Can you make yourself the least of all by insisting on your title and station? Can you sacrifice everything for the sake of others without them liking it? Are you able to repeatedly flip an argument on its head until no one is able to stake out a position? Can you use a metaphor over…
Category: The Bible as Literature
Not So Smart After All
According to Wikipedia, “Illusory superiority is a cognitive bias whereby individuals overestimate their own qualities and abilities relative to others. This is evident in a variety of areas including intelligence, performance on tasks or tests, and the possession of desirable characteristics or personality traits.” This may explain why so many students believe they have something…
How To Play Both Sides Without Waffling
For as long as religion has been around, people have come forward with a single, destructive question: “O religious leader, what does our religion say,” or, “What does our religious leader say about X?” One way or another, people eventually find someone who can provide clarity on issue X. Then everybody gives a big sigh…
Not Your Ordinary Life Coach
When couples want marriage or divorce, they think “fairness.” When people are dissatisfied with their place in life, they think “change.” When people look at their own status, they think, “better” or “worse.” If all this makes sense to you, then, according to 1 Corinthians, your priorities are all wrong. Instead of caring about the…
Égoïsme à deux
People love to defend themselves. They defend their choices. They defend their group. They defend their rights; their property; their beliefs. Oh, yes, and people love to be right. They love it. It’s like a drug. They love it so much that when something goes unavoidably wrong, they devise clever ways to blame other people….
The Problem Within
At first glance, St. Paul’s admonition in 1 Corinthians 5, that the faithful are not to associate with immoral people, seems to imply that the church should safeguard its purity by avoiding association people outside the community. No interpretation of 1 Corinthians could be further from the truth. On the contrary, when Paul speaks of…
The Art of Biblical Shame
When reading 1 Corinthians, it is easy to mistake Paul’s discussion of weakness and strength as a universal condemnation of power. On the contrary, Paul presents the teaching of the cross as a way of replacing one kind of power with another. You might be tempted to let yourself off the hook by claiming that…
Neither is Anything
Scientists believe that plant life first formed on the Earth 700 million years ago and that the first fungi appeared on land 1300 million years ago. In contrast, human agriculture did not develop in the Fertile Crescent until 11,500 years ago. Now, I am not a math expert, but it seems to me that if…
Spiritual Authority
How can St. Paul emphasize the importance of weakness while boasting that his own preaching is a “demonstration of the Spirit and of power?” How can he preach weakness from a position of strength? Is Paul contradicting himself? Why would someone proclaiming the crucified Christ claim to do so with power? What part does Roman…
A Practical Impracticality
What does it mean to hope in the Kingdom of God and how does this hope differ from the false promises of idealism? How is the biblical teaching, which seems impractical, ruthlessly practical in its transformation of human behavior? Why is the content of the gospel readily dismissed by both religious and secular thinkers? What…