Love over knowledge: A reflection on 1 Corinthians 8

               Have you ever been around a smart aleck? I’m not talking about people who are a little cheeky and are just joking around, but people who know they know more than you and make sure you know it too? I’m thinking of people who carry their knowledge on their sleeve, and project a know-it-all attitude. I have been around people like that. I’ve sometimes felt intimidated around them, felt stupid around them, because of their arrogance, believing themselves to be the smartest person in the room. Do you know what kind of person I’m talking about?

                Well, Paul found himself having to deal with some smart alecks in Corinth. To understand the situation in Corinth, I need to fill you in on a few things. An issue that the Corinthians had brought to the attention of Paul was a matter concerning the eating of meat that had been part of an animal sacrifice to some god or goddess. Corinth, like every city throughout the Roman Empire, was filled with temples and shrines dedicated to various deities. You couldn’t hardly turn around without seeing a statue or image dedicated to a god or a goddess. All kinds of sacrifices were offered to these gods, including animal sacrifices. The meat left over would be sold in the meat market of every town. For Jews, this was no problem. They only ate meat sacrificed to God, and which had been appropriately butchered. They didn’t buy meat from the meat market. But for Gentiles, they were accustomed to buying meat from the meat market, and the odds were that the meat they bought came from an animal that had been a sacrificial offering, although one could never be sure. So one of the issues was whether it was o.k. for Christians to buy and consume meat they got at the meat market.

                But there was another issue not directly addressed in this portion of 1 Corinthians but is discussed later in chapter 10. It was the issue of eating meat in a temple, more precisely, in the social hall connected to the temple. You see, just like how churches have social halls that you can rent for banquets and formal dinners, there were temples in Corinth where people could rent space to have social events, parties, and the like. If you went into these social halls, it would be obvious which god or goddess that temple was dedicated to. You would be eating your steak in the shadows of a pagan statue. Was that o.k. for Christians?

                This was a source of contention in the church in Corinth. Paul needed to weigh in on this subject. Chapter 8 begins with the argument that some Christians were making, whom Paul refers to as the “strong” Christians. These are the ones who say, “All of us possess knowledge. We know that there’s only one true God, and food doesn’t bring us closer to God, it’s just meat. So, what’s the big deal?” These are the smart alecks that Paul had to deal with. There were a couple things going on here that Paul had to work with.

                First of all, what these strong Christians were actually doing was trying to get away with something. Like I said, Jews didn’t have to worry about where to hold formal dinners and banquets. They had the ghetto, their enclosed community where they could celebrate weddings and other special occasions. For Gentiles, it was the temple banquet halls. Well-to-do Gentiles needed to have those banquets in order to invite their friends and scratch each other’s backs in order to maintain social status, which was critical in the culture of the time. When these well-to-do Gentiles became Christians, they found themselves in a bit of a bind. If they didn’t go to parties or hold parties, they would slip down the social status rung. This didn’t just affect how people felt about them. This had real economic implications. It was a big deal. So these Christians needed to justify holding parties in the banquet halls of temples. They believed their justification was that they knew what was really true. They had the knowledge that there is only one God and these other gods don’t have any meaning. These temples were just shells, had no purpose other than being a nice place to gather for parties. The strong Christians were certainly willing to utilize the knowledge they had gained in order to justify eating meat sacrificed to idols and to eat that meat in temples. In doing so, they wouldn’t have to sacrifice their social standing.

                The other thing Paul had to deal with was that these strong Christians had an attitude toward fellow Christians who were squeamish about eating this meat in temples. Their attitude was that these Christians needed to wise up. They needed to get over this hang up and not be so uptight. They need to become more sophisticated about the faith, rather than allow their old superstitions to prevent them from living as Christians in society.

