Reading Francis

What does it mean, really, for Christianity to be countercultural?

One thing you hear a lot in Christian circles is that Christians are called to be countercultural. Usually (like virtually all things American), this notion means something different, depending on which side of our societal divide you inhabit.

Traditionalist Christians tend to equate being countercultural to opposing our culture’s permissive sexual norms, speaking up in defense of life at its very beginning and end, and advocating for a role for faith in the public square in the midst of rampant secularization.

Progressive Christians tend to equate being countercultural to opposing our culture’s consumerist destruction of the environment, speaking up in defense of those marginalized by our caste systems of race, gender, class and power, and advocating for economic and political structures that better safeguard the dignity of every person.

But maybe there is another, more excellent way that Christians could be countercultural.

We just wrapped up our annual DIY marriage retreat, and this year we used a meditation that Pope Francis did on I Corinthians 13:4-7 as part of a larger document he released in 2016 called “The Joy of Love” (or Amoris Laetitia, for you Latin nerds). If you were married in the Christian faith, there’s a pretty good chance that this passage was read at your wedding:

Love is patient,

Love is kind; 

Love is not jealous or boastful;

It is not arrogant or rude.

Love does not insist on its own way,

It is not irritable or resentful;

It does not rejoice at wrong, 

But rejoices in the right.

Love bears all things,

Believes all things,

Hopes all things,

Endures all things. 

It is a fantastically challenging measuring stick for a marriage – both in terms of how well you live these attitudes toward each other and how your marriage equips you to live these attitudes in your corner of the world. (For what it’s worth, Pope Francis’ meditations are worth the effort to find for this purpose.)

The thing is, we have so connected this passage with romantic love that we overlook that Paul didn’t write this for wedding couples. (He had, at best, complicated views about marriage in his time.) The word used for “love” in Greek isn’t romantic love (eros), but divine love (agape). This is not (only) an inventory of how couples should live together; it’s a list of how all Christians should live in the world. It’s not a one-off on marriage, but one of several checklists of spiritual virtues that Paul employs throughout his letters (and it’s not even my favorite one of those).

So look at that list again with fresh eyes, if you can, and tell me there is anything more countercultural than trying to live them out.

Our culture is impatient, right?

How about unkind?

Is it jealous? Boastful? Arrogant? Rude?

Does our culture not insist on its own way?

Are we not programmed by our culture to be constantly irritable, ever resentful?

Aren’t we told to rejoice when our enemies get exposed for doing wrong, rather than acknowledging when they do right?

Aren’t we told not to put up with anything, trust nobody, expect the worst, give up on others?

It seems to me that I Corinthians 13 could contain the most powerfully subversive countercultural message our world could encounter today.

PS: To me, the most breathtaking part of Pope Francis’ meditation on this passage in “The Joy of Love” is near the end. Generally, when popes write official Church documents, they quote other popes, or famous Catholic theologians, or the Bible, or themselves. And Francis does all of that. Rarely, if ever, do popes quote non-Catholics.

But one of his longest quotes is from this sermon, given at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., in November 1957. It is a mind-blowingly good sermon. If all you know of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s works are the “I Have a Dream” speech, the Letter from the Birmingham Jail, and the quotes on the monuments, you should really take 15 minutes to read this sermon.