Continuing last week's thoughts and posts, here's something that Phil at Signposts found last week.

David Ridgeway led a fantastic session on Monday at the Forge intensive. He argued that we need to reclaim the Hebrew model of discipleship and learning.

I found that a wonderful framing of the differences in Greek and Hebrew thought. They are also, if you fool with the ideas a little bit, the differences between "modern" and "post-modern" thought. It is an intense struggle in many, many ways between the scientifically and proof-oriented thinking that claimed Christianity in the academic world of the Reformation and the ancient, more mysterious views of the pre-reformation era.

Now I know that this is much over-simplified. Nothing is ever THAT black and white. (How's that for a "post-modern" statement?) But when we look at this in the big picture- the area of world-view and perspective, it does hold true. The result of this intense struggle has been worship wars and heresy challenges and all kinds of finger-pointing and name calling.

As a result, the church of the early 21st Century is probably undergoing a transition unlike any in many, many years. Who is right? Who is wrong? Probably all sides in all instances. We are, after all, humans with but a very dim ability to see the whole truth. We do not have all the answers. We depend on the Holy Spirit for that- and even then each of us hears the words of the Spirit from our own field of experience.

Paul knew this. He lived in a time like this. Which is why that awesome passage in 1 Corinthians 13 was written. (Sorry, it is not about marriage or love between a man and a woman.) It is about the call to life in the church. In the end, it may be the most important passage in the Bible that the church should memorize for itself.

1 Corinthians 13 (ESV)

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.