Last week I opened with the statement: “To be clear, this column was written before Election Day.”
To be clear: this was written after the results were known. And I’ve had the unedifying spectacle of Christians on my social media communicating with each other about the outcome.
This column is intended for a broad general audience of ‘faith-interested’ people and not just Protestants (who, to be honest, I know best) or even just Christians. However, in Licking County and even more broadly, if I am going to speak as an ordained minister, I will have to quote some Bible text. So, stand back!
In the twelfth chapter of Paul’s first letter to the community in Corinth, he says in the twenty-first verse: “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor the head to the feet, ‘I have need of you. necessary’. I don’t need you.’”
Does this sound relevant to anyone else?
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Just before that, Paul laid out his overarching point: “For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would be no less a part of the body. And if the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would be no less a part of the body.”
With me and Paul so far? The foot may stink, but it is a necessary part of the whole. The ear may have a higher perch and smell of cologne, but it can’t get within earshot of anything worth listening to unless the feet don’t fail us now. You have to get along, feet and toes and eyes and tear ducts…
Paul continues, just to hammer the point into the dust of the market: “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God has arranged the members in the body… As it is, there are many parts, and yet one body.” 1 Corinthians 12:14-20.
It’s a vivid metaphor, one of many in the Bible (worth reading, you know?) and a very useful metaphor for our current cultural moment. You could sum it up as, “We need each other, even or possibly because of our differences,” but human nature (note the need to talk about sin somewhere) means we may need something more surprising and intense to help us to help. get the point.
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As Flannery O’Connor said on this subject: “For the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and surprising figures.” She talked about writing on the subject of faith and life, and she also knew her Paul.
We need each other, progressives and conservatives, yes, but also the elderly and the young; the praising music people and the pipe organ fans; the sensitive and caring people and the more objective and mathematical people; as a both/and, not as an either/or. In general, you don’t want English majors doing your job, and as a graduate of Purdue, I hope the engineers there won’t mind my saying that, as a rule, they are not the obvious choice for chairman of the Hospitality Committee.
I have contacts and understandings across much of my own religious tradition, and some that border ours, so I’m not just talking to my village, province or region. But I’m talking to you, dear friends. We need each other, and to say after a blood-curdling election campaign that we can have nothing to do with “those people” is nothing more than a foot falling over the high and mighty place of the ear.
We need each other. And we should all probably read 1 Corinthians 12 in full, maybe twice.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller and preacher in central Ohio; he may be more of an appendix, or perhaps a spleen. Tell him where you fit at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Faith Works: Progressives and conservatives need each other