                As far as Paul was concerned, these strong Christians didn’t know what they thought they knew. They claimed that they possessed knowledge. That much is true. But something I have come to understand about the gaining of knowledge: the more educated one becomes, the more one realizes how little he or she actually knows about any given subject. There is always more to learn. A new discovery gives birth to ten more questions. Education ought to make a person a bit more humble, recognizing how much is yet to be known, rather than becoming too self-assured. But even more to the heart of the matter, these strong Christians seemed to lack knowing what love is. It appeared to Paul that they lacked knowing how to love God well and how to love others well. They didn’t know enough about what matters most of all.

                We, of course, don’t have to worry about offending someone for eating meat sacrificed to an idol in a temple. But the general principle still holds: love for God and others matters more than knowledge about God and others. We have to be on guard that we don’t allow our knowledge to confuse us or block us from loving God and others fully. We also have to be careful not to use our knowledge in ways to justify actions that otherwise may be unloving. We don’t want our sophisticated knowledge to be an excuse for failing to love.

                I wonder if sometimes we make things too complicated. For example, a few days ago I was listening to Bernie Sanders, a senator from Vermont, who identifies as an independent but is really a pretty liberal democrat. Anyway, he was talking about how to grow America’s economy, and how trickle-down economics over the past 30 years hasn’t worked. He said that to grow the economy really is simple: sell stuff. After all, the personal consumer makes up 70% of the economy. But if these consumers don’t have a lot of disposable income, they aren’t able to buy products and services. The answer is to give them more disposable income so that they can spend it. Then, the job creators will have to expand and hire more workers because of the increased demand. Sounds simple. But then you listen to the economists and the policy wonks and then it becomes confusing. All that economic data and policies seem to prevent what seems to be a pretty straightforward and simple thing: give people more money so they can spend it.

                So there’s that. Knowledge can sometimes make complicated what doesn’t need to be so complicated. Sometimes knowledge prevents us from actually doing what needs to be done. Sometimes knowledge is about knowing peripheral things but lacking knowledge of what matters most, which for Christians is to love God and love others.

                Then there is how Paul put it, “Knowledge puffs up, love builds up.” That term translated “puffed up” is an interesting one. The term is related to the image of a bellows, or of using a bellows to blow out air. It’s metaphorical. “Puffed up” may be too polite an expression. Paul may have been going for the image of someone being full of hot air, or being a gas bag. It reminds me of the old joke that Ph.D. stands for piled higher and deeper.

                Obviously there is nothing wrong with gaining knowledge. Paul himself was a scholar of the Torah. He studied at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the best known and highly regarded rabbis of the day. There is nothing wrong with loving to learn, to be curious, to explore, to be a life-long student. Paul is certainly not an anti-intellectual. It’s just that for Paul it matters less what you know and more that you are known. Did you catch that? Paul said, “Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by him.” It’s less what you know but who knows you. Relationships matter more than knowledge.

                This past week, a man who is deeply loved by many in Ohio, particularly among the clergy, passed away; Bill Croy, who suffered from ALS for many years. When the word got out, several of my friends on Facebook, who had the privilege of knowing him, posted incredibly moving eulogies. They wrote of how generous he was with his time, how caring. They wrote of how he was a mentor. They wrote of his deep spirituality and his unwavering integrity. They wrote of how he gave so much of his time to help and encourage, yes, to build up others, even when it took so much of his energy to do so. As I read these eulogies, I didn’t see anyone write about his knowledge. It was all about his love. Because that is what it’s all about.

                Sometimes, people get too smart for their own britches. Knowledge is power. But sometimes that power can go to your head. Ultimately, it’s about living a life of love. We love God by following God’s commandments, not trying to rationalize avoidance of them by means of sophisticated argumentation. We love others by building them up, which includes teaching, sharing what we have learned, but doing so in ways that build up, not cause someone to feel inadequate or stupid. Paul is encouraging us to take care, that we live our lives in ways that lift others up. Let’s all try to focus more of our energies on loving well. Love God, love others, love learning, love this amazing world that we are privileged to live in. Let love, not knowledge, be our north star as we make our way through life.