1 Corinthians Chapter 13 often is referred to as the “love chapter.” Following the verses as a checklist of what love is, we might find that we’re better at loving others than we are at loving ourselves. But to practice the commandment that Jesus calls out as the second most important – Love your neighbor as yourself – it might be worthwhile to look at some of those verses from 1 Corinthians – “love is patient,” “Love is kind,” for the definition of self-love. Laurin Allred, a United Methodist lay person from North Carolina, joins us on “Get Your Spirit in Shape” for the conversation and challenges us to read the “love chapter” through a different lens.
Guest: Laurin Allred
- Allred is the director of young adult and connectional ministries at Guilford College United Methodist Church.
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This episode posted on Feb. 16, 2024.
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Transcript
Prologue
1 Corinthians Chapter 13 often is referred to as the “love chapter.” Following the verses as a checklist of what love is, we might find that we’re better at loving others than we are at loving ourselves. But to practice the commandment that Jesus calls out as the second most important – Love your neighbor as yourself – it might be worthwhile to look at some of those verses from 1 Corinthians – “love is patient,” “Love is kind,” for the definition of self-love. Laurin Allred, a United Methodist lay person from North Carolina, joins us on “Get Your Spirit in Shape” for the conversation and challenges us to read the “love chapter” through a different lens.
Crystal Caviness, host: Laurin, welcome to “Get Your Spirit in Shape.”
Laurin Allred, guest: Hi, Crystal, happy to be here.
Crystal: I'm excited that you're here today too for what I think is going to be a really interesting conversation. We'll just kind of see where it goes. Before we do that though, you serve as director of Young Adult and Connectional Ministry at Guilford College United Methodist Church. You're a lay person here in The United Methodist Church, and I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about your work and your family if you'd like, and a little bit about who you are.
Laurin: Yeah, sure. So at Guilford College, my work kind of has several spheres. First is making space and opportunities for younger people to connect with each other with their faith and with God, and then connecting into our congregation, helping them plug in and find their way as adults in the church, some of them coming out of youth group or coming into the church and to faith for the first time. Another thing I do is connectional ministry. So I oversee our small group ministry, which we call journey groups, and with new people that come into our church, helping them feel welcome and find their space and ways that they can use their gifts and connect. And then I work with our social media and our website.
Crystal: And that's how I met you. I visited your church and you reached out to me as a new person in the church. And so we got to know each other a little bit that way. And what's beautiful about the United Methodist connection, as we met one another, we found that we had lots of overlap of people that we knew in The United Methodist Church because you grew up in The United Methodist Church, so you've been at different churches. And so I love that connection. So thank you for being here.
Laurin: I forgot to tell you about my family.
Crystal: Yes, I want to hear about your family, I want to = hear about your boys.
Laurin: I have a husband, Alan, and then we've been married for 10 years. We have two little boys who are both having birthdays coming up in the next few weeks. They're turning six and three. And this weekend was very special for us because they got bunk beds and they decided they wanted to share a room. And so that's been a lot of fun, but not much sleep.
Crystal: That's wonderful though. And congratulations. Your home is busy.
Laurin: It's very busy. Yes.
Crystal: Little boys are busy.
Laurin: Yes, incredibly busy.
Crystal: This episode is going to come out on February 16th, so it's going to be right after Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday, which is happening on one day this year. So there's probably going to be a lot of talk about love and Valentine's. We'll see red hearts and pink hearts and things everywhere. And so I really had this idea to talk about First Corinthians chapter 13, which is known as the love chapter and is frequently used at weddings and romantic verses and things like that. But I wanted to talk about it through a different lens. I'd like to talk about what it means, not about loving others, but about what does it say about loving ourselves in that chapter there? Because there's lots of, love is this, love is this, love is this, love is not this. And if we pivot that focus on an outward love and look at it through an inward love, what does that say? What can we learn about?
