Immoderation

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.   Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.  Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air.  No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.  (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).

I cannot help but think that Paul was an immoderate man.  First he is a Jew’s Jew, chasing the nutty followers of Jesus Christ from synagogue to synagogue with orders from the Sanhedrin to put them to death, and literally holding the coats of the men doing the stoning.  Then, in a blink of an eye, he switches sides and is just as adamantly preaching it the other way—because he claims to have seen Jesus in a vision on the road!   If Paul were writing a column for the Charlotte Observer today I think he might be labeled as an extremist.  And judgmental.  And (the worst sin we have now) a hypocrite.  We might even threaten to stop reading his description of love at every single wedding we have.  Naah.  We wouldn’t go that far.  That would be extremist of us.

What is all this wackiness anyway in 1 Corinthians 9 about “strict”  training, “fighting”,  and Paul beating his body to make it his “slave”.  There’s three things right there that are just downright immoderate.  Everybody knows it’s not nice to be strict.  And fighting?  We’re not supposed to be doing that.  Give peace a chance Brother.  Be a lover not a fighter.  And slave?  That’s just harsh.  The mere use of that word might harm someone who doesn’t like the mere use of that word.  How about a little moderation?  Do we really need to work up that much sweat to follow Jesus? 

It’s funny that Paul chose to insert his epistle of love (the stuff we probably won’t stop reading in weddings) in 1 Corinthians 13—only four chapters after all this extremism about strictness and fighting in the name of preaching the gospel.  And he seems just as immoderate about love as he is about everything else.  “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”  (v.3).  Huh?   It’s almost as if the guy thinks love is more important than anything else—even charity!  What a nut.