1 Corinthians 6
1-4And how dare you take each other to court! When you think you have been wronged, does it make any sense to go before a court that knows nothing of God's ways instead of a family of Christians? The day is coming when the world is going to stand before a jury made up of followers of Jesus. If someday you are going to rule on the world's fate, wouldn't it be a good idea to practice on some of these smaller cases? Why, we're even going to judge angels! So why not these everyday affairs? As these disagreements and wrongs surface, why would you ever entrust them to the judgment of people you don't trust in any other way?
5-6I say this as bluntly as I can to wake you up to the stupidity of what you're doing. Is it possible that there isn't one levelheaded person among you who can make fair decisions when disagreements and disputes come up? I don't believe it. And here you are taking each other to court before people who don't even believe in God! How can they render justice if they don't believe in the God of justice?
7-8These court cases are an ugly blot on your community. Wouldn't it be far better to just take it, to let yourselves be wronged and forget it? All you're doing is providing fuel for more wrong, more injustice, bringing more hurt to the people of your own spiritual family.
9-11Don't you realize that this is not the way to live? Unjust people who don't care about God will not be joining in his kingdom. Those who use and abuse each other, use and abuse sex, use and abuse the earth and everything in it, don't qualify as citizens in God's kingdom. A number of you know from experience what I'm talking about, for not so long ago you were on that list. Since then, you've been cleaned up and given a fresh start by Jesus, our Master, our Messiah, and by our God present in us, the Spirit.
12Just because something is technically legal doesn't mean that it's spiritually appropriate. If I went around doing whatever I thought I could get by with, I'd be a slave to my whims.
13You know the old saying, "First you eat to live, and then you live to eat"? Well, it may be true that the body is only a temporary thing, but that's no excuse for stuffing your body with food, or indulging it with sex. Since the Master honors you with a body, honor him with your body!
14-15God honored the Master's body by raising it from the grave. He'll treat yours with the same resurrection power. Until that time, remember that your bodies are created with the same dignity as the Master's body. You wouldn't take the Master's body off to a whorehouse, would you? I should hope not.
16-20There's more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, "The two become one." Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never "become one." There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for "becoming one" with another. Or didn't you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don't you see that you can't live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.
I won't elaborate on the discussion, or the application, here. It was too much to summarize, anyway. Can I just say, though....I'm so thankful for good teaching that hits the soul, not just the mind.
*We are halfway through Charlotte's Web at home, and it still makes me teary. Kaela listens while smiling the entire time. The word pictures are just so....accessible. Beautiful. Sensory. I can almost smell the timothy and clover in the humid evening barn air.
*I finished reading the Children's Illustrated Classic version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to my class yesterday, and they were nearly all teary. Our thinking changed as we read the book. We always thought Frankenstein's monster was a monster, from what we knew from Scooby Doo, or those old spooky cartoon spoofs. Now his plight seems like one of a dear friend to us. We pitied him--created, abandoned, left to fend for himself, lonely and ostracized. Do we have a responsibility to nurture that which we create? Are there ethical implications for people even now? Is the monster to blame? Or Dr. Frankenstein? We'll be discussing that one for awhile, I have a feeling. Blew their minds. Kids who aren't even mine were asking to go to the restroom, then sneaking in to listen. Such fun! Such heavy themes--and they got it! Very cool.
*Today I began my all-time children's favorite with them: The Watsons Go To Birmingham, 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis. I LOVE this book for 5th graders. I love how it makes them think about the world, and culture, and those who look different from themselves. I love that the characters seem like people we've known our whole lives. I love that it makes history relevant, and makes children aware. Some of my favorite writing is that which entertains the reader and makes him laugh, but leaves him with a nugget of sadness. Or reality. This book NAILS that. So much to unpack.
That's all. Just enjoying living in a literary world today. I'm supposed to be brainstorming tonight things that I want to be sure that every kindergartner in our district knows/gets from his educational career before he enters the real world at age 18. I got all soap-boxy on the need to develop literate, thinking people.
Hmmm....Guess I'll work on the assignment now.
No comments:
Post a Comment