Mystery - Tuesday, 26th September
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:11–12)
It’s a phrase that some Christians are reluctant to use: ‘I don’t know’. We can feel that we should be able to answer every question that is presented to us by other Christians, or those outside of the faith. But the reality that we need to face is that we currently live in the place of partial knowledge. Paul celebrates the day when all shall be revealed, but in the meantime, we live in the twilight zone, and we should not be afraid of mystery - rather, we should embrace it as part of the walk of faith. And it’s not only when God seems distant that we embrace misery - when a prayer is answered, we might be grateful, but then quickly ask, ‘how comes that prayer was answered and another was not?’. We don’t know.
Tom Wright comments on 1 Corinthians 13: 11-12
Mirrors were made in Corinth, but the point Paul is making is familiar to many writers in the ancient world. When you look in the mirror everything is back to front, inside out. You can’t always make out what it is you’re looking at. That’s what the present time is like, Paul is saying. You can see something of God’s plan, something of what’s going on, something of what God wants for his human creatures. But in the world to come all will be plain. ‘Face to face’ could be simply a way of saying ‘so we won’t be looking in mirrors any longer’, but it is probably also a way of reminding his readers, as John puts it in his first letter, that when Jesus appears we shall be like him, ‘because we shall see him as he is’ (1 John 3:2).
‘Now I know in part’; there is such a thing as genuine Christian knowledge in the present, even though ‘knowledge’ can ‘puff you up’ (1 Corinthians 8:1). But then—in God’s new world, the world waiting to be born, the world already glimpsed in Jesus’ resurrection—‘then I shall know in the same way that I too have been known.’ What matters at the moment, as in 1 Corinthians 8:2–3, is not your knowledge of God, but God’s knowledge of you; but your knowledge, too, will be complete in the age to come.1
Gordon Fee comments, “Our present ‘vision’ of God, as great as it is, is as nothing when compared to the real thing that is yet to be; it is like the difference between seeing a reflected image in a mirror and seeing a person face to face.” In our own culture the comparable metaphor would be the difference between seeing a photograph and seeing someone in person. As good as a picture is, it is simply not the real thing”2
1 Wright, T. (2004). Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians (pp. 178–179). Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
2 Fee, G. D. (1987). The First Epistle to the Corinthians (p. 648). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Offended and angry - Wednesday 13th September
As I write, I am offended, and not a little angry. Traveling by train to London, I’ve decided to make the best use of time and write this Going Deeper. Tiny fold down tables are provided for the parking laptops - tables that are meant to be shared, hence the source of my ire. The man sitting opposite me is taking up about 60% of the table space, leaving just 40% for me. I am quietly outraged. But there’s more, because now this brazen table hogger has placed a steaming hot cup of coffee on the table as well, taking up yet more space, (I calculate about 67.75%), but risking third degree burns to yours truly if the juddering train should topple it.
Now I’m actually planning for that toppling, mentally rehearsing a withering speech should I end up being scalded. I am actually prophetically offended, planning a retort should something happen that is probably unlikely.
But I’m not alone in my bristling, because it seems like we are an angry culture that has perfected the art of being offended. Some years ago Janet Street Porter wrote that we have become ‘shouty Britain’, and I fear that it's got worse since she coined the phrase.
Yet ironically, surely our verbosity is perhaps only matched by our fragility. Gary Lineker - he of footy and crisp fame - once made a casual comment about his bald co-presenters (who found it amusing) only to discover that complaints were made, which is staggering, and I say that as one with a hairstyle that is a shrinking peninsula. A couple of days later an American television host reported that young Prince George had taken up ballet, and suggested that his interest in dance might not last long, which triggered rage among ballet lovers everywhere. They demanded an apology and suggested that she was guilty of bullying. Opinions may differ about the wisdom of her comment, but I think that those who suggest that we are becoming a ‘snowflake’ society where everyone is perpetually offended might have a point.
Banter is part of our culture, especially in the realm of comedy. While there are some comedians who have no thought for people who genuinely suffer - I can think of one who makes sick jokes about children dying of cancer and starving African children. But surely we can take things too far. Some people seem to live their entire lives permanently camped on the brink of being offended. They probably got angry and upset with the midwife who delivered them, irritated by entering the world only to begin life by having their bottom smacked.
Offence can be weaponised. It can be used as a nifty ruse. Instead of stamping our feet and huffing and puffing with childish petulance, we employ the trembling bottom lip routine and cry that we’re offended. And then when others dash to appease us, we become the victor while disguising ourselves as the aggrieved victim.
And then Christians have an extra weapon that can upgrade a popgun of offence into the relational equivalent of something nuclear: God. Upset at the sermon/worship song/service time/pew arrangement/not being included in the flower rota (if you love being offended, join a church - there’s no shortage of issues that can irritate), we insist that our preference or opinion mirrors God’s view on the matter. The Lord of the cosmos is called as a witness for our prosecution.
Meanwhile, the chap sitting opposite me is in serious danger now. He has finished his coffee, so I am denied the opportunity to be scalded and thus be scalding, but he is inching his laptop yet further into my already minuscule table territory.
I might have to have a word, just as soon as I’ve finished writing this..…