So that's one part of the conversation. And then I also, it kind of felt like it was a good complimentary passage is the passage in Matthew 22 where Jesus calls the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. And the second half of that is as yourself. Again, what does it mean to love yourself? We're going to start there. I'll also say we're going to talk about a lot. We're going to talk about the Wesleyan Quadrilateral of today and we've going to talk about a conversation I had with Chat GPT about these verses. So this is like that mix. Was it like the mix tape or Yeah, there's a lot of things.
Laurin: If you want to feel loved, talk to a robot. They're excellent.
Crystal: That's right. Yes. So let's just start with, I looked up the chapter in a lot of different versions and some that we might be most familiar with is love is patient, love is kind. I feel like those two, we just start there. We could probably talk an hour about how're often not patient or kind with ourselves.
Laurin: Absolutely.
Crystal: And so that's a jumping off place for us is how we take this, look at these verses and then apply them to ourselves.
Laurin: If we're starting with patient and kind. The first thing when you said that, that popped into my mind, especially because still here toward the beginning of the year, is the way we put so much pressure on ourself with a new year to set big goals or resolutions. And we don't often, sometimes those goals are not kind unrealistic expectations, so you're setting yourself up to fail. But more often it might be that the goal is achievable, but we just we're not patient with ourselves the way we would be patient with other people and working through change and transformation that it's a long process and it's so easy to become impatient with ourselves in a way that it's easy to be patient with other people.
Crystal: That's such a great point. I think a lot of us, and maybe it's true with men, I can't speak for that, but I know a lot of women, including myself, that we're pretty hard on ourselves when it comes to trying something new or breaking old habits or setting those goals. And then we feel like we're failing and we're certainly not kind and affirming.
Laurin: It's okay to have setbacks. Yes. I'm not kind to myself. That's actually something I've had to work on over years is how to be kinder in the way that you talk, the way that I talk to myself.
Crystal: Yeah. What do you think, Laurin, that especially to people who are watching those of us in the church, people who are not in the church, what do you think the kind of this message that we're sending when we are so hard on ourselves?
Laurin: I read an interesting article this week and it was about professional Christians and so people who are in the church professionally for their vocation or their calling, whether ordained or lay person. So I kind of find myself in that space, and you do too. And the expectation that people outside looking in have and the way that our jobs and our work are not measured on the same rubric. We could lose our income. We could lose our jobs because of our beliefs in a way that other people cannot. And so what that tells me is that perception is that we are held to a higher standard. People expect more of us. And that I know over time, and this is getting away from your question just a little bit, sometimes that kind of pressure has caused me to feel like my own spiritual walk is not what it should be or not good enough.
And so that kind of contributes to that whole negative self-talk and not being kind to yourself. But when you are not at peace with yourself and not at peace with guiding yourself, that shows and people looking out can see that. And so you see all these grumpy, struggling people. I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing for people to see the vulnerability of professional Christians, but I do think it is important that people on the outside looking in see that we are trying to be kind to ourself and to others trying to be patient with ourself and others, especially as we are leading other people in that direction.
Crystal: Yeah, that's a good point. The expectations that we put on ourselves or maybe that we perceive or put on us might cause us to not be as forgiving with ourselves when we're failing because we're humans. We might be professional Christians or Christians who work as professionals in the church, but we're also human. One of the verses that I really struggled with, and I will tell you I did some research before the podcast, and there isn't really a lot out there, there's almost nothing out there that talks about reading one Corinthians 13 through a lens other than talking to someone else, another an outward kind of expression of love. But as I looked at the different versions, there was one line that has always kind of caused me to pause, and it's the verse that says, love endures all things. And I looked it up in the message, which the message is typically one of my favorite interpretations of the Bible, but in this verse, it says, puts up with anything. And I got to tell you, that didn't hit me well, puts up with anything really. And I'm just going to say really transparently that I've been in relationships and friendships with people where I chose to endure all things, if you will, because I thought that's what love looked like to my own detriment. I want to spend a few minutes talking about that and how we might want to, it's there. It's in the Bible. It says it.
Laurin: Yeah.
Crystal: Can we wrestle with me just a few minutes with that one, Laurin?
