More Harm than Good

In 1 Corinthians 11, the apostle Paul offers the Corinthians some instructions on how to practice the Lord’s Supper together, but he opens with a blunt accusation: “Now I don’t praise you as I give the following instruction because when you meet together, it does more harm than good.” (11:17)

What was going on in Corinth?

In Paul’s day, there were no church buildings like we see on every corner. Believers gathered in homes. Wealthy Christians with larger homes would have hosted the gatherings. And, apparently, these hosts treated church gatherings the same way they would a dinner party in that culture: your closest friends and most important guests received more and better food than everyone else, while those at the bottom of the totem pole, like slaves or freedmen, would receive even less than others, maybe nothing at all. So, the way the Corinthians shared this meal together amplified the social and economic divides in the church and embarrassed the needy members of the congregation (11:22). That’s what had Paul so upset with them. What should have been a unifying experience of encountering Jesus together (10:16-17) was instead tearing the Body limb from limb. “When you meet together, it does more harm than good.”

As I read this chapter recently, I couldn’t help wondering: when do our meetings “do more harm than good”? What do we do together that can weaken faith and fuel division rather than connect us to Christ and spur us on to love and good deeds? (Heb 10:24)

I came up with a few culprits, though maybe you can think of some more:

• When the things we say in our gatherings are incongruent with the things we do in our lives, our meetings reek of hypocrisy and do more harm than good.
• When individuals or groups get the impression that they are unwanted, unwelcome, or unworthy to be there—because of a cold reception or a rigid insistence on conformity—our meetings do more harm than good.
• When our gatherings form us in the wrong direction, making us more suspicious, angrier, more inward-focused, more polarized and combative, or when they reinforce a desire to be served rather than to serve, to be entertained instead of transformed, our meetings do more harm than good.
• When we think that our gatherings are enough—that we don’t need to do the individual work of drawing near to Jesus, because we dutifully assembled once or twice a week, or that we don’t need to meet needs and bandage wounds in the world because we’re already fulfilling our Christian responsibility on Sunday mornings, then our meetings do more harm than good.

If you read the rest of the chapter, Paul’s instructions for the Lord’s Supper paint a picture of proper Christian worship. It’s a gathering of the church of God where no one is forgotten or ignored, all are honored, the gospel is recounted, and the presence of Jesus is anticipated.

Again, I can’t help but wonder… when do our meetings look like that? I don’t ask that cynically. Sometimes, that is what church looks like. So how can we emphasize and amplify those aspects of our gatherings, to give everyone an edifying, life-changing experience of the presence of Christ in God’s Church?

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