A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [83]
For where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completion comes, the partial is cast aside. When I was an infant, I talked like an infant, I thought like an infant, and I reasoned like an infant. When I became a full-grown adult, I cast aside infantile things. Now we see but a poor 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. And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. Follow the way of love. (13:8–14:1, author’s translation)
There’s no maturity without love, Paul says. In comparison with love, other things seem childish, a partial reflection in a dirty mirror.12 Paul makes a fascinating move as he concludes his letter, recalling his very first play on the word “know”: “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (2:2). The crucifixion seems to expose Jesus as foolish, weak, lowly, and despised (1:21–23), a failure in the eyes of the “one who is wise, …the scribe, …the debater of this age.” But now we see that the lowly way of Christ, the vulnerable way of love, is the only way of life. And so in the end Paul brings us from the humbling theme of crucifixion to an inspiring celebration of the resurrection (15:1–11), which anticipates the ultimate triumph of the kingdom of God (15:24, 50, 57) and which produces in us a constructive kind of knowledge:
Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (15:58)
As is often the case with Paul, this seeming conclusion is one of many, followed by this one: “Keep alert, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love” (16:13). And then comes this one, as Paul takes the writing instrument from his scribe: “I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand…. My love be with all of you in Christ Jesus. Amen.” In each case, love has the last word.
Love and knowledge are not opposed in Paul’s mind: love and so-called knowledge or pseudoknowledge may be, but for Paul, love seems to be the truest form of knowledge. Yes, you can know about something by critiquing, dissecting, and analyzing it, by studying it as an object with you as the subject. But to truly know something, you must love it, bond with it, embrace it, not as an object, but as another subject. (Does anyone doubt that Jane Goodall knows chimpanzees more deeply through loving them than she could any other way?)13
The church, then, in Paul’s mind, must be above all a school of love. If it’s not that, it’s nothing. Its goal is not simply to pump knowledge into people, but to train them in the “way of love,” so they may do the “work of the Lord,” empowered by the Holy Spirit, as the embodiment of Christ. Perhaps school isn’t the best metaphor, though, unless we think of a karate school or a dance school or a language school—not simply a community where you learn or learn about, but where you learn to. Not simply a place where you hear lectures and amass information, but a community where you see living examples of Christlikeness and experience inner formation. If taken to heart, this simple shift in metaphors from house of worship or religious institution to what my friend Mark Scandrette calls a “Jesus dojo”14 could catalyze a true renaissance in our church life.
What would it mean if we were willing to sacrifice—or at least subordinate—everything else for this one goal of forming Christlike people, people who live in the way of love, the way of peacemaking, the way of the kingdom of God, the way of Jesus, the way of the Spirit? Why should people go to the trouble of being part of a church if it does a thousand other things well, but falters in this one primary calling?15 How does spiritual formation in the way of Jesus