Laurin: Sure. Yes. That Message translation is, it's even harder than the endures all things. When you think of putting up with something that's almost a negative connotation just in the way that that translation is worded. When you think of putting up with something, it's automatically something that you don't like or don't feel like you should be having to deal with, but you're doing it anyway. I could see how for some people, especially like you mentioned, having been in unhealthy relationships, how that verse could be triggering or gloss over real trauma that's happened as a result of people pushing down themselves in the name of getting along or going along that is tricky to navigate. And my first thought is to kind of say, well, if it's true love, then it endures through hardships and endures through pain.
But that's not exactly what it says there in the Bible either. And that also kind of says, if I were to say to you, well, if it had been true love, then it would've been able to endure that pain and endure that anger and endure that whatever it is that you were putting up with as the message puts it. But then that is almost shaming to you. Well, can you not recognize true love? This is a tough, it's a tough word, and I'm not exactly sure what to do with it or what to make of it.
Crystal: And I think that's okay because I think that's where the Wesleyan Quadrilateral comes in. I told you we were going to talk about the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, which is something that I never heard, although I grew up in The United Methodist Church and didn't really understand, heard it occasionally heard the word, but didn't understand, but it is a methodology, if you will, for how we live our Christian lives. It's credited to John Wesley. But the term itself was coined in the 20th century by Albert Outlier, who was an American Methodist scholar. And it believes that as a Christian, we look at our faith through scripture tradition, reason and experience. And so my experience, as you said, is going to react, could react differently to that one verse than your experience. And that's okay. That's what I love about The United Methodist Church is that it encourages conversations like this and we can walk away from it and say, I don't really even know what that means, but I have to believe God loves me and God doesn't want me. I'm just going to believe God does not want me to put up with anything that makes me feel less than the beloved child of God.
Laurin: Right? Yes.
Crystal: And I can't say why that person says that in The Message, but I can also walk away from it and say, that doesn't diminish what I believe to be true about how God loves me.
Laurin: And this is still a letter that was written to a specific group of people. Paul wrote it to the Corinthians as a community, and they struggled. They were not the most cohesive group. And so one way that I kind of like to think of that verse as endures all things, especially when it regards myself and loving myself, is being able to own and be at peace with your whole story. You might can leave a relationship with another person behind or a community behind or walk away from it, but you can never walk away from yourself. You always can't get away from the things that have happened in your life and the things that you have done. And so finding a way for your love for yourself and owning that you are a beloved child of God, that is true throughout the whole span of your life that love, that love of God endures all things.
Crystal: Yeah, I love that. And honestly, when you look at it that way, this definitely, it feels more like a love letter to yourself.
Laurin: One of the verses that really spoke to me in this passage, and it's toward the end. It's in verse 12, and it says, for now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face-to-face. And I'm reading the NRSV. Now we know only in part, but then I will know fully as I have been fully known, and that rings so much of God's love for you as a person and as a child of God, that being fully known by God that one day we will know the full expanse of that love that we can't even comprehend now. But if we can look at it through the lens of these other things of being patient with ourselves, of being kind with ourselves, that one day we will know just the magnitude of God's love for us,
Crystal: Which I think really dovetails nicely into the Matthew 22 verse where Jesus says, the second great commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. We always stop with love your neighbor. Well, we say, love your neighbor as yourself almost like it's one. It's like one whole word. Love your neighbor as yourself. There are no pauses that shall we say it a lot of times, but to love yourself, I want to talk about that. How are we to love ourselves? And you said something before the podcast started that I really loved where you were talking about how we interpret that verse.
Laurin: Love our neighbor as yourself.
Crystal: Yes.
Laurin: So I do think some people have no problem loving their neighbor as they love themselves. They have that just clear innate sense of who they are and they love themselves. Not necessarily because you are lovable, but just because you are a person and you can spread that outward. I think it might be a good idea maybe to flip that verse around a little bit, how you love others and letting yourself be loved by others can inform and teach you how to love yourself better. I think that can be a relationship that goes both ways. When you are patient with somebody and kind with somebody, you can slowly teach yourself to be more patient and more kind with yourself. Or when somebody is patient and kind with you, then you can see that worthiness. Yes, I am worthy of patience and kindness. I can love myself in that way.
