One of the important lessons which Israel learned in her desert experience was that in the important things of human existence it is God who chooses. Israel did not choose God: God chose Israel. In that fact alone there lies tremendous consolation and hope. Jesus repeated that same doctrine during the Last Supper when he affirmed: "It was not you who chose me. Rather, it was I who chose you". This is a very simple doctrine, but it requires a very mature spirituality to accept it with all its consequences and so to live at peace with God's choice.

Paul criticized the Corinthians as immature: they had not yet matured enough to understand and accept this doctrine of God's choice, so they engaged in the rather dubious and certainly unfruitful practice of choosing their own favourite among the apostles and preachers of the Gospel, as if choosing the "best" preacher gave them some extra security, whereas belonging to Christ gives us all the riches we need.

But let us not look merely to the past. This lack of maturity has afflicted the Church is all ages: people undoing God's choice and founding their own version of what they still presume to call "Christianity".