A casual reading of I Corinthians might lead one to think that the church was marked by divisions. However, there is nothing in chapters 5 through 16, in which Paul deals with a number of issues, to indicate that this was the case. The problems dealt with were not along party lines. Some would point to I Corinthians 1:12 to make their case, but in doing so miss what Paul is saying. He writes: What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.”
By placing Christ alongside the other leaders mentioned, the Corinthians have shown the real problem. The emphasis was not on the leader but on the followers. This was a symptom of the true problem: a radical individualism. Such a problem was not new nor was it unique. We read in the last verse of the book of Judges in the Old Testament: In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes. (KJV)
And we find it in our day. In Dale S. Kuehne’s recent book, Sex and the iWorld: Rethinking Relationship beyond an Age of Individualism, he describes three worlds: the tWorld or traditional world; the iWorld or individualistic world; the rWorld or the relational world. We now live in the iWorld, a culture which sees the individual and individual choice as supreme. The traditional world believed that freedom was discovered in the process of finding contentment and meaning within the matrix of relationships found in one’s extended families and community. The iWorld sees freedom as the absence of restraint.
Kuehne writes: The alternative proposed here is one I refer to as the “rWorld.” Whereas the iWorld is a place in which freedom of the individual reigns, the rWorld is based on the belief that humans are made for relationship and that we find our deepest fulfillment not when seeking self-fulfillment but when living and engaging in the full constellation of healthy human relationships.
As exiles living in the iWorld, we should be aware of the great temptation to reread the Gospel to fit into the iWorld. It happened to the Corinthians; it could happen to us. Or has the iWorld already reshaped our thinking?