Okay. So... I have a tendency to be long winded. I freely admit this and half-heartedly apologize for it. Embarking on a ten page journey to explain how to further apply “love always protects” to our lives seems more excessive. But bear with me. I do hope this is instructive, but I am pretty sure it’s necessary. Partially because we have all completely misunderstood this verse for a very long time.
The NIV translates the first part of 1 Corinthians 13:7, “It always protects...”
“It” of course referring to love.
The Message translates the same section as, “Puts up with anything.”
The ESV translates it basically the same way as the ASV and the King James Version: “Love bears all things...”
To be perfectly honest, each of these are pretty wildly different from Paul’s original Greek. They’re similar, and each represents something we should all aspire to. But they’re not direct, literal translations of Paul’s words.
Why not? And more importantly, how is it possible to go on mistranslating something for hundreds of years, through countless revisions and translations?
Well, first, I’m sure you’ve played the telephone game. A bunch of children line up, and one is asked to come up with a story. The little boy or girl then leans in to the next person in line
and repeats the story. They follow suit and so does the next person, on and on until the last person in line is asked to repeat the story. We all know what has happened: the story has completely changed. The game is meant to teach children about the dangers of gossip, but it could also be used to teach children the dangers of continually retranslating and updating the same book.
It is true that every new translation of the Bible makes a concerted effort to go back to the root Hebrew and Greek. Unfortunately, there are 774, 746 words in the Bible. By contrast, a novel is defined as being 40,000 words (or more), and War and Peace (a five volume epic) contains only 560,000 words. When people are translating that many words, it would be understandable and easy to slack off a little bit.
I’m not suggesting that the writers of the NIV got tired, put away their copy of the original Greek, busted out a copy of the King James version, took out all the -eth’s at the end of words and called it a day. What I am suggesting is that they likely had a copy of the King James (or another English Translation) open next to their copy of the original Greek. After looking at the original Greek and looking up the meaning of each word, it would be easy to look at the KJV translation and say, “yeah...I think that seems like a good translation. Let’s go with that.”
And if the King James Version got it a little bit wrong in the first place, then we’re left with one slight mistranslation after another.
Sometimes, it’s necessary to throw out everything we know about the Bible and everything we’ve learned and are influenced by. We have to get rid of what we assume something means and try to understand it the way the writer was originally intending to write it. We have to imagine that we don’t know anything about Christ or God. We have to pretend we are from some other planet, studying the peculiarities of this Christian religion and it’s scriptures.
So how have we misinterpreted something so simple as: [love] always protects?
First, we glaze over it, assuming that it means what we want it to mean. Every man who’s repeating 1 Corinthians 13 as a part of his wedding ceremony instantly connects with this one. I am a man. I protect my wife. I protect my children. It’s generally assumed that this is every man’s (and especially every husband and father’s) primary function. Women and children get rescued first, right? I mean, they do in all the movies. And also on boats. So as a Christian man, it’s easy to get this one -- to react to it on a gut level. It seems to us that God is reaffirming that it is our duties to protect our families from harm, not only as a man, but as a follower of Christ.
We are drawn to this interpretation because protecting what you love is a natural, innate desire. But how often are our natural, innate desires Christlike? Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Our natural, innate desires are things like lusting after a beautiful woman, or desperately seeking power, control, or comfort. Does our desire to protect our loved ones come from a selfless desire to sacrifice ourselves in the stead of another, or does it come from a desire to keep the things that we love? Is our natural inclination to protect our wife (or husband) and children the same natural inclination that leads us to put our iPhone in a protective case? Because we would be sad if something happened to them.
The thing is, it’s impossible to always be protecting someone. You cannot be physically present in your child’s life every single moment of every single day. And even if you could, you would never be able to anticipate every possible harmful scenario. Think of the Secret Service, who’s job it is to protect the President from danger. There are dozens of them dedicated to this singular task. And yet, several times throughout history, they have failed to be able to protect the president from harm. If someone wanted to assassinate the president, it would most certainly be difficult, but not impossible. And that is a large group of people with all the latest technology.
Would Paul ask us to do something impossible?
