Real, at any cost - 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 - Living by the Word - Column

Christian Century, June 15, 1994 by Walter Wink

2 Corinthians 12:1-10

THERE WAS a period not so long ago when anything having to do with mystical experiences was suspect. Theologians stressed the objectivity of the gospel. God alone takes the initiative in our salvation. The disciplines of prayer, the quest for an experience of the living God, the hunger for immediate contact with the object of faith--all these were regarded as a kind of works righteousness, an attempt to ascend to heaven by one's own powers. No, God had taken the initiative; our spiritual experiences are as filthy rags.

This always left me perplexed. I had had a string of what seemed to be mystical experiences when I was 19. Surely it was God who was agitating me to open up to these events. I certainly didn't cause them, nor did I know what to make of them. I knew they were from God, but nothing in my experience prepared me to integrate these encounters with all the other elements of my life. What was most real was most problematic: I had such a sense of God's power flowing through me that I have never been able to doubt God's reality since, even for a moment. But rather than healing my neurosis, this fact augmented it. Now I could compensate for my sense of inferiority and unlovableness with a sense of superiority and specialness. I would guess that the whole episode--the greatest blessing in my life--simply made me, in the eyes of others, more insufferable. And I learned that the entry of God into our lives may initially serve only to make us sicker, and that the path to healing is long and indirect.

Paul, I suspect, learned something of the same lesson. At some point prior to writing 2 Corinthians he had an overwhelming mystical experience. He was snatched up into the third heaven, called Paradise in the seven heavens worldview, and saw and heard things that were unrepeatable. It is clear from the way he describes the experience that it was seminal for him. The Pharisaic moralist and exegete experienced something from the other side of reality that would forevermore free him from rationalism and the fear of death. It was the kind of experience about which one might ... brag.

That experience had not, in short, eradicated an element in Paul that was inclined to be "too elated" about such visions. Subsequently, he was given a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to keep him from being too elated. Apparently this ecstatic episode had not cured his deep need to feel superior, to compare himself with others, to use spiritual grace as a point of personal pride.

Given that history, Paul has been placed in the worst possible situation: an attack by a delegation of overseers who have come from the church in Jerusalem during his absence, fully armed with letters of introduction from the top honchos of the church. They do not accuse him of heresy; his teaching does not seem to be at issue. Rather, they have maligned his character, accusing him of bringing the congregation into spiritual dependency, They have ridiculed his speaking ability, his lack of oratorical flair. In short, they have attempted to undermine his authority as founder and father of the church in Corinth.

What is he to do? If he defends himself, he will fall right into the hands of his opponents, who can scathingly point to his unbridled and unhealed arrogance. If he makes no defense, however, he will have lost all standing with the church, and his previous letter(s) show how deeply they still need courageous pastoral leadership.

Paul hits on a way. He will play the fool. He will be a clown, and boast of all the wrong things: not those excellences that qualify him for leadership, but those weaknesses that throw him continually on the gracious love of God. So he boasts of his stupidity in offering them the gospel free of charge, instead of sponging off of them as all the other apostles--including these interlopers--do (2 Cor. 11:7-15). He could boast of his pedigree, his training, his church foundings; but no, fool that he is, he boasts instead of his imprisonments, floggings, beatings, stoning, shipwrecks, toils and hardships (11:21-29). He might have bragged about the number of conversions or baptisms he had made; instead he tells about fleeing Damascus by being lowered over the wall in a basket.

It is precisely at that point in his defense that the passage about his mystical experience comes. Sure, Paul had plenty that he could be proud of. But he had learned that pride was his personal demon, and that boasting, given his particular character, was the very epitome of sin, for it represents a total misapprehension of God's grace.

Yet Paul, with all this self-awareness, still needed this thorn in the flesh in order to keep his pride under control. No one will ever know what that thorn was. Glaucoma, epilepsy, malaria, homosexuality, even a wife have been conjectured. All we know is that he tried three times to get God to remove it, and God did not. It must have been then that Paul began to suspect that he needed this thorn. And so he embraced it. It was as if the humiliation that this thorn produced kept him in touch with his finitude, limits and neediness.