems, the disparate values, beliefs, worldviews, arguments, morals and reasoning of our culture, understand the philosophical underpinnings and origins of the ideas and offer course corrections with practical applications.

Some Christians argue that we just need to preach the truth. Perhaps you’ve heard the adage, “I’ll know the Bible so well that if any counterfeit comes in, I’ll be able to detect it.” A worthy and admirable goal, and the starting point of our passage, but that is only one side of Titus’ two-sided coin. When I go to the doctor, I don’t want a physician who only knows what health looks like, I want a medical practitioner who understands disease, illness, cancer and a host of what ails humanity physically. So it is with the pastor, elder, youth leader, worship leader and dare I say, layman.

This will require us to know what the opposing ideas are and their origins. Some of the most influential issues we face today are Marxism, Critical Race Theory, wokeness, liberalism, postmodernism, LGBTI+ and intersectionality, just to name a few. But rarely do we have original conceptions, ideas or even beliefs. We mimic and synthesize but rarely create. Because of this, people largely repeat ideologies as if they were their own. If we do not know the origins and tenets of these positions, we are handicapped trying to see, address, rebuke and refute them. Learning to defend the truth means that our leaders must know and understand the false beliefs attacking the church.