Love does not in fact always protect. That is a mistranslation.
The Message translates this section of the verse as: “[love] puts up with anything.”
The Contemporary English Version puts it: “[love] is always supportive.”
The New International Version says: “[love] always protects.”
and the King James Version says: “[love] beareth all things.”
There is a subtle, but very important, difference between “love protects all things” and “love always protects.” And there’s a huge difference between protecting everything and “puts up with anything” or “is always supportive.”
Paul’s original Greek writing of this section was only two words: Stego pas.
Stego translates:
1) deck, thatch, cover
a) to protect or keep by covering, to preserve
2) to cover with silence
a) to keep a secret
b) to hide, conceal
3) by covering to keep off something which threatens, to bear up against, to hold out against, and so endure, bear, forbear.
Pas simply translates as “everything.”
So it’s true -- the word “always” has literally nothing to do with Paul’s original intent.
But even the King James Version takes quite a bit of artistic license in changing a word that effectively means “to protect” in reference to covering or concealing to a word that means “protect” in reference to structurally supporting or enduring.
Paul suggests that love act like a covering -- like a protective shield. The way that your house protects you from the weather. Another excellent way to look at it is lamination on a sheet of paper. We are called, not to support, but to take the abuse in another’s place. (Which seems pretty Christlike, right?) A sheet of paper will become dingy, frayed, or easily torn apart eventually just by being handled repeatedly. Lamination makes that significantly more difficult.
An even better way of looking at it might be the way tupperware protects your food. Your food will stay fresh much longer if you place it in a protective container. It will dry out, become freezer burned, mold faster, or simply go bad. If we are to be loving, we are called to be like a tupperware container. And, if you recall, the role of preserving food once belonged to salt, which was also used to cover the food it was protecting. Which may evoke another bible verse...
So then, we are called to protect in a slightly different way than we might have originally thought. The type of Protection Paul is talking about is more akin to stepping in front of a bullet for someone than it is like keeping them in a good neighborhood where bullets are less likely to fly. But, who exactly are we supposed to protect?
Everything.
It is easy to think, “I’ve got it! I will totally protect my girlfriend. And boy does she need it! She’s so weak and frail! She needs protection from all the bad men out there who would rape or murder or steal from her. She needs protection from financial woes and worries. Heck, she needs protection from spiders.”
But we are not asked to protect merely our girlfriend. Love protects ALL things. Love protects the girlfriend and the spider.
How do you protect your girlfriend and protect the rapist?
Because Paul doesn’t say “always protect the people who deserve protection.” He says “protect all things.” Love doesn’t just protect the innocent. Love protects the guilty.
There’s a pretty famous quote from the movie “The People vs. Larry Flynt.” Edward Norton plays Alan Isaacman, Larry Flynt’s attorney. Larry Flynt, if you’re not familiar, is the creator of Hustler magazine. And there’s a reason the movie is called the people vs. Larry Flynt and not the people vs. Hugh Hefner. Playboy is generally considered to be somewhat refined and tasteful. Hustler does not have that reputation. Hustler is gross, dirty, and filthy. There’s an old joke that people subscribe to Playboy “for the articles.” Nobody claims to read Hustler for the articles. There’s no claiming to simply be appreciating the beauty of the female form. Hustler is lust and objectification in all it’s lack of glory. And Larry Flynt set out to build an empire of riches off of this filth.
In his defense, his attorney says this:
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you have heard a lot today, and I’m not gonna go back over it, but you have to go into that room and make some decisions. But before you do, there’s something you need to know. I am not trying to suggest that you should like what Larry Flynt does. I don’t like what Larry Flynt does, but what I do like is the fact that I live in a country where I can pick up Hustler magazine and read it, or throw it in the garbage can if that’s where I think it belongs.”
Alan Isaacman, in the movie and in real life, defended Larry Flynt despite the fact that he thought it was despicable. He protected him despite the fact that he deserved no protection. That’s what love does. Because none of us really deserve protection do we? We are all awful. We are all rotten. We’ve all cheated on our God with dozens of idols. We’ve hurt each other. We are all Larry Flynt. But we still want to be protected.
