"If anything can go wrong, it will." This tongue-in-cheek principle, known as Murphy's Law, is cited by economists, sports team owners, and big-city mayors. Human nature somehow guarantees that nothing turns out quite the way it's supposed to. And the church at Corinth provides a darkly shining example of Murphy's Law.
To be sure, Corinthian Christians started out with the odds stacked against them. Imagine a church composed of converted idolators, adulterers, male prostitutes, thieves, drunkards, and swindlers (6:9-11). The church made up of people from such backgrounds soon encountered a thicket of problems. Paul faced a huge challenge: for one thing, he had to convince these people of the immorality of sexual activities that had been a part of everyday worship under their old religion.
Local and Universal Issues
First Corinthians is Paul's careful response to that thicket of problems, some of which had been posed to him as questions in a letter (7:1). Many of his answers relate directly to Corinth's local situation. In that culture, as in Muslim countrues today, whether or not to wear a veil was a major issue for women (11:3-10). Eating meat sacrificed to pagan idols also disturbed some new Christians (10:18-33).
But other problems discussed here turn up in every culture: divisions in the church, lawsuits, immorality, the single life, the extent of Christian freedoms, differing views of worship, and the place of tongues-speaking and other spiritual gifts. Not every breakdown in Corinth will recur in churches today, but Paul's principles apply to our own |
