#St Paul – Breaking the Chains that Bind

Oy, will those kids ever stop arguing????

When I go to weddings the first thing I do is look at the program for the ceremony. In almost every case there is one passage from Scripture that appears that is one of the most misused passages, (and, there are Many!), of any. This passage is 1 Corinthians 13.
The “Love” chapter.
I cringe when I see that listed as a reading. Usually, it will be read by one of the bride’s friends from childhood. You know the one, she stayed up late with the bride doing each others’ hair and joking about the length of the quarterback’s, well, you know.
The reason I find this particular passage so distasteful is because it was NEVER meant to be read only at weddings. In fact, the content alone is not about the love found in some fairy tale of wedded bliss.
This passage was placed in this particular spot between chapters 12 & 14 for a specific reason by St. Paul.
As we are learning in our Bible study at St. Barnabas, the Corinthian church had a serious identity problem. They were all excited about the personalities who came to visit them.
Paul, Apollos, the M&Ms Guys…whoever. They were totally enamored by the kinds of Spiritual gifts that they could flaunt at one another. People took pleasure in standing up in the midst of their gatherings and saying something wise, or at least esoteric sounding enough to make people applaud them.
They were all about what each of them thought of themselves.
So, right in the middle of trying to straighten out their thinking on gifts and order and stuff, Paul tossed in “a more excellent way.”
He wrote:

“If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
8 Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! 9 Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! 10 But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.
11 When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. 12 Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
13 Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.”
Tyndale House Publishers. (2015). Holy Bible: New Living Translation (1 Co 13:1–13). Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers.

Read that carefully.
Note that what Paul was saying that Love is Hard.
He wasn’t talking about some warm and fuzzy feeling in my chest. There are many people who follow Jesus who Do think about love that way.
No. Paul talked about sacrificing his body and experiencing ecstatic plateaus of spirituality. He wrote of all knowing and understanding.
All things that the church at Corinth prized as the highest reward for their troubles.
These are also things that many in today’s church cultures most value.
“I have the correct doctrine!”
“I understand the hidden things of the Bible and prophecy!”
“I am an enlightened progressive who really gets inclusiveness!”

But, there is a more excellent way.

John the Elder wrote:

“The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (1 Jn 4:8). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

Jesus revealed what he considered the two greatest commandments.
The second one,

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (Mt 22:39). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

That’s enough to make my point, I think.

I find that I can sit and spend meaningful time with those I disagree with. There are usually areas of common concern that we can talk about. Perhaps, we can disagree amicably. Even though it’s unlikely either of us will be swayed to think differently.
There still is that part of us that shares faith in the One God who has called us to faith in Christ.

Can I sit down with someone whom I think is a bigoted, hateful Christian and share a meal?
I would hope that I could.
Would I let that person off the hook for their bigotry and hatred?
Not on your life!!!
They would get an earful from me.
I would do my best to paint them into a corner where they would either need to repent or get up and leave.

There is NO ROOM in the Body of Christ for Hatred or Exclusion!!

Yet, as far as it depended on me, I would hope that I could extend the Unity of the Spirit toward such a person. For I am called to Love them.
I may not succeed well. (Or, at all!)
But, I would be compelled to try.

I am not responsible for siblings with whom I disagree.
I can pray for them.
For sure, I can rebuke them and encourage them to join me on a better path.

At the end of the day we are each responsible for our own thoughts and actions. As I lay my head down at night and take a time of Examen to consider the day, I can only take credit or blame for myself.

Is it hard?
Damn straight it is!

Can I go to a church where I know that I will be triggered with anxiety?
No. I know my limitations.
Can I see Jesus in people who DO go to those churches?
I hope that I can.
I pray that I can.
And, I try to enact that love and acceptance as best I can.

That’s all we can do.

It is a more excellent way.

Leave a Comment

Yesterday I wrote a little about what I think was St. Paul’s over-arching concern for the churches that had contact with.
That concern was for unity. As he wrote, he desired that the folks in the fellowship of believers at Corinth would “be like minded and of the same consent.”
So, it’s no surprise that one of my reader would pose the following questions:

“So is it possible to apply this call to unity as you understand it to the Fundamental/Evangelical portion of the church? What does that unity look like? Must unity be reciprocated or can it be only one way? Do I have a responsibility to pursue unity even if others don’t want to have unity with me? If you believe a group within what we would consider the Body of Christ holds hurtful, or even evil doctrines regarding women, gays, minorities, immigrants, etc. must we attempt to live in peace and unity with them? Can we express unity over spiritual matters but go to war with one another over political positions?”