Crystal: Yeah, I've heard before that in counseling, sometimes the counselor will direct the person to write a letter to themselves as if they were talking to a friend. And what would they say to a friend in that situation, which I think is exactly what you're saying, that we are sometimes we're more apt to treat someone else more kindly than we treat ourselves.
Laurin: Yeah. I've actually done that exercise in counseling before, back after the birth of my second child. I had a hard time with postpartum depression. And I mean, that's such a common thing, and it gets glossed over. You feel so alone in that time, but I mean, it happens to 25 or more percent of women. It's super, super common. But I did go to counseling for a while during that, and one of the things that my counselor had me do was to write a letter to myself, because at one point he stopped me. We were talking about something. He says, you're really hard on yourself. I said, no, I'm not. I'm realistic. I have big goals. And he said, no, I think you're being unkind to yourself. You're being really hard on yourself. Why don't you try writing a letter to yourself? Exactly what you said as if you were somebody else.
What would you say? And it really did open my eyes to the ways that I was not loving myself well or I wasn't being patient through that process, that healing after having a kid. And so I went to my husband a few days later because it really rattled around in my brain for a while what had kind of come out in that counseling session. And I said to Alan, I said, Alan, am I too hard on myself? Am I unkind to myself? And he said, yeah, yeah, you really are. I was like, okay. And so I've worked on that over, that's been, gosh, almost three years ago now, because about to turn three, which blows my mind. But I've worked on that for the past few years. And I think really trying to dig into the relationships in my church, invest in my marriage, and allow myself to be loved well, and to really internalize and own the things that people say about me as part of me has really helped in overcoming that negative self-talk aspect.
Crystal: Thank you for sharing something so personal, Laurin, that I really do think will a lot of our listeners that'll resonate with them, whether they've been through postpartum depression or not, I think the negative self-talk does affect so many of us. We're very quick to be harsh with ourselves. And when I was researching for the podcast, I came across something that said the heading was, can you really love your neighbor as yourself? And it said to love your neighbor as yourself. You need to love yourself. This is something that gets misunderstood in the body of Christ. Often it gets mixed up with dying to self and denying self as if we need to destroy ourself. This is not true. Jesus died for each and every one of us and loves each and every one of us. That's something I added that because of that, but I think that destroying ourselves, that martyrdom, if you will, we take that on as almost a badge of honor in the church.
Laurin: Oh, yeah. I've watched so many people in the church just absolutely run themselves into the ground in service of others and being useful and being kind. And what they're doing is the services they're doing and the way they're loving others is truly wonderful, but it comes at such a great cost and that balance is not there because they're not loving and taking care of themselves in the way that they're loving others. And so that really hits that. It's like verse three where it says, if I hand over my body but I have not loved, then it is in vain. And that's oftentimes what so many people do is you hand over your body, you hand over your time and all of yourself, but without that and that undergirding love, that there's not a balance and you end up just hurting yourself or becoming tired or burnt out and walking away altogether.
Crystal: And there's no joy in that.
Laurin: No, there's no joy in that.
Crystal:
Yeah. So I said at the top of the episode that I was also going to talk about AI, that I went to ChatGPT in my preparation. Some people are going, what in the world here? I just asked ChaptGPT to help me understand one Corinthians 13 as it pertains to self-love and first thing ChatGPT said, that's a great question. So I got that affirmation right off the top.
Laurin: ChatGPT is so affirming.
Crystal: So affirming. Yes. And there's a lot here, and I'm not going to read the whole thing, but one of the things that said is that by loving ourselves, we become more capable of spreading love and positivity to those around us. And I liked that, and I told, I affirmed ChatGPT and said, I really like that. And it came back and said, yes, it has a ripple effect on the people around us. And that we're able to, it becomes easier to radiate kindness, empathy, and understanding to others, which is what one Corinthians 13 says. So when we're loving ourselves, we're actually able to then go out and love, like this verse is encouraging us to love. So it feels a little circular here that it's not just about loving others, but it's about loving ourselves so that we can love others better.
