What Do You Know?

1 Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. 2 If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. 3 But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.

—1 Corinthians 8:1-3

Knowledge is a fluid thing—what is known moment by moment changes and shifts, depending on one’s experience. I woke up this morning, knowing what I was going to do today, but three phone calls later, the entire schedule changed, making my original knowledge wishful thinking at best. Life is like that. As it follows its completely unpredictable course, we are left scrambling in its wake, seizing at straws to find our balance. 

Yet, we hunger for certainty. We want to be sure of ourselves, our expectations, and our way through the world. To do so, we need standards. We need certain pieces of knowledge to be concrete, dependable, and consistent. We long for truths like gravity that rules our daily experience—we drop something and it falls to the ground—every time, all the time. We want other pieces of our lives to follow that sort of predictable stability. It makes so much easier. It makes life manageable. In our hunger for that sort of certainty, we apply concreteness to things that are anything but concrete. We try to force the issue. 

For instance, we might believe that if something is on the internet, it must be true because “they”—some faceless authority governing such things—would not allow someone to post something blatantly untrue on the internet, so, to use a current event, friends have excitedly let me know that the Malaysian airliner that has been missing for two weeks has been found—it said so on the internet—when the truth was (is) that no one is yet certain where the plane is or what happened. It has been completely tragic to watch family members of the missing raise their hopes and then be cruelly plunged back into unknowing. But we stubbornly cling to our belief that the internet is an unquestioned fount of real information all the time. 

A savvy teenager would have warned us off that fallacy long, long ago, having authored several “adaptations” of Wikipedia biographies herself!

When it comes to our faith, though, we want that concreteness to be more than tangible—we want to be absolutely certain of what we believe, finding that place where questions cease, doubts vanish, and ambiguity is non-existent. 

Paul dealt with such a hunger as worked among the Corinthians. The main problem he encountered was that there was no single truth declared to be concrete. Rather, multiple factions arose within that congregation, each of whom was absolutely certain of the validity of their assertions. They would tolerate no questions from other sides. The result was expected—mass division, animosity, and a church in danger of flying apart at the seams—in other words, a good, old-fashioned church fight. The different combatants had found a truth that worked for them, and closed off all other options. Hence, we find an argument over the food served at the common dinner table. One group believe with all their heart that food offered to idols in ritual sacrifice (the practice was simple—you made an offering to the gods, then ate it, taking in the blessing) was anathema for Christians. God would blast someone ingesting such tainted food. Others were completely libertarian about where the food came from—food was food, thanks be to God, so eat hearty and don’t worry about it. Paul’s problem is that the two sides were literally at each other’s throats, threatening all sorts of violence against the other. Not exactly Christian peace, harmony, or love.

Paul, though, is smart enough to see the core issue. Forget the menu, the real issue is KNOWLEDGE. Someone thinks they something absolutely for sure, and all hell breaks loose, perhaps literally as well as figuratively. 

What we think we know gets us into trouble when we close off all other options. It “puffs up.” We believe we are special because we know what is what. We believe we are better than someone else because our knowledge tells us so. We see this behind hateful and horrible human actions that end in genocide—one group truly, sincerely, and completely believes another group of human beings is beneath contempt, not really human when all is said and done, and not worth saving, and perhaps worthy of eradication—everyone and the world would be much better off if they were gone. But we mud guard ourselves here, not thinking such horrendous consequences are limited to the extremes. Even otherwise normal, decent, and generally open human beings can fall into the same trap when they run into conflict and believe the other person is out of their mind, stupid, closed-minded, or any other rationale for dismissing, discarding, or demeaning them. Hence, an otherwise rational person can launch into utter vitriol against a coworker who espouses contrary political views, or who engages in opposing lifestyle choices, or who chooses really bad music to work by—the other is dismissed by knowledge as beneath contempt. 

Paul argues that the only certain knowledge is to be known by God.

But that sounds like a convenient sidestep. 

It isn’t because what it does it relativize what we can know for sure. Our wisdom—what we know that works to keep life and the world manageable for us—comes through experience. We see what works, what leads to solutions to our problems, and what helps us make sense of daily conundrums. Our experience tells us that this must be true based on the results. Yet, what works for one of us may or may not work for ALL of us. We have to be careful not to assume too much. What works for me, works because it is a direct outgrowth of my particular experience, shaped by my abilities, understanding, and dedication to whatever was before me. What works for my daughter may or may not flow from my experience. She may find, given a completely identical circumstance, that something completely opposite my discovery works for her. What that means is, no, I do not then reject my daughter as an uppity child with no respect for her elders, but, yes, allow her experience to be her own. We wound up in the same place, but on different roads. And being in the same place was what we both wanted. 

So, with God, we need to recognize that only one sure of much of anything is God himself. We all experience God in our own way through our own encounters with God. Some of us wind up with Peter—absolutely sure of absolutely anything (caveat—he ended up being wrong an inordinate amount of time); while others of us wind up with Thomas—absolutely sure of nothing, questioning everything, and hungering for proof upon proof (caveat—he missed a lot because of unnecessary hand-wringing). Yet, God is with both with the same love, consideration, and full presence, full of grace, mercy, and comfort for each. 

When we reach the inevitable impasses that come with being human—put more than one person in a room and there will be conflict—remember that no one is working from absolute knowledge. We need to stop, reflect, then listen. We need to seek to understand the experience of the other. We need to find a way where we can mutually hear what each says, then perhaps find a new truth that neither one of us considered, yet brings us more fully to God.