Journal: Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Volume: JBMW 11:2 (Fall 2006)
Article: Women against Public Blasphemy
Author: Rebecca Jones

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JBMW 11:2 (Fall 2006) p. 8

Women against Public Blasphemy

Rebecca Jones

Homemaker, Author, Editor
Escondido, California

My husband and I recently visited South Africa for a five-week speaking tour. As our host drove us to a meeting, he became quite agitated by the constant traffic jams in the clogged streets of Johannesburg. At yet another snag, he exclaimed, “Now what!” But soon he was all smiles. “Look! It’s Christians demonstrating against public profanity!”

Christians naturally cringe when our Lord’s name is defamed. But there is more to blasphemy than swear words in the media. The apostle Paul offers us strange advice about countering blasphemy. He specifically tells women how to help. Paul tells the young pastor Titus that

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled [blasphmtai—“blasphemed”] (Titus 2:3–5).1

Elsewhere, Paul gives a similar instruction to slaves: “Let all who are under a yoke as slaves regard their own masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be reviled [blasphmtai]” (1 Tim 6:1). Conversely, slaves who respectfully submit to their masters “adorn the doctrine of God our Savior” (Titus 2:10).

The Greek verb blasphme is often translated as “revile,” “speak evil of” or “slander.” Most English translations use “blaspheme” only when God’s name or character is in question. In the above texts, “blasphemy” seems more appropriate for two reasons: (1) Paul uses this verb, as well as the related noun and adjective, throughout his first letter to Timothy to speak of blasphemy in its strongest sense:

JBMW 11:2 (Fall 2006) p. 9

• In 1:13, he refers to his own violent resistance to the gospel (“though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent”).
• In 1:20 he speaks of Hymenaeus and Alexander’s damnable resistance to the gospel (“among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme”).
• In 6:3–5, he describes the false t...
  
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