Church: Real or Ideal?

Many people make no secret of their disappointment with the Church and wonder why they should bother with it at all. Others keep moving from one community to another in search of the perfect one, yet none matches their picture of the ideal, because everywhere there are very imperfect people. Perhaps, though, by looking only at what we can see, we miss part of the picture. The Church is God’s idea. It is a place where we can learn to live together and to love people who can be difficult. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul helps us see the Church from a wider perspective and find our place in the tension between the real and the ideal.