INTERVIEW WITH DR. BETTY PRIES

Betty says it’s hard work to be the body. In your experience what is the hardest part about being a 1 Corinthians 12 body? Acknowledging the value of other people and their gifts? Accepting your own place in the body as real and valuable? Accepting that you don’t have some of the gifts or level of influence that you wish you did? Being frustrated that others don’t have or aren’t using gifts you think they should? Something else?
Betty says we don’t have tolerance for diversity—that we would really prefer that everyone was a foot or an ear. Do you agree or do you think we’re better than that? Do you have an example that illustrates your point?
When Betty says we don’t have tolerance for diversity she might be talking about spiritual gifts or the slave/free, Jewish/Greek categories as Paul is, but that’s not necessarily what we mean when we talk about diversity, and it has become a politicized term. What came to your mind when she used the word? Does 1 Corinthians 12 apply to other areas of diversity, or does it not apply outside of social status and spiritual gifts?
Betty points out that 1 Cor 13, the love chapter, was written for the church rather than for weddings, and that it’s about humility as well as love (see verse 12). How do we hold in tension the confidence about what we know to be true (see again Colossians 1:26) and awareness that what we know is through a mirror dimly (or “in a riddle”)?

Ahhh! We need each other! We’re not all feet!