Signs for Believers and Unbelievers

Signs for Believers and Unbelievers
1 Corinthians 14.20-25

‘We need to take an adult attitude to this . . .’

‘Of course, if we are to approach the problem as adults . . .’

‘Since we’re all adults here, perhaps I could say . . . ’

What do you think these people are talking about? It would be nice to think that such sentences really did introduce serious and informed discussion of important and difficult issues. But in much modern speech the language of ‘adult’ has been used in a different sense. As with shops and bookstores that offer ‘Adult’ products, and with movies that proclaim themselves as ‘Adult Entertainment’, we have to conclude that the word has ceased, almost entirely, to mean ‘grown-up’ in the sense of ‘mature, wise, responsible’, and has come to mean ‘people who have forgotten the moral constraints of their younger days’. The three speakers are most likely saying, ‘Now that we’ve grown out of the silly restrictions that less mature people still regard as important . . . ’And of course from the same stock of words we get ‘adultery’ – adults behaving selfishly without thought for long-term consequences, especially for children...

Taken from Paul 1 Corinthians for Everyone – by Tom Wright