Love or Knowledge?
What do you know? How well do you know love?
The fact that there are there so many movies and books about love, whether searching or finding love, whether winning a parent’s or child’s love, or learning to love oneself, indicates there’s more than just a little confusion about the topic.
And what about knowledge? Here we are living in the Information Age - inundated with knowledge from Google or Cable networks, RSS feeds to our Blackberry - even information about how Joe’s diet is going on Facebook! Since this is a spiritual site based on the Bible, let’s start with, I don’t know, God?
1 John 4:8
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
If God is love, then it stands to reason that we can only know how to love and how to be loved only as much as we know God! God and Love are interchangeable!
Recently, I was very ill and at points I really felt like giving up the ghost (I am sure I wasn’t even close, I’m just a big baby) - but I considered heaven and the Scripture (1 Cor 13:8) that mentions that even knowledge will pass away - I thought “If I die there won’t be any knowledge? What would be left“? Could it be we will exist in a state of pure love with God? My mind thinks “I’m not sure that is that enough?” since from childhood I have always have had such a thirst for knowledge.
Then there are the Scriptures like 1 Corinthians 8:1-3 that says knowledge puffs up but love builds up, and also Prov 19:22 which says “What a man desires is unfailing love…”
Okay, so far:
- What a man desires is unfailing love.
- God is love.
- We can’t know God if we do not love.
- Knowledge which puffs up will pass, but love, which builds up, will remain.
So the question remains is love, or God then for that matter, enough for me?
We are not left without similarities in the love we find in one another. For those of you who are married, consider what is like when you’ve had a hard day, and you get home to your loved one - no matter what the day was like, what is going on in the world, when you’re together, the knowledge of all that becomes nothing compared to love and security you are experiencing… Or for those who have children, they couldn’t care less about what you know - they only need to know they are loved. Even back in my sick-bed, no matter of knowledge concerned me, or could help me for that matter. I only wanted to be better. My prayers were only for God’s love and mercy. Would love alone be enough in that moment? Yes. Should love be enough in any other moment? Hmm… yes? Will love be enough for eternity? Perhaps that’s it. Who needs knowledge when you have absolute unfailing love?
When I consider the character of God, knowing where those missing socks went to, or what that dark matter on the far end of the universe is, or was there really a JFK conspiracy, or will there ever be a truly fat free, low cal food that tastes like bacon - well none of that even compares to unfailing love. Love overpowers knowledge that much. I have to admit as I looked up a few passages that came to mind, that a number of Scripture have both love and knowledge together, and make clear the perspective to which love is regarded against knowledge:
Ephesians 3:17-19
…And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Huh. What do you know?
