What do you know?

What do you know?

Greetings at the end of this week y’all

As you know, sometimes something in my daily Bible reading grabs me & won’t let go…yesterday was another of those times. Here’s the passage & then some thoughts…1 Corinthians 13:9-12

“Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless. When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. 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.”

This is Paul writing this…speaking from the heart about “partial & incomplete” knowledge. Paul’s straight up saying, “I don’t know everything.” How many of us are willing to make that admission…in public? Paul does. He reminds me I stand there with him…I don’t know everything. As much as I think I know…great measures of it is partial & incomplete like looking in a fogged up mirror. There…I said it & again, I don’t know everything.

The great hurdle I think I see in myself, & maybe you can say, “Yeah…me too,” is that my first reaction to a situation or an event is emotional. I suspect “Oh no!” “Poor you,” or something similar is a first response from many of us. The difficulty arises in staying in that emotional reactiveness & dealing with the circumstance, situation, or person from that whirlwind of emotions. I know wilderness guidebooks often have their “rules when you get lost” list & the first rule is always, “Don’t panic.” Emotional reactiveness can be harmful to your health in many situations…not just when you’re lost out bush.

The Corinthians lived in the heady emotions of the abundance of gifts God had poured out in them by the Holy Spirit. I noted earlier this week, “their giftedness & flourishing as a group of disciples had gone to their heads.” But it never turned into reasoned faith; it stayed in the emotions. So Paul had to re-ground them in the rock-solid call of the crucified & risen Jesus to be his presence in this world & especially among other believers.

I believe our digital world has cranked that reactiveness up beyond all imagining. If you are linked to the digital world in any way, & TV news is part of it, you have no choice but to be flooded with the shoot-from-the-hip reactions of millions of people all day long. I was struck by a part of an interview I heard of a man in a position of great responsibility & high authority in the ACT public service. He was being questioned about a process his department had followed & one question was about “social media.” I can’t quote him fully but it was in the vein of, “Yes. In hindsight I probably shouldn’t have ‘liked’ that post.” He’s about my age & has served in his department for probably 35 years & he couldn’t stop himself from reflexively & emotionally reacting to something someone wrote on one of the social media platforms. His emotional reactiveness was being used to question his competence in his duties. I don’t believe he’s incompetence. I don’t believe he normally exhibits bad judgment. I do believe he found himself reacting emotionally & reflexively to a circumstance…from looking in a fogged mirror…and there was the problem.

Now…emotions aren’t bad. God wove them into our human make-up & they’re part of how we reflect the image of God. But in a sin-damaged world, our emotions are the least trustworthy things about us. So…We live with limited partial knowledge, Untrustworthy emotions, & Self-indulgent desires. You see the trouble we’re in. But Paul reassures us that the day is coming when the partial, incomplete, untrustworthy, & self-indulgent parts of us will be fully transformed by God in Christ through the eternal working of the Holy Spirit. We will “know everything completely, just as God now knows (us) completely.” I don’t know everything, but I know God will bring his work in us to completion when Christ returns.

For the Corinthians & for us that means we need to treat one another with incredible patience. Luther understood the 8th Commandment (not bearing false witness) as a challenge to “interpret our neighbour’s actions in the kindest possible way.” When we don’t know all the details…assume the best, pray for wisdom & insight, dial back the emotions, and ask God to bring that perfect clarity sooner rather than later. First Corinthians 13 is that chapter extolling the virtue of love. Too often we think of this chapter, & love itself, in billowing emotive ways, but Paul is firm in reminding us that love is a hard work that strives to see the highest & best of God’s desires for his people accomplished by his work through our lives.

May God grant his love in its fullness through & to you as we approach worship this weekend!

John

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