Titus 1:7 Meaning For the Overseer Must Be Blameless

Sīla: Virtue Sīla is trained conduct, the ground a person stands on. Wine, temper, money, force: each is a spot where an overseer can be caught out, and standing clear of all of them is what lets him be looked at from any side without a stain showing. Blamelessness of this kind pays out first in his own sleep, since a man whose hands stayed clean all day has nothing to lie awake replaying.

Māna: Conceit Māna is the habit of measuring yourself against others. Self-pleasing in an overseer is small and easy to miss: he takes the decision he prefers, the seat he likes, the word that goes his way, and calls it leading. An office handed over for other people's sake becomes a mirror.

Khanti: Patient endurance Khanti is steadiness under provocation. An overseer sees the same faces week after week, and the same small frictions come around again, each one an invitation to flare. Anger costs a stranger little; in the man who settles the disputes, it decides them.

Pamāda: Heedlessness Pamāda is slack attention. Wine earns its place here for what it loosens: the grip on temper, on money, on the tongue, all of which have their own lines above and below. An overseer is a watchman by trade, and a watchman who drinks is asleep at his post while still on his feet.

Avihiṃsā: Non-cruelty Avihiṃsā is the intent to do no hurt. Violence in a man with authority rarely takes the form of a raised hand: it is the public dressing down, the name dropped in the wrong room, the debt held over someone's head. The bruise is the same whether the blow lands on a body or on a reputation.

Adinnādāna: Taking what is not given This names the fault of helping yourself to what was never offered. A steward carries keys to a storehouse he did not build and hands out bread that was never his, so every coin that sticks to his fingers is something nobody gave him. Dishonest gain starts small, a favor rounded up, an expense left vague, and the hand learns a motion it does not unlearn.