Chapter 2 - Pauline LOVE and community's "bitter" LOVE
1 Corinthians 13 is the essential teaching of Paul about love. We find here the same features of love as in Mt 5:38-48. So we can say, that this is not only Pauline view or interpretation about love, but he delivers the same values to his readers, as did Matthew. This is the passage, where we may find assertion. which kind of love Paul actually upheld and which was for sure also the base of success in his missionary field. It is thus the base, the starting point, to make any further interpretations about love in his letters.
It is but interesting for me, how valueless has our community treated 1 Corinthians 13. Only three times there is mentioned this passage in community's topics, which are put on the web.
First of them is in the topic "God is love", where community points at the fact, that love has something to do with truth:
"Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth " (1 Cor 13:6)
They describe further, that this love is not always accompanied by good feelings. In other words, community sheds the light on love as to something, that is not always easy to accept, admit. The further comment to 1 Cor 13:6 follows there as thus:
"A doctor may prescribe medicine which tastes bitter, but he does it because he knows it will make the patient well. It would not be love not to give it to the patient just because he wants to please the patient or make them feel good for the moment. Likewise true love gives a person what they need most, and not necessarily what they would prefer."
However, if we read the whole chapter (1 Cor 13), which Paul dedicates wholly to love, it seems rather, that this kind of love mustn't be hard to accept at all. If one loves really somebody with that kind of love. There is nothing in 1 Cor 13, that gives the signal to us: "It would be hard to accept, admit". So, I think I'm not unjust, when I say, that the word 'truth' in 1 Cor 13:6 is the only one, to which community tries to engraft his own packet of doctrine about 'assessing love' (which about you can read more in chapter 4).
Second time occurs the passage from 1 Cor 13 in the German website about Martin Luther ("Martin Luthers Lehren"), concerning the topic about exclusion, which is described in 1 Cor 5:11-13 about drunkards et cetera, whom Paul suggests to expel from the church. Our community asks rhetorically, what about patience and hope, which is described in 1 Cor 13? Community sees the answer in the light of the passage 1 Cor 5:5:
"...hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord."
Community explains further to this passage, that exclusion could still be help for sinner, in order to see his state in front of God and sinner could still repent. That kind of 'loving exclusion' has become in our community quite popular, especially in recent years. The effect of that kind of loving shock-therapy is rather questionable. Many excluded ones had suicide-thoughts after exclusion. Questionable is also, whether community really had hope to see them coming back again, because those, who were excluded, were off the subject in daily discourse. Also when they excluded me, I asked them, whether I can take with me the Bible, which I used at most in the community. They were astonished and asked me: "Why?" I don't remember the cases either, that we prayed for excluded ones, that they would repent and rejoin us. Exclusions had become an ordinary and pragmatic procedure by this time I was still in the community, I can only imagine the myriad of those, who were excluded before me. We didn't mention their names. Even if somebody mentioned something concerning excluded ones, then this topic was rather taboo.
Third time occurs the passage about 1 Cor 13 casually, in the footnote under the topic "Christians' heavenly hope". 1 Cor 13:12 is not mentioned as focusing on love, but in relation to the final fulfilment of our faith, when we see God face to face in Heaven, and not in this world (this short topic is created mostly because of Jehovah' Witnesses' false teaching at this issue).
That's all we can find from community's public materials about the usage of 1 Corinthians 13. Basically, only the first quotation in the topic "God is love" explains a bit the content of verse concerning love (in other two cases 1 Cor 13 has rather secondary function). And even in the first quotation community doesn't see love as a value in itself, and isn't satisfied with the mild concept of love described there. Community connects the love with their connotation about 'occasional' bitter truth, expanding it to the whole 1 Cor 13 about love. This love, which is 'not always companied by good feelings', acquires by practicing upon the outsiders rather almost invariably the form of 'bitter truth', 'bitter love'. In this way makes community empty the whole teaching about love in 1 Cor 13. We can say, that community's teaching about love has not the base on 1 Cor 13. Community avoids this passage so evidently. Even though all our community's articles in whatever topic are heavy-laden of the word 'love', their ability to use the passage of 1 Cor 13 for argumentations is quite scanty.
J.A.'s 79 pages long apology to Gerald Kluge (PDF file in German), full of Bible quotations, makes no mention about 1 Corinthians 13, but uses abundantly the word 'love' as an answer and reason to many Kluge's erected questions and critique. 'Love pushed us to do this and that'. The word 'love' (in German: Liebe, lieb-) occurs there as a whole word or as a part of compound in all 130 times.
So - why does J.A. and the rest of our community not like to use 1 Corinthians 13?
