To the pure, everything is pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; in fact, both their mind and conscience are defiled. —Titus 1:15
My grandparents’ home in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, had a “fruit cellar.” Many times, as the kid who had been assigned to kitchen duty, I was sent to this scary place to retrieve something.
A fruit cellar, in case you don’t know, is a small room off the basement that had been carved out of the dirt, deeper than the foundation of the house, and lined with large rocks. Before the days of prolific refrigeration, these little rooms were built to keep fruit and vegetables from deteriorating too quickly. Dug deeply into the earth, these cellars stayed cool year-round but didn’t freeze. My grandmother, who also canned peaches, tomatoes, and all manner of other things, kept these glass jars—Mason or Ball brand—on the shelves in the fruit cellar.
As though it were yesterday, I can remember going to the fruit cellar on an assignment to retrieve something for dinner. Grabbing a jar of peaches wasn’t too scary, but reaching into a bushel basket of potatoes always made my stomach tighten up. Putting my hand in there to seize a few spuds, I well remember being afraid that something fuzzy with sharp teeth would already be there—retrieving something for his grandmother, no doubt.
Thankfully, in all the years of visits to the fruit cellar, that never happened. However, I do remember bringing a potato to my grandmother one time and having her snap to attention as though someone had just dropped an ice cube down her back. She ran down the basement steps and dashed into the fruit cellar. In a moment she was back in the kitchen carrying the whole bushel basket of potatoes.
Dumping the potatoes onto the kitchen table, she picked each one up, meticulously examining them top to bottom. “What’s the matter?” I asked her. “One of the potatoes you brought up was rotten,” she explained. “If I don’t check every single potato and weed out the rotten ones, they’ll all be ruined.”
Although you and I would rather believe that everyone is deep down a good person, the apostle Paul reminds us that this isn’t true. There are, in fact, some bad potatoes out there: “rebellious people, full of empty talk and deception . . . [people who] are ruining entire households by teaching what they shouldn’t in order to get money dishonestly. . . . Defiled and unbelieving. . . . [They are] detestable, disobedient, and unfit for any good work” (vv. 10–11, 15–16). These are potatoes.
Paul’s advice? Throw the rotten ones out. Feed them to the pigs. Why? Because Paul knew what my grandmother knew. Contemptible potatoes are contagious. In no time, their rottenness spreads to good potatoes, and soon the whole basket is spoiled.
I don’t know about you, but I tend to be a live-and-let-live kind of guy. Given a choice between shameless confrontation of a Christian friend caught in sin and looking the other way, hoping he figures this out for himself, I usually prefer the latter. Who do I think I am? I may whisper to myself. After all, I’ve got a few rotten spots myself.
Paul knew Titus well enough to know that they both were flawed men. Nonetheless, his instructions were crisp and straightforward. “Save the whole basket,” Paul was telling his protégé. “If you don’t, the rotten potatoes will win.”
You may be thinking that this advice sounds cruel. In my experience, confronting guys who are sarcastic and cynical—rotten—can be a challenge. Once you’ve done this and there’s no kindness or gratitude in return, make another friend. You’ll want to pray for this guy, but he can be dangerous and not worthy to be your friend.