A Danger of Knowledge

I catch myself doing it on Facebook. Someone says something I think is wrong, and before I’ve decided anything I’m already typing — reaching for the verse, the correction, the thing I know that they apparently don’t.

Sometimes I catch it in time and delete the whole thing before it ever posts. Sometimes I stop, walk away, come back later with a cooler head. But if I’m honest, more often I only catch it after I’ve hit enter — and every now and then I go back to something I wrote, find it so horrific I can hardly believe I sent it, and quietly take it down.

There’s a small pleasure in the typing that I don’t like to look at too closely. And underneath it, quieter, a question I’d rather not hear: who was that for?

Which makes this an awkward thing to write. The danger I want to look at is the one I’m standing in the middle of. A man who sits down to write about a danger of knowledge is, almost by definition, a man with some knowledge he’s itching to hand you. The warning has my name on it first — maybe my name especially. So I won’t pretend I’m up here and the trouble is out there. Let’s just look at it together.

And let’s start where it’s only fair to start. Knowledge is a good thing. The Proverbs don’t hedge about it — “an intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.” Get it, seek it, treasure it. Whatever this is, it isn’t a case against knowing things. I love to know things. That’s rather the problem.

Because Paul says something that stops me every time. “Knowledge puffs upFrom the Greek physioō — to inflate or puff up, the word behind "knowledge puffs up" (1 Corinthians 8:1). The image is leaven: what puffs up a lump is leaven — tying intellectual pride directly to leaven as knowledge held without love. See Does Leaven Really Mean Sin? More,” he writes, “but love builds up.” Puffs up. Like bread, like a chest, like something swelling with air. Beside it sits love, which builds — lays one thing on another until something is actually there. Two things that look alike from the outside. One of them is mostly air. It’s an old swap; the first time anyone reached for knowledge in a garden, it went the same way — the knowing came, and something got smaller, not larger.

The next line is worse: “if anyone supposes that he knows something, he does not yet know the way he ought to know.” Not doesn’t know enough yet. Doesn’t know the way. The very supposing — the I’ve-got-this — is itself the tell. And I’ve noticed it: the times I’m most certain I’ve got it are the times I’m most likely already typing. The more I actually learn, the more the edges of what I don’t know light up. Real understandingIn the New Testament this is synesis — a bringing-together: scattered pieces drawn into one cohesive whole, not a quantity of information accumulated. In plain terms it is connecting the dots — understanding is unification, not accumulation. Synonyms: synesis, unification, insight, discernment See The Importance of Understanding in Jesus Christ More and the puffed-up feeling seem to run in opposite directions.

And then the verse turns, and it’s the turn I keepFrom the Hebrew shamar — to watch over, guard, protect, give attentive care to. A shepherd shamar the flock. The keeping the feasts and sabbath requires is the attentive, protective engagement that creates the conditions for seeing what they reveal — not external compliance with a schedule. Synonyms: shamar, observe, guard, watch over. More missing. You’d expect: but if anyone knows enough, then— Instead: “but if anyone love God, the same is known of him.” Known of him. The whole thing pivots off of knowing and onto being known. Not what I know. Not even Who I know — I’d have taken that; it sounds humble enough. Who knows me. And the door into it isn’t study. It’s love.

That rearranges things I’d rather keep. What was I actually after, in the comment box? To convince someone. But I can’t remember the last time a person was argued into anything that mattered. It’s God who convicts — not me who convinces. God who calls. God who turns a mind around; the word is metanoiameta (change) + nous (mind): deeper than the English 'repentance.' A renovation of perception — stepping outside the old framework to see clearly — from which a real change of direction follows. See also: The Mask and the Metamorphosis. More, a mind turned. God who changes a person from the inside. Every piece of that I keep trying to do with the right verse and a good paragraph. Not one of those is mine to do.

Which is maybe why Paul, elsewhere, puts it as starkly as he can: if I have all knowledge “but have not love, I am nothing.” Not less. Nothing. And then the strangest economy of all — the whole law, he says, is fulfilled in one word, one Logos(λόγος): The Greek word translated "Word" in John 1:1 — but unlike rhēma (an individual utterance), logos means the ultimate organizing principle, the logic and source of all meaning. John's choice announces Jesus not as a messenger but as the living structure by which all things were made and hold together. See The Word That Isn’t Just a Word. See also: Christ More: “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” One. All my words, the complicated stacks of them, the threads and corrections and verses at the ready — and the whole pile was only ever pointing at a single one. The man I was correcting was my neighbor the entire time.

So I’m back at the comment box, cursor blinking. Someone has said something wrong, and I know it, and I have the verse ready. The question hasn’t changed since the top of the page — I just couldn’t hear it before. Who is this for? If it’s for me — to be right, to be seen knowing — I already know how that one ends; I’ll read it tomorrow and take it down. But if it’s for him, the neighbor on the other end of it, then maybe the most knowing thing I could do is the one thing all of it was pointing at: close the laptop, and love him instead.

I still get it wrong more than I get it right. But I’m beginning to catch it a little earlier. Sometimes even before I hit enter.

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