Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not rejoice in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies they will cease; where there are tongues they will be stilled; where there is knowledge it will pass away.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8 NIV (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+13%3A4-8&version=NIV)
The Letter
I would be lying if I said I understood exactly what Paul wanted to tell the citizens of Corinth with this letter and with this particular passage in it. Everything has been translated over and over in a thousand different ways. Like most of the bible it is almost impossible to interpret it exactly in the way it was intended. I do know from a bit of historical research that his intention with the two letters he wrote to the Corinthians was to get them to see the error of their ways. He felt that the Greek and pagan backgrounds they had prior to converting to Christianity ( non-monogamous marriages etc) set a bad example for Christianity. He wanted to impose a greater sense of "morality" in this area. I would hazard to guess, that he wanted to impart a better understanding of what Christian love was as opposed to pagan love with this particular passage.
As far as I am concerned, it really doesn't matter why Paul wrote those words...their truth is universal even to us "New agers" whom more traditional interpreters of Paul's words may include in the list of "evildoers" addressed. :)
How it ties into Lesson Two
Regardless, the words are beautiful and full of Truth. As we embark into a better understanding of who we are...I want you to firstly focus on this line, It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. This line goes perfectly with Lesson 68 in A Course. Love holds no Grievances.
The final step necessary in getting beyond our thinking to who we really are, which btw, is Love, is to stop holding grievances. A Course says that to hold a grievance is to forget who we are. It is to deny that we were created by Love and are love.
As long as we hold any form of grievance against another human being...and lets face it, we all hold grievances against absolutely everyone in one form or another....we will never feel connected. We will never feel safe. Our sense of separation from God and from each other is perpetuated by ego's insistence that we have a reason to be upset with one another. We then put up our defenses and watch through the peek holes of these immense walls we built around ourselves for reasons to defend, reasons to attack. We collect grievances.
From self-seeking to Self-seeking
We want to remember who we are which is not "self-seeking" as the NIV translations describes Paul's words...but Self-seeking. Self is this connected unified being that we all are, The person we hold grievances against is actually a part of this Self, a part of who we are. So as long as we hold others away and apart from our little self because they "wronged us" in some way, we are not loving...and if we are not loving ...we are not being who we are: Love.
So how do we get there?
We forgive. We put down our weapons of justification and rationalization about why this person deserves our wrath or our frustration. We stop building walls between us and them. We choose, instead, to see the good in all.
That does not mean you have to like, condone or deny what the other person may have done. It simply means you look beyond the deed to the doer remembering these famous words if you have to, "They know not what they have done." So many of us do not know what we are doing...we may be sick, lost in ego, convinced we know something we do not know, forgetting and truly believe we are right and doing good. Look beyond the ego imperfection to the perfection within.
We make a choice with forgiveness regardless of what the "wrongdoer" may have done or not done, to look at them in friendship, in brotherhood, in peace. Without weapons, without walls, without defenses and without attack there will be nothing separating us from them. We will then and only then be connecting to form the Self. And it is the Self that we are seeking, is it not?
To find yourself stop finding fault and start loving instead.
I will not look at another's bowl intent on finding fault: a training observed.
The Buddha ( http://www.realbuddhaquotes.com/)
All is well in my world.
References/ Recommended Reads
ACIM (2007) Lesson 68, pages 115-116.A Course in Miracles: Combined Volume: Third Edition. Mill Valley: Foundation for Inner Peace.
Bible Gateway. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+13%3A4-8&version=NIV
Real Buddha Quotes http://www.realbuddhaquotes.com/
Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica (n.d.) Letter of Paul to the Corinthians in Encyclopaedia Britannica https://www.britannica.com/topic/biblical-literature/The-Pauline-Letters#ref598129
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