Nicole Starling reflected on the way she and her husband found themselves accommodating their behaviour to that of the next-door neighbours they had round for a meal. Her sane approach to 1 Corinthians 9 provides a healthy counter-balance to the typical over-reading and over-application of this passage:
- Maybe the array of terms that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 (“Jews”; “those under the law”; “those outside the law”; “the weak”, etc.) is not really a long list of examples of various cultural differences to be overcome by contextualization. Maybe in Paul’s situation, it all boils down to one issue: the impact of old covenant food and purity laws on who he is able to sit down and share a meal with.
- Maybe the main application of that passage… is not about trying to look and sound more like my neighbours when we sit around the table talking; maybe it’s simply about overcoming the kind of preferences and prejudices that would stop me from sitting around a table with them at all.
- Maybe I’ve been hiding behind “all things to all people” as an excuse for not obeying “let your light shine before others.”
- Maybe I should focus a bit more on having dinner with the neighbours more often, and focus a bit less on trying not to look like the Flanders family when I do.
- Maybe I should pay a bit more attention to loving my neighbours, and pay a bit less attention to looking like them.
Source: Nicole Starling, “Contextualization vs. chameleonization” in The Briefing 371 (August 2009) 8
Posted April 9, 2011
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