Love builds

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by him. 1 Corinthians 8:1b-3 (NRSV)

I’ve enjoyed school for as long as I can remember. At every age I found myself drawn to the exploration of new ideas and the expansion of my understanding of science, history, philosophy, or art. Knowledge is a great gift and carries with it the potential to transform our understanding of God, the world, and ourselves. And yet, it is remarkably easy to know a great deal of information without ever being transformed by that knowledge.

Knowledge is important, but love is essential. This is the point Paul emphasizes again and again to the Corinthian church. Frankly, he could care less about their enlightened and progressive opinions about food offered to idols and the freedom they had to eat it, especially when it resulted in painful confusion and relational breakdown within the community of faith. Just because you have the freedom to do something doesn’t mean it’s the loving thing to do! And for Christians, loving God and others is the highest call upon each and every one of our lives.

(Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves) Philippians 2:3.

True humility means caring more for the preservation of a relationship than it does winning an argument or proving yourself to be in the right. In fact, Paul challenges us to always approach the other with a posture of wonder and delight, seeing in them a woman or man created in the image of God and through whom we always have something to learn and discover. To consider others as better than yourself is to consistently believe that you have something to learn and receive from someone else, even in spite of differences of opinion or belief. And when those differences threaten to divide, we must always be willing to lay our knowledge down in the name of self-giving love.

The goal of life is to love as we have been loved. Nothing is more important than this, and all of our knowledge and expertise should be freely laid down in name of this pursuit of love. As Thomas à Kempis so beautifully put it, “At the Day of Judgment, we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done; not how eloquently we have spoken, but how holily we have lived.”