More Than Smart--September 7, 2022

More Than Smart--September 7, 2022

"Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by him." [1 Corinthians 8:2-3]

It's been said before, but it bears repeating: people who are genuinely intelligent don't have to tell you they are smart--it is evident when they speak and act.  The same with people who are truly powerful--they don't have to advertise.  And people who are actually wealthy don't need to insist how very rich they are--when you have to tell people that, it's more likely that you're selling them on an image you want them to believe.  Hence Paul's point here that if you're the one going around bragging that you know something, chances are that you're trying to hoodwink or impress others rather than actually being knowledgeable.  Bragging that you have the answers is often a sign of your insecurity that you don't actually know what you are talking about... or of your overconfidence that you're the smartest one in the room.

On the other hand, as a gorgeous line of Brandi Carlile's puts it, "You'll be wrong, 'cause sometimes we get it wrong, but nobody leaves here alive and nothin' holy comes from being right."  Boy, there's a line that hits like a punch--nothing holy comes from being right.  There's a bit of wisdom a lot of us would-be Respectable Religious types could stand to learn again [but of course, that would mean admitting we didn't know something, wouldn't it?].

If that seems a surprising conclusion, maybe we can recognize it in Paul's words to the Corinthians, who sure seem to be intent on bragging about how much they "know." That was how he opened up the subject in yesterday's passage, remember?  He starts out quoting their own slogan back at them: "All of us possess knowledge."  There was a group, maybe a pretty sizeable one, in the congregation, who was certain they had all the right answers on their theological conundrums--after all, they had been taught by Paul himself and had taken notes.  But it turned out they really only knew just enough to be dangerous.  As we'll see in the coming verses, the Corinthians are so proud that they know what Paul thinks is the "right" answer to the question of whether it was ok to eat meat that had come from a sacrifice in a pagan shrine [Paul's take was, basically, it's not a problem to eat that meat, per se]. But Paul can already see that where the Corinthians want to take that train of thought, and he can see that that they don't care about running over the people who are stuck on the tracks.  And Paul won't let having the "right" answers become a way of steamrolling people.  Paul insists that having the "right" answers doesn't make you holy--but rather, once again, it all comes down to love.  More than "smart," Paul is concerned with how well we love.

Paul is laying the groundwork again for saying that ultimately it's more important to love like Jesus than to brag about having correct theological answers that leave you acting in pretty non-Jesus-like ways.  And for that matter, loving God has a way of bending our priorities into alignment with God's list of priorities, which always are more concerned with helping the weaker, the lesser, the vulnerable, and the overlooked, than with making the High Honor Roll in the Religion Department.  Nothing holy may come from merely "being right," but we sure do become more like Christ [which is to say, we become holy] the more we are formed by his kind of love.

And on the flip side, the more energy and time we spend on insisting on our "right-ness," the clearer it is we don't actually know what we're talking about, at least when it comes to the character of Christ and the Reign of God.  In plenty of other fields of study, you can know a lot and be an arrogant jerk.  You can be a well-read scholar of history and be pompous and puffed-up.  You can study astrophysics or organic chemistry and still treat human beings like garbage, I suppose.  But to really know God, Paul insists, you will find yourself increasingly shaped by love, even if you're still dealing with rough and jagged edges.  And the converse is true as well: if you think you are an expert on God but are more interested in proving yourself "right" than in showing love precisely to the ones you think are "wrong," you're not the expert you claim to be.

Maybe this can help us to get some clarification on why we do things like reading the Scriptures or studying the Word--because I don't think Paul believes it's just to get more head knowledge or reach a higher score on some theology exam, real or imagined.  We don't read the Bible simply to get more "right" answers, as though the Bible is simply a reference manual we consult when we have a question and then set back on the shelf.  We read the Scriptures as one more way to allow God to shape us into the likeness of Christ--which is to say, to form us with love.  If we're going to the Bible looking for ammunition to use in an attack on somebody else so that we can demolish them with our religious correctness, we have misunderstood what it is here for.  But if we learn from the Scriptures in order that we can become capable of living the Jesus way in the midst of a world trying to teach us its own meanness, we are on the right track.

Today, don't let being "right" be the end-point of our faith--ever.  Let's take Paul's direction and seek both to love God, and to love like God. I suspect something holy is likely to come from that.

Lord God, move us beyond our need to look smart or prove others wrong, and move us further into your way of love.