A Proof-Text Pet Peeve

Have you ever heard someone say that "to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord"? That gets thrown around a lot at funerals, usually as a demonstration that the deceased is in heaven. Occasionally, you'll hear it as a proof-text against purgatory as well, but that's not nearly as often.

The quote is a paraphrase of St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:8:

But we are confident and have a good will to be absent rather from the body and to be present with the Lord.

If you check that in the KJV, it's:

We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

In the New American Standard, it's:

[W]e are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. 

The problem is obvious. What is typically presented as an unqualified statement of "Absent from body" = "Present with the Lord," is actually nothing of the sort. St. Paul is quite clearly saying that, given his druthers, he would RATHER BE absent from the body and present with the Lord. One doesn't necessarily entail the other, although I can certainly see why most people would share Paul's preference here.

Rant over. It's just a weird thing that probably bothers me way more than it should.