Hearing Love's Whisper
On knowledge, love and power
“Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”[1] This may be St. Paul’s best aphorism. It would make a great social media meme. Imagine a picture of your least favorite know-it-all, expanding into a huge ball and floating away like Harry Potter’s Aunt Marge after Harry accidently placed an Inflating Charm on her, with the caption underneath: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”
Knowledge can be a source of pride that separates us from others, perhaps even leading us to treat others with contempt. Knowledge doesn’t make us good or even wise. Prophets can know God’s will and still speak contrary to the truth, using their power in the service of death instead of life.[2] Even the demons recognize Jesus’ identity and power.[3] They know who he is, but knowledge alone does not save them – or us. Only love can do that.
We can speak of divine power as knowledge united with love, and demonic power as knowledge without love. In his letter to the Christian communities in Corinth, St. Paul goes to some lengths to explore the relationship between knowledge, love, and power. He reminds them again and again that love is the queen of the virtues, the fulfillment of the law, the primary fruit of the Spirit, and the fundamental nature of God revealed in Jesus Christ.
Human knowledge has limits – that is the first thing we need to understand, tempering our certainty and keeping us open to the environment. Some things are too big for us to comprehend – like God. It is not we who know God, but God who knows us, a truth which love reveals to us. When we love God, we discover that we are known by God.
St. Paul warns that Corinthians that their supposed knowledge of God, when it becomes a source of pride, may cause them to actually harm their sisters and brothers. Knowledge – even knowledge about God – without love is dangerous. St. Paul addresses the specific issue of eating meat offered to idols as an example.[4]
He is responding to a specific question that the Corinthians have asked. Is it OK to eat meat that was sacrificed as an offering to an idol? In the Roman world, meat offered to idols would sometimes be resold at the market, or served at banquets held at a pagan temple. It was not uncommon for people to come into contact with such meat. Judaism had a strict prohibition against consuming it; though selling it to Gentiles for their consumption as allowed.
Some of the Corinthian Christians, understanding that God is One and that Christ liberated them from bondage to lesser gods or spiritual powers, had no problems eating meat offered to idols. Those idols held no power for them. Their knowledge of God freed them to eat with a clear conscience. But other Christians, whose conscience was “weak,” as St. Paul puts it, were still fearful of idols and, in a sense, still in bondage to them. Seeing a fellow Christian eating sacrificed meat at a temple banquet might be perceived as similar to bowing down to an idol. Such a brother or sister might even be tempted to resume worship of idols, and lose their freedom in Christ.
In this instance, St. Paul argues, it is better to refrain from eating sacrificed meat for the sake of the conscience of these siblings in Christ. Our love for others is more important than our knowledge of God. Love may require us to constrain our liberty for the sake of others who are not free. An idol is anyone or anything that we prioritize above God’s love for us and for the world. We can be in bondage to many things: wealth, addiction, unhealthy relationships, self-pity, resentment, racist nationalism. When we are consumed by them, they become idols to which we sacrifice our lives and the lives of others.
While the issue of sacrificed meat doesn’t resonate in our cultural context, the principle remains the same. Love might require us, for example, to refrain from serving or consuming alcohol at a dinner party attended by others who are just recovering from alcoholism. It might require us to boycott a business the exploits our siblings, preying on their vulnerability or ignorance. When we are free from idols, we are free to love. We are able to choose to restrain our freedom for the sake of the liberation of others.
Knowledge guided by love directs us to use our power to support others in their journey toward freedom in Christ. Too often, our knowledge is devoid of love. This is particularly true of technical and scientific knowledge. We know a lot about the natural world, and how to exploit that knowledge for material gain, but we relate to the natural world as an object. Love requires us to move into a subject-subject relationship, in which the beloved person or place has its own identity and integrity that must be respected.
In the community of subjects, love seeks to build up the whole, not simply to benefit some at the expense of others. In the community of subjects, we are willing to curtail our liberty to make space for others to learn and grow. In the community of subjects, the flourishing of all life becomes possible.
Is not our being right that creates a future, but our being in love. The Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai, expresses this beautifully:
From the place where we are right flowers will never grow in the Spring. The place where we are right is hard and trampled like a yard. But doubts and loves dig up the world like a mole, a plough. And a whisper will be heard in the place where the ruined houses once stood.[5]
It is those who are “right” who are creating the ruined houses in Israel and Gaza. It is those who are “right” who are destroying civil discourse and tearing our country apart. It is those who are “right” who are setting the planet on fire. This is why technological power or military superiority will not save us from catastrophic climate change or any of the other crises that plague us. The problem isn’t the lack of sufficient knowledge. The problem is the lack of sufficient love.
Only love can save us: learning to love all beings as our siblings the way that Jesus did, uniting love, knowledge and power to liberate us from bondage to idols in their many guises. It is the whisper of love, still heard by those with ears to hear, that will speak a future into being where the ruined houses once stood.
“Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”
[1] I Corinthians 8:1.
[2] Deuteronomy 18:15-20.
[3] Mark 1:21-28.
[4] I Corinthians 8:1-13.
[5] Yehuda Amichai, A Touch of Grace (Jerusalem: Museum on the Seam, 2000).