Don’t you just love the quizzes you can take online or in the popular magazines you find at your dentist office or hairdresser? Topics might include (based on a recent Google search): “Are you a Slacker?” “Is He Arrogant or Insecure?” or my personal favorite, “Which Taylor Swift Album Are You Based On Your Random Food Preferences?” Those types of “quizzes” are supposedly designed to help reveal something about ourselves, but probably just help us pass the time online while we’re supposed to be working (not me of course!)
I’ve been thinking about one particular quiz in the context of our theme for this school year “We are the Body” based on I Corinthians 12:12-27. At a Lutheran educators conference I attended I took a quiz called “The Encouragement Index.” It was designed to help me evaluate how frequently I engage in behaviors that build up other members of the body of Christ. I learned that with Christ’s help I need to work on my index quite a bit! Satan and this sinful world want to divide us – to create strife in the body of Christ by sowing the seeds of conflict, dissension, bickering, and gossip. Yes, we even find those things in a Christian school – perhaps particularly here as the devil’s goal is to attack people of faith and thus destroy the body from within. How do we fight against that sin inspired division? As St. Paul teaches in I Thessalonians 5:11, “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up…” I urge you to examine your own “encouragement index” and dedicate yourself to healing divisions in the body of Christ.