1 Corinthians 13; The University Edition

My favourite chapter of the Bible is 1Corinthians 13. Most people refer to it as the Love Chapter. Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians based on issues of the day. We live over two thousand years later and somehow, we can still relate. I have a feeling that if Paul lived today, that chapter would be considerably longer than it is now. The world today is full of so many atrocities I wonder how we live in it. I’m a university student and I relate to most things that have to do with students. If St. Paul were in the university right now, 1Corinthians 13 would probably look something like this;

If I can recite off hand the names of all the winners of the VGMAs since its inception and do not have love, I am but a noisy gong or a whining nuisance. And if I am an outstanding student, with the highest GPA in the class, and if I am the most active member of a campus religious group and go to church every Sunday, if I give the largest sum of money as an offering and do not have love, I am nothing. If I do good, for the prestige that comes with it, and do not do me because of love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; it takes time to explain the Kurt Lewin model of change to the friend who was not in class. Love is kind, it shares the little it has with a friend and does not expect anything in return. Love is not selfish; it does not refuse to share the third season of Game of Thrones with a friend. Love is not boastful or arrogant, pompous or rude. It does not tell everyone that it is the reason that friend passed her Logical Reasoning paper. Love does not hurt one’s emotions. It does not go round boasting about all the girls he has slept with. Love does not insult that boy who always wears designer knockoffs. It is not irritable or resentful; it doesn’t hate the girl who always gets a first class. It does not insult a boy who asked her out because she feels he is not her class. Love does not force a girlfriend to have sex with him. It respects her wishes and stays away. It does not insist on its own way.

It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but it rejoices in truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things; even that lecturer who is excruciatingly boring.

Love never ends. But as for the VGMAs, they’ll pass. The Puma Fenty will get old. Your name on the Dean’s list would soon be history. The popularity you have on campus, it will all fade away. The boys will stop chasing you and that puffed up pride will deflate. Your money will eventually finish and you’ll no longer be the one all the ladies chase.

For we know only in part, and think only in part, but when the complete comes, the partial will end. When I was a child, I spoke, I thought, I reasoned like a child. Now I’m an adult and I put an end to childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly but then, we will see face to face. Now I know only in part, then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

And faith, hope and love abideth; these three and the greatest of these is L O V E.