We Have a Narcissist Problem (1 Corinthians 1:18-25)

We have a narcissist problem, and, apparently, always have.

The more time that I spend with Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, I become more impressed with their ability to presage the struggles of the modern church. One of the core pillars of the conflict between Paul and the Corinthian church centers on authority. Or, more to the point, does Paul really have authority? Here in 1 Corinthians 1, Paul pushes back against their expectations of what a teacher of great truth will look like. He chides the Greeks for wanting their great and eloquent debaters, “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (1 Corinthians 1:20 NRSV) As a city connected to a couple of different ports of call, Corinth, in particular, got a lot of these great philosophical speakers passing through, and it seems that the Corinthians congregation has found their own more debonaire, better spoken, expectation meeting teacher, Apollos. He gave the upper class portion of the Corinthian congregation what they wanted: eloquence, credentials, and all the correct cultural hallmarks.

Everyone, even Paul, seem to agree that Paul may be a great writer but not a great speaker, “I may be untrained in speech, but not in knowledge; certainly in every way and in all things we have made this evident to you.” (2 Corinthians 11:6 NRSV) Instead, he makes the point that it shouldn’t matter. Throughout the letters and certainly here in 1 Corinthians 1, Paul challenges the Corinthians to turn their eyes away from cultural expectations and instead seek the deeper more paradoxical truth, “but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” (1 Corinthians 1:23-25 NRSV) God’s wisdom doesn’t rely on rising to human expectations. A crucified body typically signifies defeat at the hands of Rome. To turn this imperial torture device into a hallmark of salvation and triumph reveals God’s transforming power to push far beyond the normal logic of this world and reveal a far greater power. Still, the Corinthians wanted this truth related in the normal wrapper with all the correct trappings of Greek success.

We keep stepping on this particular rake, to our own detriment. Flash forwards a couple of thousand years, and we still want our religious teachers to radiate the right aura of success. The only the nature of said aura has changed in the intervening centuries. We no longer seek Greek eloquence.  21 century church judges its truth speakers on how big a crowd that they can draw.  We essentially say to pastors, “By all means, speak the truth of God, but do so in the way that brings the numbers.” To truly succeed, it matters less how true one’s message might be and more how many bottoms will place themselves in seats to hear it. We cheerfully ignore that the largest crowd sizes in the New Testament top out at a handful of thousand, and that Jesus and the early apostles spent most of their lives working with individuals and small groups. Just like our Corinthian forbears, we careful avoid the reality that none of the heroes of the New Testament, Jesus included, ever looked particularly “successful.” In the economy, companies make the profits go up. In church world, the pastor makes the number on attendees go up. Surely, a message with so many people responding to it must be true and blessed and divine wisdom.

It is sometimes, maybe even most of the time, but occasionally, we hand the keys to the kingdom over to people who are far better at getting the numbers than speaking the truth. The secular press can feel quick to jump all over the latest megachurch pastor with the moral failing, toxic church culture, cultish levels of control over their members, misappropriation of funds, or the ranting of toxic, hateful, and insane things from God’s pulpit., but our church cultures made them possible. Just in the past month, Aaron Ivey, now former worship pastor of Austin Stone Community Church, had to step down because of inappropriate and explicit communication with congregants and predatory manipulation of a minor. This guy had all the trappings: a write up in the Washington Post, a successful podcast, on top of a front facing role a huge congregation. Too often to count, we tolerate the behavior because these folks sure could draw a crowd, and only stop, when it becomes too obvious, or the blowback becomes too intense. When the desire for church leadership boils down to an ability to project earthly success, we make ourselves vulnerable to some downright earthly results.

These guys committed their owns sins, and to the Corinthains’ credit, Apollos seems to have been preaching God’s truth. They simply failed to recognize truth in a less “successful” looking vessel, and we got so obsessed with bigness that we equated it with truth. Mike Cosper reaches this conclusion by the end of his investigative podcast into the failings and excesses of Mark Driscoll, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. He points out our collective guilt for wanting big, not always caring how we got there, and setting people like Driscoll up to wreak havoc. Cosper also opens every episode of the show with a recognition that the story of Mars Hill and by extension the Church universal is “also about the mystery of God, working in broken places.” Thank God that the foolish, paradoxical, wisdom of God breaks through even our love of earthly success. In the places where we let the brokenness lead, God weaves in redemption.

That doesn’t get us off the hook. I wrestle with this a lot. I got to where I am in life in part on the back of my ability to entertain a crowd. I’ve been doing that my whole life. I only started preaching ten years ago. For me, it’s a constant spiritual discipline (that I don’t always succeed at) to hold myself accountable to seek to speak truth and not just put on a show, to remember that God does the real work, and to reject the idea that I’m defined by my crowd size. For us all, we need to keep in mind that one of the greatest writers of Christian truth of all time, Paul, had to defend his bona fides because he didn’t look successful, that we would probably pass him by for similar reasons, and that our key symbol of faith is a Roman execution method. God’s wisdom doesn’t look right to our eyes because we need God to help give us better eyes.