Some of you reading may not understand the questions. They seem to be a way of dodging the responsibilities that Paul appeared to lay upon the folks at Corinth.
“Of course! Unity is unity! We should strive for it with all people.”

And, for those of you who may ask that question I have a reply that may explain where such questioning may originate.

If you were never a part of a conservative, evangelical church you really have no idea how questions like those asked of my reader are important.
Many of us came to follow Jesus at a time when there was a lot of social and political unrest in the U.S. We were part of the so-called “Jesus Movement” of the early 70s. We built our faith and identity on our understanding of the Church as it was described in the first few chapters of the Book of Acts. We willing gave away our belongings and identity in order to “follow Jesus just like the first Church!” Hallelujah!
Part of our concept of how to do this was to become “Disciples.”
We understood that the term Disciple shared an etymological root with the word Discipline. So, we instituted a church government that we believed mirrored that which Paul and Peter and the rest established in the first century.
We had elders who held absolute authority over the church. We took the words that folks should not cause the elders any grief because they worked for God and not themselves.
We believed that such elders or even so-called apostolic ministry was ordained by God for the building up of the Body of Christ so that we could live counter-culturally and witness to the Good News that the Bible taught us.
As our churches grew, we got older. We began to see cultural issues as battlegrounds where our faith was tested. Abortion became a rallying cry for us. Secularization in government and wanton corruption in entertainment caused our leaders to decry how our culture had fallen from its original mandate to establish a City on a Hill that would beckon those seeking religious freedom to our cause.
As you can see, our church culture was ripe for authoritarian abuse. Those elders and leaders we had entrusted our faith to led us into culture wars where we soon saw ourselves as a persecuted minority.
Those of us who did not hold positions of authority were expected to do as we were told.
We met when we were told to meet. We raised our children according to the ways prescribed by our leaders. We had marriage retreats where husbands were told that they were neglecting their duty as the “Authority and covering” for their wives and children. In some case we were told how to spend our free time and how to vote.
The church was our life.
We were instructed by people like second-rate psychologist and theologian wannab James Dobson on how to raise children.
He was wrong on so many levels. But, we didn’t realize it at the time.
We were becoming disciplined disciples who disciplined their children in a disciple-making manner.
Many of us still suffer from the dysfunction that lingers to this day.
Our elders controlled how wives should submit to their husbands in all things including sex.
Wives, we were told, didn’t have control over their bodies, their husbands did. And, husbands were told that we were simply sexually driven animals who really didn’t have any control over their bodies either.
This led to abuses, adulteries, slut shaming, and a purity culture that shamed girls and women.

Many of us, myself included, suffer today from some form of what is termed
“Church PTSD.” Walking into an evangelical church for me is a triggering event that causes anxiety and anger associated with our natural ‘fight or flight’ reaction to perceived danger.
I know people who absolutely cannot walk into ANY church because of the abuses they incurred.
I’m not talking about physical abuse in my case.
Emotional and Spiritual abuse, however, have left me and my family scarred.

So, for those of us who escaped from that milieu, we react viscerally when someone suggests that we should strive for unity with those we feel abused us.
This is what leads us to ask the kinds of question my reader posed.

How can we seek unity with our abusers?
Is there any common ground that we can find with the haters and bigots who were spawned by this fundalelical movement?
Can we sit with the likes of Franklin Graham or christian nationalists like Robert Jeffress, pseudo-historian David Barton, or the Liar Tony Perkins?

From my description of these folks you may assume that I don’t see a way.

That may not be entirely accurate.
I do take the Bible seriously. I take my trust in the Faithfulness of God seriously, also.
So, what to do with our personal histories and beliefs?
I think that we’ll continue this discussion for a while.
We may even find some hope in Paul’s letter to that troublesome church at Corinth.

Tag: #St Paul

1 Corinthians_Unity pt. 3

1 Corinthians_A Digression