Closer to Love

Let’s pretend that you didn’t know didly squat about church and then were assigned a research project in which you had to visit and research a bunch of churches. And let’s say that the main question you were seeking to answer was: What are churches attempting to do? I wonder what conclusion you’d come to.

My guess is that you’d answer: “Churches are attempting to increase the knowledge of those who attend.” Don’t you think? If you saw that the main gathering was half teaching time, and listened to the content of that teaching time. And if you looked through what else the church offered, the classes, groups, seminars, books, etc. Wouldn’t you conclude that the primary goal is to increase knowledge?

And if that’s even possibly true, today’s reading (1 Corinthians 8) is pretty scary. Because it tells us that: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.“And it teaches what the real goal of a church should be: Love. And so knowledge should really be just a vehicle towards love. If it isn’t. If it’s just knowledge for knowledge’s sake, it’s dangerous. And in this chapter we see an example of how knowledge can be used to be unloving.

I pray that at Verve, the knowledge we give and we gain brings us closer and closer to love.