Laurin: And the prequel to this passage before it gets to all the love is the more poetic part. You could almost substitute in if I don't have love for myself, if I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but I do not love myself, I'm a noisy gong or a clinging symbol. If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and knowledge, if I have all the faith so as to move mountains, but I don't love myself, I am nothing, it makes it hit even a little bit more poignantly.
Crystal: No, it absolutely does. It totally ocs it on how I believe how we're to love ourselves and how when we do love ourselves that what the impact is on the world then.
Laurin: Yeah.
Crystal: I like that a lot. Well, as we are finishing up today, is there anything that we didn't talk about? I feel like we kind of were in a lot of different places, but I mean, it seems like loving ourselves. It's something that maybe doesn't come easily to us. I mean, for some people maybe they don't have any trouble at all, and that would be a different conversation. But I think it's something that we have to be intentional because there's a lot of external forces out there, perhaps, that are not affirming us, that's causing us to, I think there's one verse about, I don't know that the exact word. My interpretation was that if we comparing ourselves to others, I don't know that that's in here. I don't know that those words are in here, but I kind of interpreted it that way myself, that we are living a world that if we are constantly comparing ourselves to others or trying to be something that we're not.
Laurin: I think in the end we did have kind of come full circle back to love your neighbor as yourself. I think one thing that I can say about First Corinthians 13 that I and wholeheartedly affirm is that love never ends. Right? And even when we might be falling short or feel like we don't have enough love for ourselves, that doesn't mean that love has ended. The love of God is always there. It's something that belovedness is not something that we can ever lose. And when the more we live into that and take care of ourselves, we are able to love others even more authentically and holy and meet needs in an even greater way than we would've without that undergirding love. And so I think when Jesus says, love your neighbor as yourself, it's not so much a, you love yourself so much, you love others, but an instruction of claiming that you have in God that is innate, that never ends, that can't be taken away from you and ascribing that to others and letting that be what flows out in a way. And that's something that culture can't take away. That's something that struggles in your congregation can't shake. That is always there.
Crystal: Yeah. I like the way, thank you for tying this episode up with the bow in that way. That's so true that love never ends. That's a great message for us all to remember. To finish up today, Laurin, I will ask you the question we ask all of our guests on “Get Your Spirit in Shape” and that's how do you keep your own spirit in shape?
Laurin: Well, I am a bit of a dabbler as I am a personality type, ENFP, so the enthusiast. And so I'm one of those people that flits from thing to thing to thing. And I've tried, I feel like all of the things from journaling to really prescriptive plans to specified prayer structures, I have tried it all, but the thing that I come back to over and over again to keep my spirit in shape is running. Actually, I'm a runner and I've actually taken kind of a break from it the last few weeks, and I can tell in my own heart, but that time by myself outside in nature, listening to music or not is where I find that I can just process so much. Sometimes it's a great prayer time, and then other times it's me just processing crazy junk that's happened in my life, and other times it's just feeling joy at all. That's around me. But that 30 minutes or an hour, several times a week that I take for myself is always what I need, whether it's prayer, connection with God, time to process, or just the endorphins from getting your body moving.
Crystal: Sounds like a great form of self-love.
Crystal: Laurin, thank you for being a guest on “Get Your Spirit in Shape” and having this conversation with me. I've thoroughly enjoyed it.
Laurin: Yeah, me too. This was great.
Epilogue
That was Laurin Allred, director of Young Adults and Connectional Ministry at Guilford College United Methodist Church, discussing how First Corinthians, Chapter 13 may give tips for loving ourselves as well as how to love others. To learn more, go to umc.org/podcast and look for this episode where you'll find helpful links and a transcript of our conversation. If you have questions or comments, feel free to email me at a special email address just for "Get Your Spirit in Shape" listeners, gysis@umcom.org. If you enjoyed today's episode, we invite you to leave a review on the podcast platform where you listen. Thank you for taking the time to join us on "Get Your Spirit in Shape. I'm Crystal Caviness and I look forward to the next time that we're together.
