A Corinthian in Quarantine

Sometime south of five in the morning (four-thirty?), I’m lying in bed when I hear a noise. Seconds before I register what’s happened, my fuzzy sublingual thoughts flutter. In the pre-dawn dark, my sheets are somehow the softest thing I’ve ever felt. Cozily inert, at any moment I could lapse back into dreaming. But then it sinks in. My son is crying. And not just fussing, but full-on, I’m-awake, I-need-mom, crying. My denial ratchets up to frustration, frustration boils into rage, and rage cools into mopey self-pity. Though I have been up in the night nursing him three or four times already, I rise. Walking to his room I think the following — not super poetic — thoughts: I love sleep. I need sleep. I deserve sleep. 

Most days, these days, my thoughts follow a similar train. Like many of you, I’m on week seven of sheltering-in-place, at home with my kids, all-day-every-day. With adoring grandparents and attentive preschool teachers kept away by the coronavirus quarantine and a husband kept busy by work, it falls to me to care for my kiddos. And I’m tired. So very tired. As the weeks wear on and fatigue sets in, I’m noticing a widening chasm between what I want to do (lie on the couch, eat cake, stress-read the New Yorker) and what I’m called to do (instruct my children, feed my family, model the gospel). And it has become easy, sitting in this chasm, to think about my rights, to think about what I deserve. “I work hard,” I think, “I deserve some ‘me’ time.” “I deserve kids who obey instead of whining.” Or, my favorite, “I deserve to drink my coffee in silence.”

I’m going to go ahead and call it divine timing then, that in this season, my small group has been reading through 1 Corinthians. We’ve made it through the first 10 chapters so far. In reading this letter, I’m remembering — slowly, because I have a stubborn heart — that my life’s work as a Christian does not consist in getting what I think I deserve, in me exercising my rights, but rather in honoring and protecting and even sacrificing myself for the rights of others.

Despite the differences of time and place, the culture to which Paul is writing is recognizable enough to me. It’s not too different from my own. Corinth was privileged, morally-permissive, and self-consciously intellectual. A bustling metropolis, a port-city with port-city morality, a hot-spot both for the worship of love and sex — Corinth featured a temple to the goddess Aphrodite, and consorting with temple prostitutes was normal behavior — and the worship of the liberated mind. Though located in Greece, Corinth was a Roman colony, and citizenship formed an integral part in the Corinthians’ sense of self. Romans thought of themselves as the only truly “free” people, placing a premium on the liberties of its citizens.

Paul addresses a ton of problems within the church, but it seems to me that most have a common root: Corinthian Christians lived to satisfy themselves, acting as if they had no obligation to each other. There’s the man sleeping with his stepmom, an offense so gross and so brazen, Paul says, that unbelievers would blush to do such a thing. Nonetheless, the man felt justified in doing so because his version of “freedom in Christ” exempted him from social and moral norms. Another man was suing his Christian brother, entrusting his grievance to the authority of the Roman satellite courts instead of seeking conciliation. Of course, he had every right to do this as a Roman citizen. And then there is the somewhat byzantine discussion about eating meat sacrificed to temple idols. Some in the church felt it immoral to eat what was essentially leftovers from pagan rituals (N. T. Wright points out these believers probably once ate in tandem with having sex with temple prostitutes, and therefore the meat was a triggering reminder of their old, sin-filled lives). Anyway, the people in the “pro-meat” camp thought those in the “anti-meat” camp weren’t being open-minded enough. Meat is just meat, they said, and idols are just idols, so it’s totally okay to eat. The church at Corinth was just a hot mess of self-justified decadence and bickering. And, if I’m honest, I relate to these struggles much more than I’d like to.

Interestingly, when he talks about each of these misfires, Paul focuses less on the ramifications for the individual sinner than on the damage their actions did to the church as a whole. The man caught in sexual sin? Paul says, if he won’t give up this habit, don’t let him hang around. Soon everyone will think what he’s doing is fine, and the corrupted purity of the church will destroy many lives. The man who is suing his brother? Better to let himself be wronged and cheated. Why put trust in pagan authorities instead of mutually submitting to each other and to Christ? And what of those of “weak conscience” who won’t eat meat sacrificed to idols? If seeing others in the congregation eating throws them into spiritual agony, isn’t it better simply for everyone to refrain? On all counts, Paul insists, Christians need to think about how their actions — the exercise of their rights — affect other people. His conclusion? It is far better to lay down your rights than to compromise your brothers and sisters. 

It needs hardly to be said, but this way of thinking about liberty radically contradicts what the world offers. The world encourages you to put yourself first. To “treat yourself.” To put on your own oxygen mask before helping another. Well-meant as they may be, I bend these phrases to selfish ends. They are the words I remember, conveniently, when I’m sick of serving other people. Paul’s advice is different, and tough. Instead of giving into your body’s desires, instead of insisting on your own way, “give [your] body rough treatment, and make it [your] slave, in case, after announcing the message to others, [you yourself] should end up disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:27 N. T. Wright’s translation). Wright clarifies, “the body needs to be brought into submission, into ‘slavery.’” This means that “[a]ll the much-boasted ‘freedom’ and ‘rights’ that some in Corinth were so keen on must give way before the needs of the work of the gospel. He concludes, “many things the body wants to do, has a right (in theory) to do, and is ‘free’ to do, must be denied” (NT Wright, Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians, 119). And Paul isn’t being some macho gnostic grunt, he is, in fact, following the highest example of Christ. Christ, “[w]ho, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:6-8). My only hope, my only health, must be to look to the example of Paul, and to Paul’s example, Christ Jesus. The more I fix my eyes on Jesus, the less fixated I become with my own needs. In beholding him, I become less beholden to my desires. 

So what does this look like practically for a weary mother trying to make it through quarantine? For me, I think, it means not resenting my children simply because, in their weakness, they need me. It means thinking twice before I grumble about the work God has given me to do, because June will learn from me what it means to “work at [whatever you do] with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men” (Colossians 4:23). It means repenting unceasingly instead of holding rigidly aloof and insisting on my privacy. It means playing with Jonah when he whines and fusses, instead of sulking that my baby is behaving like a baby. It means laying down my cherished right to an aesthetically-pleasing and socially-relaxed dinner in the service of loving and feeding two loud and messy people. When tempers run hot and a fight breaks out, it means being the first to lay down my sword. When my children tantrum and defy me, it means demonstrating, hour by hour, how to submit in love. When I have come to the end of myself — and I get there very quickly these days — it means saying the shortest and best prayer I know, “Lord, I am weak. Be my strength.”

(By the way, please hear me when I say: rest is important. God did not create us to run like machines that never break down. In my pride, I often insist that I’m capable of holding it all together without God’s help. I think what Paul is talking about when he’s advocating for bringing the body into submission is to acknowledge both the body’s waywardness and our creaturely needs for sleep, sustenance, and human connection. This is a recognition of our dependence, not our rights. I often remind myself that Jesus gave us the example of total sacrifice while also tenderly inviting us to cast all our cares upon him.) 

On that recent morning that my son woke me early, I received an unexpected benediction. As I held my sleep-heavy child in my arms and rocked him, the sun rose with undeniable gentleness. Rarely, of my own volition, do I get up to see what then I saw. Bands of shell-pink and downy blue light bled on the horizon. By degrees, I could see the outline of my garden emerge from the mist. Quietly at first, and then with great joy, a clutch of robins called and a chickadee sang in my neighbor’s catalpa tree. Again I was stilled, brought by obligation, by the laying down of my body, back into the presence of God.  

- Lisa Elmers

For further reading, check out: Wright, N. T. Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003.