Love protects everything.
Love protects the girlfriend and love protects the spider.
So then. What exactly are we supposed to be protecting Larry Flynt from?
We have to remember that God is love. And so, where all else fails, we must seek to protect the way that God protects. And God does not protect the way we assume that protection should look like.
Take for instance the story of Job. Not only does God fail to protect Job from harm, he actively takes a role in challenging the Devil to do more and more harm to Job. Further, in the story of Adam and Eve, God does not intervene when they are tempted to eat the fruit. God could have easily stepped in and exposed the serpent for what he was, or simply taken the fruit away. He did not.
What we can learn from this is something we should see very clearly in our own lives. God does not step into our lives and stop us from screwing up. There is no angel who shows up at the bar and convinces you not to cheat on your wife. God allows you to do damage to yourself and to others. Further, sometimes, bad things just happen, and God does not intervene to put a stop to those things either. Hurricanes and earthquakes and cancer and traffic kill people constantly, and while many prayers are answered, just as many are not. God doesn’t protect us the way we might assume He asks us to protect others. And if God is the perfect embodiment of love, then we have to assume that Paul is talking about something different.
The important distinction is that we are not called to shield someone. We are called to be the shield. God does not jump in and stop the tsunami, saving thousands of lives at no cost to Himself. He dies on a cross in our place saving billions of lives. Because real protection, real love, takes the beating for someone else. It accepts their punishment as our own. And it doesn’t do it for glory or for a thank you note. It does it because that is it’s job.
How often do you thank your shield? How often does your leftover hamburger helper thank the tupperware.
At the end of the Dark Knight, Harvey Dent, once Gotham’s shining beacon of hope, has nosedived into evil. He has gone on a murder spree and his actions will unravel all of the good that he, Batman, and Commissioner Gordon have done. So Batman does the Christlike thing. He takes Harvey’s punishment in order to save Gotham. He takes the blame, and the punishment, and despite the fact that he has only done good the entire movie (and for two entire movies) and has done more and been more sacrificial for the city than could ever be asked of him...and not killed a single person in the process, he allows himself to be hated and hunted.
The final lines of the movie are:
James Gordon Jr: Why’s he running, Dad?
Lt. James Gordon: Because we have to chase him.
James Gordon Jr: He didn’t do anything wrong.
Lt. James Gordon: Because he’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one they need right now. So we’ll hunt him because he can take it. Because he’s not our hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight.
Love doesn’t get to be a hero. Love doesn’t get to take credit or receive glory. If you don’t look stupid and insignificant, you’re probably not being loving enough. Love is the scapegoat.
Perhaps people would try harder to be more loving if Paul had written this as: “Love is like Batman.” But the truth is that this ending makes Batman into a very efficient Christ symbol. He takes the fall for our good. He allows himself to be persecuted and spit on and hated because that’s what it takes to do what is best for us.
So if you claim to love someone, you have to be willing to take the beating for them. You have to be willing to be the one who looks stupid.
I’m a filmmaker, and I am constantly in a position where I am asked to watch a friend’s film. Occasionally, these films are great. But more often, they’re severely lacking. Now, I’ve been in groups later where everyone has seen the film and knows that it sucks. So everyone is making fun of it. Now, I have to explain that this is a precarious position for me. As an artist, over half of your credibility is found in your taste. If I claim to like this film, or praise its successes rather than blasting it, I risk looking like a bad filmmaker myself. But however normal or smart it might be to protect my reputation as a filmmaker, it is not loving. Love is willing to be the stupid one and love will never fail to protect out of selfish desires -- even if those selfish desires are completely rational.
Or what about when your boyfriend or girlfriend makes a stupid joke and no one laughs. Do you laugh? Is making sure everyone knows that you don’t have a lame sense of humor more important than the hurt your significant other will feel in being ostracized for a moment?
Love is willing to look stupid, clumsy, desperate, pathetic, weak, or childish if it means keeping someone else from looking that way.
Love is willing to lose. Love is willing to be a loser.
Over and over and over.
Because that’s what Batman would do.
And more importantly, that’s what Jesus would do.
Even for Larry Flynt.
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