"Did Paul Think the Corinthians Were Bad People?"

 A thoughtful listener of the New Testament readings in church asked precisely this question.

 After all, Paul writes to the Corinthians things such as:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Cor 13:1-3)

 Sounds to me that Paul was speaking about the average group of churchgoers. People who are prone to think that lining up to receive a wafer (and sometimes a sip of wine} makes you holy. Most churchgoing Christians today don't speak in tongues nor do they claim prophetic powers, as they did back then, but the effect is the same: the trend is to think that the point is to show off churchiness.

 Bad people? No. But certainly hypocritical.

 This is why I don't like to start talking about the New Testament speaking of Paul, or about today's professed Christians.

 That's not the beginning of the New Testament story at all.

 Paul was not the first apostle, nor were Corinthians the first followers of the Way preached by a Nazarene woodworker who rose from the dead.

 Although Paul may have written what were chronologically the first texts that collected into what came to be known as the New Testament, the ideas presupposed a gospel story and preaching that had not yet been committed to paper.

 That's why I like to start with the gospels. To which I shall turn in my next entry.