I think a lot of young Christians in their desire to be radical apply certain verses of Scripture in really extreme and naive ways. For instance, “Love…believes all things (1 Cor 13:7)”.
If you go back and read 1 Corinthians, this is not an indicator of how love always handles everything. It is a description of how love handles disagreement and misuse of gifts in church meetings and why love is superior to any ability that can help the church (it mediates between abilities). Thus, love believes the best of people that you find grating or irritating. Does love actually believe “all things” in all circumstances? Check out this paragraph from Proverbs:
Proverbs 23:1-8 When you sit down to eat with a ruler, observe carefully what is before you, (2) and put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite. (3) Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food. (4) Do not toil to acquire wealth; be discerning enough to desist. (5) When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven. (6) Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy; do not desire his delicacies, (7) for he is like one who is inwardly calculating. “Eat and drink!” he says to you, but his heart is not with you. (8) You will vomit up the morsels that you have eaten, and waste your pleasant words.
Now compare this to these passages in the gospels:
John 2:24-25 But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people (25) and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.
Matthew 12:38-39 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” (39) But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
Jesus, in these, and in many other places is acutely aware of the way people are. I wonder if sometimes the effort of Christians to have Christian character (loving the unloving, showing mercy, etc) leads Christians into thinking that the unloving actually are loving, the dishonest are honest, and so-on. It’s something I need to think more about, but I fear that some of Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity for making people weak is true, though it was a mistaken understanding of Christian meekness that did so.
I suppose one could argue that Christians should “believe all things” and that Proverbs is being corrected by Paul, but Paul himself does not believe the best of the Corinthian Christians about whom he writes the letter. He believes the reports that they are disorderly and so-on.
Thoughts?
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