Word to the Wise
Tuesday, September 5, 2006 - 22nd Tuesday in Ordinary Time
[1 Corinthians 2:10B-16 and Luke 4:31-37]Now the natural man does not accept what pertains to the Spirit of God, for to him it is foolishness, and he cannot understand it, because it is judged spiritually......But we have the mind of Christ.
Our English language struggles to capture some of the ways in which St. Paul's Greek expresses the profound realities of Christian faith. There is a lot of word-play in the passage from First Corinthians. For St. Paul, the person who has been baptized becomes a "new creation" (2 Cor. 5) and thus has a new identity. Therefore their behavior has to flow from this new identity. This could be a real test in Corinth, which was a port city and played host to a variety of pagan religions as well as the usual immoral opportunities that are part and parcel of port cities anywhere. To describe the difference between believer and non-believer, Paul uses two Greek words, sarx and soma. These are occasionally translated as "flesh" and "spirit." This translation tends to reflect our Greek way of thinking. But Paul, despite his use of Greek, thought in the Middle Eastern fashion. Thus, the human person was seen not as a composite of "body" and "soul" but as a single entity. Therefore the change that takes place when a person becomes a believer is not just a change in the "soul" which leaves the "body" in an ambiguous and often adversarial position. The change is in the whole person, which enables that person to see all of life in a new way. Perhaps the closest equivalent we have in English is the term CHARACTER or OUTLOOK. Thus, we refer to some behavior as "out of character" for someone because it is not what we would expect of that person as a whole. The "Spirit" that Paul refers to is the new relationship of the person to Christ which should enable the person to see life in a completely new way - a new "character" as it were. It can be very helpful to look at our own life and, instead of picking on particular actions, look at our whole "outlook" or "character" which shapes our behavior. What is "in" or "out" of character for us? What are the patterns that are healthy or unhealthy. What kind of person am I? These kinds of questions will give us a good grasp of what Paul was trying to tell the Corinthians. Then we'll know what he's trying to tell us as well! AMEN
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