Love, Knowledge and Insight

John Lennon famously sang the song "All You Need is Love" in the "Yellow Submarine" feature cartoon. It's a great song. And it's wrong. You might be surprised that a preacher whose primary message is the good news of God's love would say that love alone is not sufficient. But we have it on the highest authority that it is not. In today's reading from Philippians Paul writes, "And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best…"

We see love without knowledge and insight all the time. Someone just meets a person and in no time they've moved in together, setting up a household with little knowledge of their partner. We see people blind to the fact that the boyfriend or adult offspring they love so much is damaging them, all the while defending the person doing evil. We see people raising the children they purportedly love without insight or even common sense. Worse, we see people following an ideology or a religion with no clear idea of the real essence of the thing, blindly defending it using methods its founders would repudiate.

Just because some person or activity or lifestyle attracts you doesn't mean it's right for you--or anyone. What looks or even feels good is not always good. Nobody takes drugs with the intention of becoming an addict. They do it because it feels good--at first and fleetingly. If the effect were lasting they'd never take another hit. Other people do some terrible things because they make good money at them. Or because, without checking them out, they mistakenly thought that they would be good things.

Evil is a chameleon. It is fake goodness, a cunning knockoff that promises what it cannot deliver. It is spoiled fruit with the rotten or fuzzy side turned away from you so that you will buy it unwittingly. It's the contract that seems too good to be true, until all the unfavorable conditions and fees in the fine print catch up to you. Were it seen for what it is, no one would choose it. So a good deal of wisdom is discerning what is good and what merely appears to be good.

Knowledge and judgment are the 2 things that Paul prays that the reader's love overflows with. Knowledge is important. You have to have the facts. I can't believe the stuff people post on the internet without looking up the facts. There are whole websites devoted to correcting internet misinformation. Snopes.com is my favorite. You would think with the equivalent of a world class library on your laptop or smartphone people would stop believing foolish things. But knowledge is not enough. Otherwise, all of these studies governments commission would lead to better policies.

It is insight, judgment, the proper weighing of the facts, that leads to wise choices. Facts only tell you what is; judgment tells you what ought to be. And it needs to be right about what ought to be; it needs to be good judgment. Different philosophies, political parties and religions have various ideas of what ought to be. They can't all be right. Hedonists have one view of what the world ought to be; Nazis have a different one; Quakers yet another. Values must be decided.

Our values are derived from scripture's wisdom. They begin with the idea that we are created in the image of God. That means human beings have intrinsic value. This is why it is wrong to harm others. That's why the natural corollary to loving God is loving human beings.

Another insight is that human beings are fallible. All human beings. Popes, priests, scientists, atheists, politicians, thinkers, writers, soldiers, athletes, rock stars, actors, doctors, nurses, teachers, you name it. The Bible says that there is none who is righteous. Thomas Jefferson was a great president but terrible at managing his personal finances and also when it came to acknowledging his illegitimate sons by his slave, who was his wife's half-sister. Charles Dickens was a beloved and world famous writer who exposed the plight of the poor but left his wife and the mother of his 10 children for an 18 year old actress. Richard Wagner was a great composer but an anti-Semite. Weekly the news reveals the flaws of otherwise admirable people.

That's why we don't worship someone who is merely human, but Jesus Christ, who was tempted in every way we are yet did not sin. And that's why humility is a Christian virtue. Even when we must correct others, we need to look towards our own behavior. Jesus warned about trying to take specks out of others' eyes while carrying around a log in our own.

The obverse of the fact that none of us is perfect is that anyone can be redeemed. No one can be written off completely. Nor are we supposed to. Jesus told us not to pass judgment on others lest we be judged by the same standards. All saints have a past...which means all sinners can have a future! It also means people we are tempted to look down on may be in transition, in the process of coming to God, however roundabout it looks to us. Our job is to help them, not impede them; to encourage them, not discourage them; to invite them, not repel them. 

Because we know the good news that anyone can be redeemed by Christ, we share it. We come not as conquerors or judges or enforcers. We are messengers, heralds, emissaries of God's Kingdom. We offer God's love and forgiveness, his mercy and transforming power, his grace. We offer new life, a new beginning, new hope. We offer an alternative to the world's increasingly fatalistic reading of genetics and environment as one's inescapable destiny. We offer an opportunity to become more than an animal, whose purpose is just to reproduce and die. We offer the opportunity to become one of God's children, following in his footsteps, continuing his work. We offer a community that gives support in following Jesus, providing free instruction, inspiration, music, prayer, communion and love.

And so we come full circle. From love to knowledge to good judgment to love. They go together. If you love something, you want to learn more about it. If you love someone you want to learn everything about them. You want to know what they like and don't like, what they are interested in, and what they love to do. If we love God, we want to know everything we can about him, what he likes and doesn't like, what he is interested in, what he loves to do. If we really listen to him, to his Word, we will gain knowledge about him. If we use good judgment, we will uphold his values. If we uphold his values, we will show our love for him and for those he made in his image and for whom, in the person of his son, he died.

Paul wrote that he prayed his readers' love may overflow with knowledge and insight "so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness…" The old saying is that practice makes perfect. Jesus said we must be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (or complete). We are learning about God and his love so that we get better at emulating it. Our goal is eventually reaching perfection. We will probably never reach it in this life but when Christ returns we are told we shall be like him. The righteousness he imputes to us by grace will be realized.

We will be changed. That's what knowledge and insight do to you. They change you. The knowledge of God and the insights of his wisdom are meant to change us until we are more like him. We were created in his image and we have marred that. But through knowing God we come to be more like him. Especially because we cannot really get to know God without knowing Christ. And we cannot know Christ without opening ourselves to his Spirit. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, we are transformed and shaped into the image of Christ.

Christianity is becoming less popular these days. But Christ isn't. And that's the problem. People are not stupid. They see that many folks who use Christ's name do not resemble him very much. But when we do resemble him, when we do the things he would do, when we display his Spirit, the world makes note. Like when a mentally ill man shot up a schoolhouse full of Amish girls and the Amish community comforted the shooter's widow and family and attended his funeral. The world realized that was Christlike behavior.

The obvious solution to the unpopularity of Christians is that we need to resemble Jesus all the time. We may not achieve it perfectly in this life, but if we were the next best thing to Jesus, if we were a reasonable approximation of him, if our presence reminded others strongly of his presence, imagine the impact we would have. Imagine the good we would do. Imagine the people who would be interested in knowing more about the God we love, if we more perfectly reflected that love.