The Good Portion

My childhood home was a place of conflict. My room was my retreat. It’s where I did my homework, drew pictures, read books, ate my dinner, and watched TV. Alone. I felt safest there, alone, or sometimes with a friend. I’ve spent my life since trying and failing to find safe people and places. Looking around, I see I’m not the only one. Social anxiety is epidemic. The American ideal of rugged individualism and self-determination has given way to a culture of rugged trampling and being trampled. Thirteen years ago, after a lifetime in and out of churches, I came to Christ. Since then I have watched Christians leave the church, one-by-one. A few rejected the faith outright. Others expressed their frustration or dissatisfaction with church. Some had been abused. I am sympathetic to them all. “Me and Jesus” is a siren’s song. I, too, have been dissatisfied and frustrated. I, too, have witnessed and experienced abuse by Christians. I, too, have been tempted to give up on church ...

Paul wasn’t like the celebrity preachers the Corinthians were welcoming into their churches. He didn’t carry letters of recommendation boasting of his prominence. He wasn’t famous for his flamboyant preaching. Also unlike them, he had “renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways” and refused “to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word” (2 Cor 4.2). The Corinthians were prone to confusing price with value, arrogance with greatness, impressive vocabulary with true wisdom, charm with love. This made them easy prey for false apostles, “peddlers of God’s word,” who saw preaching as a way to promote their own wealth and status. These peddlers abused Paul’s converts spiritually, financially, possibly even physically, and the church welcomed it (2 Cor 11.20). Paul, on the other hand, like an ordinary clay pot holding the world’s greatest treasure, came to Corinth humble, weak, covered with scars. He arrived without pomp but carried in his heart and in his message “the light of ...