I think, it is not because these things in 1 Cor 13 are very self-evident or easy to follow. This kind of love mentioned in 1 Cor 13 is easy to admit, if we are receivers of that loving attitude. But this love is not easy for those, who try to follow the principles of love described there and love others with this love. It is easy to socialize, when somebody is kind and patient. But the hard thing is to be patient, kind, to protect and trust others, and not to be envious, rude.
All these features do not fit so well with our community's standard about 'assessing love', which firstly points the finger at the false doctrines of the evangelised ones. There is actually nothing in 1 Cor 13, that would support our community's type of 'truth seeking love', which 'says the truth' and dissapears, when the discussion doesn't show progress within a few minutes and their 'loving' evangelisation is detected by church leaders.
Actually, I'm a bit scared, what picture get unbelievers about Christian belief concerning love, when they read the topics of our community's website, which describe all the basic Christian beliefs, delivering almost nothing from the Paul's concept about love depicted in 1 Cor 13...
Love is nothing separate from others. At least it is not something very special, when somebody or some religious group loves only himself/herself/itself. It is said not only in other denominations, but in our community, too. I think so. Love is more senseful, when it has at least two parts. Concerning the Christian mission, also the outsiders must be able to perceive the love, which is patient, kind, mild. That kind of love, which is described in 1 Cor 13, is not perceived as love only from one party, but from both parties. What's wrong then, when community has experienced rather resistance from outside? Why don't they "recognize our love", as we used to say? If community would say, that other churches or unbelievers don't understand, what is love like, and it would be occasionaly like unpleasant medicine, then let's go back and discover again, what meaning and impression gives us Paul's concept of love in 1 Cor 13 and whether his concept about love agrees with community's one:
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud." (1 Cor 13:4)
We boasted, that we have in the community such a unity, that is missing in other denominations. Being honest, we were proud of our unique community. Everything in our behaviour indicated, that we looked down on others. Other denominations weren't equal partners. They were false teachers and had to listen to us, and not contrariwise. Oh, it was really fun for us to discuss the whole evening long about topics related to others' false teachings. I remember also after 6 years very well, how much pleasure it gave for me and for one of our sisters to make fun about pope John Paul II. In one point I didn't agree: I think, pope didn't have so guileful eyes in the frontcover of a book about him.
"It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." (1 Cor 13:5)
Concerning dishonoring others I'll not give here any more examples. I think it is needless. Dishonoring was our way to 'show someone's state in front of God'. As I said, love is not something perceived only by one party, but by both ones. Evangelising other churches, we didn't honour their freedom and choice to live their life according to their understanding about Christian faith. What if Jehovah's Witnesses came to us and would recruit members out of our community? Surely they would have shared us their love and would have said the ultimate 'truth' about the heavenly hope.
In my native language Bible there is expressed thus: "it doesn't remind the bad things". That is but, what our community is seeking both inside and outside the community. Our 'encouragements' were generally rootings around our intime sphere, frequent askings about sins ('fights'). Evangelising other churches we had in mind the false teachings of them, to speak about. All our topics we spoke about other churches' doctrines, were only with the aim to find something wrong, to disprove their teachings, and not to find something useful, right and worth for putting into practice in our own little community. However, not always is community's critique towards outsiders full of bitter sarcasm, 'saying the truth' directly. There exists also topic about islam (True Islam - True Devotion) in our community's website, which shows certain ability for subtle Socratic irony. So, have a cup of tea and enjoy the topic about islam.
"Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth." (1 Cor 13:6)
As I mentioned, this verse seems to be the only one in 1 Cor 13, which could be integrated to community's concept of 'assessing love'. It would be strange, when community wouldn't have done any attempts to hook some tidbits of the passage, which speaks at most about love. Unfortunately our community neglects the first part of the verse: love does not delight in evil.
"It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." (1 Cor 13:7)
How did we protect outsiders? In which way we showed trust towards outsiders? We didn't want even to introduce ourselves, our name etc. We evangelised incognito, because we had fear, that somebody will detect our 'loving' mission. This is not the love John is speaking about, when he says that there is no fear in love (1 John 4:18). Did apostles have fear about intrigues, that might have occured during evangelisation? Not at all. Read the missionary accounts of Luke, which describe and emphasise the way of evangelisation (Acts 5:42 Acts 9:27,28, Acts 13:46, Acts 14:3). They evangelised openly, fearlessly, publicly. When we didn't evangelise in the same way in the community, maybe we had 'lack of love', 'lack of faith', and not the outsiders? Apostles didn't have fear even to face death, but community has fear of misinterpretations and misusage of community's statements and prescious love, which mustn't be thrown carelessly to the feet of everyone.
Decide yourselves, how much base gives 1 Cor 13 here to speak about the "bitter truth", "bitter medicine", through which community tries to give bitter flavour for love, too.