Recognizing the Tools--July 28, 2022

Recognizing the Tools--July 28, 2022

"Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases?  Do you not know that we are to judge angels--to say nothing of ordinary matters?" [1 Corinthians 6:2-3]

I've got to be honest with you: these verses feel a lot like one of those click-bait articles you'll see online that take a legitimate news story but phrase the headline in such a sensationalistic and outlandish way that it becomes very easy to misunderstand unless you read the whole thing.  For example, I saw a headline recently that said, "Scientists detect heartbeat signal coming from deep space," a title that makes it sound like astronomers have literally heard the vital signs of some living organism coming from deep space.  It would be really easy--but really wrong--to glance over that headline and take it to mean that observers have found proof of alien life in outer space.  But of course, that's not what the actual story was about; it was about a high-energy radio-wave that pulses regularly, called a repeating fast radio burst, that almost certainly comes from a particular kind of star.  So the headline is true... but really easy to misconstrue.

Now, I don't think that the apostle Paul is trying to be deceptive here, or that he's intentionally misleading anybody with this notion about judging the world.  We've been working our way through this letter for long enough, too, that I'll bet you know Paul isn't trying to sensationalize his writing like a piece of online click-bait.  But these verses definitely belong in the category of headlines that make you do a double-take or spit water out of your mouth when you read them.  And if we were going to be the kind of irresponsible readers who take a verse or two out of context to suit our purposes [which is a terrible way to read, but also a pretty common one among church-folk, to be honest], this passage would be ripe for misunderstanding.

Almost every other word here is loaded with possible ways we could get terribly confused.  We could misunderstand "the saints" for some special sub-group of especially virtuous Christians, and take it to mean that there is a special council of super-Christians who will govern the world like something out of a conspiracy theory [this is an easy mistake to make when we refer to some special Christians from history with the title "saint" when we rarely do that for one another today].  Or we could take this as Paul's endorsement that Christians right now should oversee the world's governments and that the institutional church should be a higher authority than secular leaders--and from there, it would be an easy [but disastrous] leap to make to say that Paul is directing Christians now to seize power from civil governments with violence because he says we will "judge the world."  And then the whole notion about judging angels throws me for a loop--Paul asks this question rhetorically, assuming his readers are already well aware that one day they will "judge angels," as though there is a lot of pending litigation among the heavenly host.  Any one of those phrases is an off-ramp into outlandish conclusions and bad theology.  So, please, let's be careful not to take any of them.

Ok, if we are trying to avoid missing the point of these verses, what's this actually all about?  First, a reminder of context.  We saw in yesterday's verse that Paul is now going to be addressing the situation of church folks taking their disputes to the local civil courts for lawsuits, rather than resolving them within the community.  His point here seems to be that the Christian community is a better venue for dealing with our conflict than taking someone to a civil court.  That's where this business about one day "judging the world" and "judging angels" comes in.  Even if it seems odd to us, Paul and his readers seem to already have been familiar with the idea that in the new creation, we'll be part of overseeing God's redeemed world.  And so, if we'll one day be tasked with adjudicating and supervising the new heavens and new earth, we might as well get used to resolving disputes and healing conflicts right now in ordinary situations.

I don't know about you, but my immediate reaction to that business about angels and judging the world to come is to stop and ask, "Wait--what kinds of conflicts would need to be resolved in glory?  Why would angels need anyone to mediate a dispute for them--do they even have disagreements?"  And I've got to tell you, I just don't have any good answers for those questions.  I tend to assume that in glory, we won't be petty and selfish anymore that we would get hung up on a fight over property lines or inheritances anymore.  I can't imagine anyone having an argument over which way the toilet paper goes on the roll, or the need for polarized political parties.  And I just don't have even the foggiest notion of why angels would need someone to render a verdict or resolve an argument for them.  But maybe I don't have to understand those things to get Paul's point for the here and now.

Whatever our existence is like in the new creation, both Paul and Jesus seem to envision a restored and redeemed humanity returned to the role God intended for us in the beginning--to be stewards and servant-guardians of all of creation, like gardeners overseeing the garden, which is a role of supervision and leadership.  I don't know what that will look like, but I get the idea.  I can hold on to that hope that God's intention for a redeemed humanity to take our rightful place alongside God's own care for creation to nurture, shape, and delight in the world, like a gardener deciding how to train the vines, or where to prune the grapes, or how to arrange the zinnias and marigolds--except on a cosmic scale.  And I can get the idea that if one day the glorified Lord Jesus will appoint you and me to oversee some corner of that new Garden of Creation, then sure, we had better get some practice at leadership and oversight now.  If God thinks we are worthy to help in supervising the new creation, we are surely up to the task of helping one another resolve disputes in the present moment where we are.

And so, to come back around to this day and this life, Paul's point is to say we as the Christian community really are equipped and able to help one another to resolve their disputes and heal broken relationships.  If the moment someone else has a problem we shrug them off and say, "Sounds like you need to take them to court," we have let down our friends and shirked our responsibility to be instruments of renewal and restoration right now.  If we think we are too busy or too important to be bothered with helping friends to reconcile and restore a broken relationship, it says something about how our priorities have gotten out of whack.  And if we think we don't have the skill or credentials to help them to set things right, Paul is here to tell us that we indeed have all we need in Christ to help one another resolve our disagreements and mend fences with one another. 

In a culture like ours that tends to professionalize everything--making it seem like every problem requires a paid counselor rather than a circle of good friends, or that every argument has to be fought with lawyers rather than with honest give-and-take--maybe we need to be reminded that we do have what it takes to help resolve conflicts, if we dare to use the skills at hand.  We have the wisdom to discern a good and right resolution, and we have the right tools in our toolboxes to work together.  Sometimes we just need a reminder to recognize we have them.

Lord Jesus, help us to see the tools, wisdom, and insights you have given us already to deal with the challenges and conflicts of daily life.