Better Than Knowledge

Knowledge is good.

Knowledge has brought us Aristotle, Da Vinci, Shakespeare, and Bill Watterson. It’s given us modern medicine, a better understanding of outer space, the ability to talk with loved ones from across the country, a vast system of information at the click of a button, and a plethora of ways to make a great cup of coffee. Knowledge lets us relate to friends, understand coworkers, and help those in need. Knowledge is a tasty carrot at the end of the college string. It’s a formidable ally in the fight against foolishness. It’s a floodlight to expose hidden injustice.

So knowledge is good.

But knowledge without love is nothing.

Knowledge without love yields boasting, gossip, blackmail, manipulation, corruption in the political scene, weapons of mass destruction, and talk radio. Knowledge without love makes us brains without hearts, tongues without bridles, bulldozers without steering. Knowledge without love creates debaters, one-uppers, and smug talkers.

Knowledge without love is incomplete, like a child’s understanding of Einstein’s physics. It’s imperfect, like a warped reflection in the carnival’s house of mirrors. And it’s transient, the moon-sliver of knowledge setting when the sun of perfect love shatters the darkness.

But knowledge is good.

Yes, knowledge is good, but love is better.

Love precludes the pernicious parts of knowledge: boasting, arrogance, stubbornness, resentment, crookedness. Instead, love ensures that knowledge is used rightly—to advocate, defend, restrain, imagine, create, extend grace, choose joy, and offer forgiveness. And this is only possible because Love Himself has done it for us. While His knowledge of our hearts is perfect (even the parts we’d die before admitting), His love for us is also perfect. That’s why, with full knowledge of our unworthiness, He died to make us whole.

So knowledge is good.

Yes, knowledge is good, but love is better, and one day love will transform knowledge.

Consider that the first sin was in pursuit of knowledge: the desire to know good and evil. The knowledge that was purported to make us like God estranged us from Him and has brought us little but tragedy ever since—a tragic irony. The knowledge of evil began the curse and keeps it going. You could say that knowledge brought death.

But one day mere knowledge will be obsolete, replaced instead with experience—a postcard snapshot superseded by a Grand Canyon hike. