Artwork for podcast Enter the Bible
Ep 143: What does it mean to see in a mirror dimly (1 Corinthians 13:12)?
Episode 1433rd December 2024 • Enter the Bible • Enter the Bible from Luther Seminary
00:00:00 00:26:19

Share Episode

Shownotes

In this episode of Enter the Bible, hosts Katie Langston and Kathryn Schifferdecker are joined by Professor Mary Hinkle Shore to explore the meaning of 1 Corinthians 13:12. Together, they unpack the powerful imagery of "seeing through a mirror dimly" and its connection to love, community, and navigating a world of imperfect understanding.

Tune in for a conversation filled with:

- Insights into the depth of God's love

- The importance of humility in faith

- Practical wisdom for engaging across divides in a polarized world

Watch this episode on YouTube at https://youtu.be/pkxWKjD8dgs.

Transcripts

Katie Langston (:

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Enter the Bible podcast where you can get answers or at least reflections on everything you wanted to know about the Bible but were afraid to ask. I'm Katie Langston.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

and I'm Kathryn Schifferdecker. And today we have a returning guest, one of our favorite guests, Professor Mary Hinkle-Shore, who is an instructor in religion at Brevard College in Brevard, North Carolina, and taught New Testament here at Luther Seminary several years ago now, but for a long time here, and has done various other things in between, including being a pastor.

Katie Langston (:

Mm-hmm.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

at a Lutheran church. So, so happy to have you back with us, Mary. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, exactly. So our question for today comes from a listener and as usual, those of you who listen to this regularly are probably tired of us saying this, but if you have a question that you would like us to address in this podcast, please go to enterthebible.org and let us know. We try to get to as many questions as we can.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

Thank you. It's great to see you both again. It's good to be here.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

So the question for today has to do with a verse in 1 Corinthians, maybe the most famous chapter in 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 13, the one that's read often at weddings, that speaks about seeing through a mirror dimly. So the listener says, what does it mean to see in a mirror dimly in 1 Corinthians 13-12? How can we live well now despite our limited vision?

Katie Langston (:

Mm-hmm.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

while anticipating the clarity promised in scripture. So it's a lovely question, especially how do we live well now despite our limited vision? So seeing through a mirror dimly, and I know there's other ways to translate that, Mary, but how would you begin to answer that question?

Katie Langston (:

Mm-hmm.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

I would start by noticing where it shows up in the letter. As you have, said it's the love chapter in 1 Corinthians. That chapter actually comes after, golly, maybe a half dozen or more conflicts that Paul is addressing. The letter itself is in response to a lot of questions about just what does it mean to live well now?

Katie Langston (:

Hmm.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

in between times, right? And are we in between times or have we, you know, do we have, do we know it all already? It's that's a central issue with Corinthians. And so Paul is saying you don't know it all already. And we're, we're in a kind of in between time, ethically. So he has a lot to say about that. And after he reflects on all of these conflicts,

He speaks about everyone being one body in Christ. That's first Corinthians 12 and different gifts same body and Then he and then he has then the love chapter happens. So it's not about The love between two human beings. It's really about love as it's expressed in a really Real Community that has a lot of disagreements and and

Katie Langston (:

Mm-hmm.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

unfortunate misunderstandings of one another and all the things that we always have when we try to live together and work together. So that's the first maybe thing I would say. The other thing that occurs to me is that it's a little bit, I think, connected to the philosophical world that Paul finds himself in. I don't know if anybody remembers, I had to look this up. Was it really in the Republic that Plato said all that sort of stuff?

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Hmm.

Katie Langston (:

Hehehehehe

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Hahaha

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

There's this famous allegory in Plato, the Greek philosopher, about human life being kind of like we're chained in a cave and instead of actually seeing things as they are, we see shadows on the wall of the cave. So we're oriented, but we're not completely oriented and we're informed, but not completely informed. And I have always read that thinking,

Katie Langston (:

Mm.

Yeah.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

Paul must be kind of imagining that kind of philosophy, that that's part of how he makes sense of where we are now. One, Jesus isn't back yet and Paul expects that, but also in a Platonic or we might say Neo-Platonic worldview, illusion is, we have to recognize that what we are seeing is at least seen from an angle.

not the whole picture, and it might even be illusory, which is kind of depressing. I think instead of, you know, I've always wanted things to be real. And it might be real and it might be, you know, it might be more about your perspective. So we, and Paul is kind of saying, look, I'm gonna give you what love is and how to be loving. And when I say be loving, this is what I mean. And

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Hahaha!

Katie Langston (:

Like, you're not seeing right.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

And then he, know, love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. And if you hear this, whether at a wedding or somewhere else, you're like, well, I'm screwed. You know, yeah, kind of working on it, but but not there. And so I think there's a kind of accommodation that Paul says, you know, and he uses that

Katie Langston (:

I'm boastful, I'm envious, I'm not always particularly kind.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

imagery of when I was a little person, I thought like a little person, right? When I was a child, I thought like a child and I reasoned like a child and we look back on our own lives and think, yeah, I've come some distance from where I thought I, you know, where I was and where I thought I knew what the world was about. I'm teaching freshmen right now. I'm teaching 18 year olds. And I remember feeling all grown up at 18, like all grown up.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

wow.

Katie Langston (:

Mm-hmm.

Sure. Yeah.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

And I couldn't understand why, you know, my mom would say drive safely or, know, whatever she would say. Everything was an affront to that all grown up girl. so Paul says, when I was a child, I thought like a child. As a grownup, I think differently. And then I think he kind of pushes it just a little bit farther. Now we see in this kind of like an old mirror that doesn't

Katie Langston (:

Right.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

reflect really sharply. Now we see in a mirror, dimly, and then we'll see face to face. So there's a hope in it that the kind of love we can describe right now, we can't, or we find out about ourselves that we've, fall short of it. That's the love that's being perfected in us through the Holy Spirit and in anticipation of

of the last day really of the Christian hope of being of knowing God fully and being known fully.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Yeah, I love that verse.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

I haven't answered your favorite part of the question, but that's enough for now.

Katie Langston (:

No, no, that's, yeah, that's good.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

That's great. You just mentioned this, Mary, but the end of that verse is so beautiful too. So 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. I mean, that's just so beautiful. Like I just remember, you know, when I was a freshman in college and...

All my many years of being a student with a master's degree and then a PhD, I moved around so much, right? Like from school, from one program to another or taking a year off for volunteering or doing internship, you know? And I remember every new place, the thing I longed for the most was to be known, right? For someone who knew me, because it just,

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

for an introvert such as myself, right? It's just, it takes so much energy to get to know people and to be known. And that's, you know, it's a kind of homesickness, I guess. so that part of Paul's chapter, right? Now, then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known, is just so beautiful. Like even when we're in those places, whether it's a new place or a new job or whatever.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

Mm-hmm.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

we are fully known by God, by Christ, and we will come to know more at that time, right? So anyway, that might be a bit of a distraction, knowing how to live, right? I think that's such a difficult thing. Like how do we love in a society where love doesn't...

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Katie Langston (:

No, I think that's...

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

Mm-hmm.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

manifest itself very often, shall we say, in the social media realm. We're recording this particular episode just a couple of days after a very contentious election. there's a lot of pain, enough to go around, right? More than enough to go around. And I know some people are happy and many people aren't. And so how do we love people who we

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

Mm-hmm.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

deeply disagree with about really important things.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

To stick with the text a little, it may be that there are things about those people that we don't see yet that in fact make them easier to love. I think part of what it means that God fully knows us is God fully knows us as God intends us to be created and redeemed. And so that's

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Yeah, yeah.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

one thing that comes to mind, I, you know, what confirmation bias is we, we decide we, I don't know, nobody else does this. I decide I don't like someone and then I find all the reasons why. And, and then I confirm them with more data Yeah.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Mm-hmm.

Katie Langston (:

Yeah, you're definitely the only one that does that, Mary. I've never done that.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Yeah, yeah, know. I never do that.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

Yeah, and the data that might contradict my speedy judgment, I don't know, I've served blinders on or whatever. I'm seeing that through a mirror very dimly. so part of the check I have on myself is what I used to remember that feeling, Kathryn of wanting to be known, and especially when you're misunderstood.

Katie Langston (:

Sure. Sure.

Yeah.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

when someone does the same thing to you that I just described, like they judge you and find you wanting and you're like, there's more to me than you see. And I know what that feels like on the receiving end of it and try to remember that there may be more to them than I'm seeing. It's really hard to do when you're triggered as the kids say, when you're going to 11 because the other person is already there or something.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Katie Langston (:

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

That's one thing I have one other thing to say about it. And it is that it might help to imagine the end. That is to say the eschatological end like the we are we the ultimate end. Thank you. Yeah. And and live as if that was our destination. So

Katie Langston (:

Like the ultimate end.

Mm-hmm.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

given that that's our destination, that there's a love that embraces us all in a 51 % to 49 % or whatever election. There's a love that embraces us all.

It helps me just have a moment, right, before I...

Try to vote someone off the island. I don't know what the right metaphor is but the idea that boy would be better off if only Whatever the thing is I Don't know that I do it very well, but I do believe in it I do trust it as a path To imagine that that the love that I believe God has for me in Christ

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

is extended to others who are, you know, maybe differently sinful, but just as sinful, just as sanctified as I am.

Katie Langston (:

There's a kind of beautiful humility, right, in this text that maybe, I don't know, maybe Christians as a brand aren't really known for as much. Or even if we're talking in the context of our political divisions.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

Mm-hmm.

Katie Langston (:

Partisans aren't particularly known for that kind of.

acknowledgement of seeing through a mirror dimly, that acknowledgement that I'm not grasping this all exactly the way it is.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

And for Paul to be humble, it's like, amazing. Yes, yes.

Katie Langston (:

Right, right, Paul, right? Right. He I mean, he's had some moments where he was maybe a little bit I'm not saying he was being not humble, but there are times when he's really mad. And he's not saying I'm seeing through a mirror dimly. He's saying I'm really clear about this and you are wrong, Galatians. You know, which there you know, you have to discern when those moments are and what those things are about which maybe you are staking.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah.

Katie Langston (:

something very important, right? That it's not to say there aren't places that you say, no, this, I'm standing firmly in this, right? That this is at stake and this is what it means to stand here and to say this is right, this is wrong.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

I think in fact there are two different things. Loving doesn't mean agreeing with all the time. So the loving thing might be to seek to better understand what exactly someone believes and how they got there. So you can have some compassion or whatever, but it doesn't mean agreeing. I don't think at all.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

really, I mean, people can have very different understandings of what someone who is not documented in this country needs in order to have justice and love each other, right? I can love someone who I would not want their policies implemented.

Katie Langston (:

Yeah, yeah, I think that's right.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Katie Langston (:

implemented at the yeah for sure

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

No, that's an excellent point. And I think it's worth reading those verses before to talk about this kind of. So again, we often hear this chapter at weddings, but Mary, you already said this isn't about the love in a marriage or a wedding. It's so much, I mean, it can be, right? But Paul is writing about a community and a community that, as you said, is in deep conflict about how

Katie Langston (:

Mm-hmm.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

how they should live the gospel, right? What does that mean? And we'll be doing another episode later about the whole book of 1 Corinthians. But this kind of love is not romantic love, right? It's love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. I think that gets it.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

something of what you guys were just saying. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. This is love, think, not so much, it's not a kind of fuzzy feeling, right? This is love as a verb, love as a intentional decision to act, live in such a way as to, for the well-being of the other, right?

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

That's right. We were talking before we began recording. I live in a part of the country that just underwent a hurricane in inland. And so it was a surprise. And we were, most of us, not very well prepared for the level of destruction. But nobody asked who you were going to vote for when they were finding out whether you needed an airlift out of your flooded

Katie Langston (:

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, right, right.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

house, you know, or when we were trying to help our our neighbor who's, I don't know, 75 year old oak fell into the cul-de-sac and he was he is himself about 75. And he was out there with a chainsaw. And, you know, that's a job that takes a couple of days in the best of with a crew. And there were the community showed up.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Right, right, right.

Katie Langston (:

you

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

in this place in ways that I can get pretty cynical about the absence of that kind of community. And I wasn't by the end of it, cynical at all. know, anyway, I could tell a lot of stories, but that, if we could figure out how did we do that? We did that for a week. Could we live like that? Could we like show up for one another?

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Mm.

Katie Langston (:

Yeah.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

And I think some of it is, of course, on the leaders in the media and who gets attention and what stories run and all the things. And I'm not just talking about this sort of feel-good story about the baby bear that likes the mother kitten or cat or something, but yes, it is, it is. And it gets me every time. But just like, if when you're, you know, I...

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Ha ha ha!

Katie Langston (:

but that is very cute and I do love those but but yes.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Hahaha

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

I don't want to speak in a partisan way, but I saw a parade of pickup trucks last week because we were, in a battleground state and they're beeping and they're, you know, and all the things. I didn't think it at the time, but now I think what if I had just imagined those people either helping me when I didn't have any running water or needing help.

Is there a way that that would change how I showed up in their lives and how I imagined them showing up?

Katie Langston (:

Yeah, which really does get to that kind of second part of the question, you how can we live well now despite our limited vision? And it feels like, you know, our vision is limited. We don't know, you know, as we are known other people or reality as it actually is or whatever. And yet, even if we're only glimpsing, you know,

the love that is described in that chapter through a mirror dimly, if we orient ourselves towards that, right, and recognize it both as a gift that God gives to us and then as something that we can, however imperfectly kind of live from, that feels like we're on our way then to living well now by catching ourselves when we're feeling

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

Mm-hmm.

Katie Langston (:

Like we would dismiss someone or, or, you know, vote them off the island, like you said, Mary, or when we, when we're feeling contempt or whatever, to, reorient ourselves. I think even the, even the dim image of that kind of love is transformative. And just like imagine how it'll be when we are able to, to stand face to face with it, you know?

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

Yeah.

Hmm.

I think, please.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

How does this, Ethan, you can cut out that interruption. How does this relate to the love of God, Mary? I mean, we hear, I think maybe a lot of us have heard, this is agape love, right? This is not brotherly love or Eros love, romantic love. What does this say about the?

the kind of God that we worship, that this is the kind of love that is described here.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

Hmm. Mm-hmm.

That's the Terry Fretheim of blessed memory question, right? How is this a God passage?

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Yes, yes.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

part of the humility Paul has, I think, is the humility of one who understands that God is greater than our best understanding of revelation. So God reveals God's self in the love of Christ, for instance. I think I'd say that's the premier revelation of God's love.

And even that we will understand more fully. We will recognize the power and the embrace, I guess, of self-giving love as Jesus demonstrates it, laying down his life for his friends. I think that's part of what Paul means here.

I wonder sometimes, and I'm making this up now as I go along, help me find texts you too. But if God already sees us as we will be, somewhere in, is it 1 John? Yeah, maybe three.

little children, do not know what we shall be, but we know that we will be like him or something like that. We will see him as he is. Yeah, yeah. As he is, so we are, we just haven't recognized it or don't recognize it, can't recognize it yet. I'm not really answering your question, sorry. God.

Katie Langston (:

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Yeah, for we shall see him as he is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, no you are. I think that kind of, the self-giving love, right? That we know most fully in Jesus on the cross. And that we're promised, right, that we will see him, that we will know him, and that we will become like him. And we're not there yet, but it's a journey that by God's grace we continue walking and

Katie Langston (:

Mm-hmm.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

And by the power of the Holy Spirit, God will make us who he says we are.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

I think there, wanna say one last thing, I think it's last thing. This speaks to the company we keep and the, mean, company of humans and company of ideas. You can sometimes say to, I worked in a veteran's hospital in recovery, the recovery setting, that is addiction recovery. And I sometimes would say to veterans,

Can you put yourself in the stream that's running away from the drugs and the alcohol? Can you just make it easier for you to, you would have to swim upstream to get there rather than just letting yourself be in the water that's going in a different direction with friends, places, with so on. And...

Katie Langston (:

Yeah.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Hmm.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

I think that's true for Christians too. We can keep company with, and it's appealing on some level, with a very us and them, a very dualistic friend, enemy way of looking at the world. And we can choose not to keep company with that. can just always, wherever we see that, render it just a little bit problematic.

go and introduce ourselves to somebody that we really don't wanna talk to or we think we don't wanna talk to or whatever. These small ways to get yourself out of the stream that in our country has turned into kind of a pretty much a good and evil narrative with people as the actors. anyway, that's all I wanna say about that. I think we do have some choices.

Katie Langston (:

Mm Right, right, right, right. Yeah.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

This is the work of the spirit and part of what the spirit does, think, is inspire us out of some of that dualistic thinking.

Katie Langston (:

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Well, I bet we could I bet we could continue on forever kind of talking about this, especially, you know, how how we are to live now today in our context. But we sadly have to leave it there as we've reached our time. But thank you so so much, Mary, for being with us today. Beautiful, beautiful reflections and wisdom really appreciate it. Thanks to the listener who submitted such a such a lovely question.

Kathryn Schifferdecker (:

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, thank you, Mary.

Yes, thank you, Min.

Mary Hinkle Shore (she/her) (:

Thank you, Katie.

Katie Langston (:

And for more great resources like this, conversations, podcasts, videos, commentaries, all kinds of stuff on the Bible, head to enterthebible.org. If you enjoyed this podcast episode, please rate and review us in your favorite podcast app or like and subscribe on YouTube. And of course, the very best compliment you can pay us is to share this podcast with a friend. Until next time.

Follow

Links

Chapters

Video

More from YouTube