“Love is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered” (1 Corinthians 13:5).
A cartoon I saw long ago always brings me a chuckle, even after all these years. A couple is seated at restaurant table, with the waiter standing at the table. The waiter stands there with no shoes, no shirt, and the caption is the waiter saying, “Get it yourself.” Near the waiter is a sign that reads, “No shoes, no shirt, no service.”
There are rude people all around, and have been around for as long as people have been around. How many of us can attest to a time we’ve done something to be polite, like holding a door open for someone, only to be ignored? It’s a common event every day we live that people are rude.
Not only are people rude, but we are also self-seeking. A term that has been around for a number of years is the word “spin.” Spin is working to make the outcome of an event appear to be in a light that best reflects on me. Whenever a political statement is made, there are spin doctors from all sides that try to “interpret” the statement in a way designed to help or hurt the politician, depending on what side the spin doctor works for. The one who is self-seeking is filled with an unhealthy pride in oneself that is often misplaced.
And being easily angered comes naturally to a lot of people. It’s amazing how patient we can be toward one person and how angry we can get at another person for doing the same thing.
That’s why the Bible reminds us that love—Christ-like love—has no room for rudeness, self-seeking or a quick temper.
Rudeness
When the Bible speaks about rudeness, it doesn’t speak to any and all rudeness. I was raised that the proper response to a sneeze is to say “Bless you” to the one who sneezes. Others were raised that a sneeze is followed by “Excuse me.” For those raised in the “bless you” school, the sneezer was not expected to nor required to say anything. Obviously, not so the case with the “pardon me” school. Needless to say, the “pardon me’s” always consider me rude when I sneeze. I should follow my sneeze with a request for pardon. But by the same token, I wonder who raised such insensitive people that they don’t have the decency to bless me when I sneeze. Who’s rude? Both and neither.
The rudeness being spoken of here is not the unintentional cutting through a line without saying, “Excuse me.” The rudeness mentioned here is the rudeness that is intentional and demeaning. Like that cartoon that I mentioned in the opening paragraph. The waiter is being asked to bring food. He doesn’t care, thinks such service is beneath him, or both. That attitude is antithetical to the love mentioned in 1 Corinthians 13.
The rudeness that the Bible does not condone or excuse is the rudeness that arises out of one’s sense of entitlement or sense of superiority. It arises from a sense of believing that I know better than others.
I used to work at an attorney’s office that was housed in a bank building. There was another attorney’s office in another hall not far from my office. There were signs in the parking lot that clearly stated some of the parking spaces were reserved exclusively for the bank’s customers, and that any and all other vehicles would be towed at the owner’s expense.
I knew the attorney in the other office. I knew this attorney had a higher opinion of herself than probably was deserved. I knew her car, and I noticed several times that her vehicle was parked in the reserved parking space in front of the bank.
One day, while I was out of the office, one of my co-workers called me on my cell to tell me that the other attorney’s car had been towed away. The other attorney had stormed into the bank and demanded they bring her car back. The bank told her that she knew better than to park there, but continued to do. Her response at one point in arguing why she shouldn’t have to respect the bank’s position was, “I’m an attorney!” as if being an attorney was a valid reason to ignore the rules. That’s the rudeness the Bible addresses in 1 Corinthians 13.
When we are rude to others because we feel ourselves entitled or superior, we are also telling others that they are not also entitled to our respect and encouragement, that they are not worthy of being treated in a way that we want to be treated (yes, there’s that Golden Rule again!). A rudeness that arises from that mentality hinders our ability to see others in the light of God’s love and compassion. When I see myself as better than someone else, it allows me to disregard their feelings, their aims, their hopes. Basically, such a rudeness says that I don’t care about you or anything about you. If you can’t help me, I don’t need nor want you.
It reminds me of the words Michael Corleone said to his brother, Fredo. “You’re nothing to me now, Fredo. You’re not a brother, you’re not a friend—you’re nothing.” How can such an attitude reflect agape love?
Self-Seeking
Like rudeness, self-seeking is an attitude that looks only to the individual’s profit and advancement. “What’s in it for me?” is the mantra of the self-seeker.
The Bible’s response to the self-seeker is, “Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others” (1 Corinthians 10:24).
Paul’s letter to the Philippians urges them to follow the example of Christ in seeking others’ welfare over one’s own. He introduces the passage with the following words: “If you have any encouragement from being united in Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:1-4).
The self-seeker can’t be troubled with that which benefits others, unless the benefitting of others benefits him or her as well. Again, go back to the example of the pray-er, the alms giver and the faster in Matthew 6. They do the things they do in order to be noticed by others. Their desire is for others to laud their spirituality, their devotion to God. By doing what they do for the praise of men, they neglect actions that are truly pleasing to God. “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams” (1 Samuel 15:22).
The self-seeker gets caught up in the doing of the work and ignores the voice of the Lord, and that is the tragedy and the reason why God tells us “love is not self-seeking.”
Easily Angered
“The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet He does not leave the guilty unpunished; He punishes the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation” (Numbers 14:18).
One of the amazing things about life that so many of us have no clue about emotions. We seem to think that our emotions are not within our control. “He made me mad.” “She made me sad.” And so forth. The truth of the matter is that we each choose which emotions to feel. To claim that a person can “make” me feel a particular way is to give that person control over me. In so doing, I seek to excuse my actions and deny responsibility for that which I feel and/or do.
Granted, sometimes circumstances and our state of mind hinders our ability to act rationally. For instance, if I’m around someone who is not someone I’m particularly fond of, then I find myself more willing to let my anger and annoyance come to the fore, while those whom I hold in high esteem are given the benefit of the doubt more often than not. A crying child in a restaurant is annoying unless it’s our crying child. (If a child is crying, why not take the child outside and let him or her calm down before returning to the restaurant?)
In other words, how quickly we demonstrate our emotions is a reflection more often than not a reflection of ourselves than it is the other person or the circumstances.
Love is not easily angered. Based upon what I just confessed to, it makes sense that the love of God within me will give me an additional dose of tolerance and acceptance. The love that fills our heart through the presence of the Holy Spirit enables us to go that extra mile that Jesus spoke about in the Sermon on the Mount (cf. Matthew 5:38-42). It was a common practice and a law of the land that a Roman soldier could force any non-Roman to carry his equipment one mile. If I’m travelling south and the Roman is traveling north, it means carrying his things one mile will take me two miles out of my way. In addition, I’ll be toting things that may weigh a lot. Imagine the typical person toting the things, being forced to carry it one mile out of the way (possibly, a mile I had just walked) all so a Roman soldier can be better rested than I. Add to that this Roman is representative of the conquerors that now rule my land. It would be easy to resent someone like that.
Imagine, then, the impact of carrying the pack one mile, then continuing the journey another mile or two. Imagine that, instead of the obvious resentment, there is a genuine love present in the task of carrying the pack and going the extra mile or two or three. What impact would such a thing have on a soldier—a person—who was expecting hostility and the angry tossing of the pack on the ground once the mile was up?
The control of one’s anger is a demonstration of God’s love in us. (I’ve written a more in-depth look at anger and the Christian. See explorationinfaith.com July 10, 2017.) James tells us we must be “quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires” (James 1:19-20).
Conclusion
No one who is honest with us has ever said the life of a disciple of Christ will be easy. It’s not always easy to love as Christ loves, but it is what God expects of us. Love of the agape kind is the love we must demonstrate in our daily lives each moment. That means we must be aware of the times we are rude, self-seeking and easily angered and seek to take steps to overcome those times, seeking forgiveness when needed and striving to walk in God’s love as He loved us and loves us still.
© 2019 Glynn Beaty