I like Saint Paul's
letters to Timothy and Titus. I like their plain practical good
advice. But where Timothy is treated to a list of "what to
do", Titus is given more "how and why" advice.
Perhaps Titus' character was better suited to such teaching. Or
perhaps in the greater isolation of Crete, he needed to discern
solutions to problems Paul could not anticipate. Certainly
neither Paul nor Titus had much experience of how to be a woman
in Crete. Instead, Paul advised Titus to rely on the experts.
When I tried to fathom
how, with a divorced athiest mother for a role model, I myself
might become a good Christian wife; Titus 2.3-4 came as a ray of
light. I chose role models from the godly elder women in the
Church and was blessed by their example. I venture to believe
too, that they were blessed by the opportunity to teach.
The relationship between
an involved role model and an inexperienced colleague is called
"mentoring". The mentor offers her protege an
increased chance of success. The protege offers her mentor
assurance that her life-work will continue in another
generation. The mentoring relationship depends on three
important prerequisites.
Mentors
must share their protege's goal. An older person who tries
to subvert a younger person to carry out her own agenda is not
acting as a mentor. Goals are hard to discern, and its easy to
assume that another's goals must be the same as your own,
because your own are so obviously right. Even agreeing on a
goal such as "to be good wives and mothers" may not
be enough. For one person, that may mean "to be accepted
in the best social circles and keep a spotless house", to
another it might mean "to share my husbands interests and
offer my children a range of experiences." The
apparently-like goals may be fundamentally contradictory.
Mentors must
themselves be successful. What a mentor brings to the
mentoring relationship is her experience. A protege accepts
that experience because it will help her succeed. So, a woman
who is trying to be a godly wife will have no desire to follow
in the footsteps of one whose husband does not call her
blessed. A mother who is trying to raise children to the glory
of the Lord will not draw on the practices of one whose
children are apostate.
Mentors
must have the trust of their proteges. The ministry of
mentoring cannot function if mentors and proteges live on
different time-tables and move in different paths, such that
they rarely meet or reveal their interests to one-another.
Trust is built from pleasant recollection of time spent
together.
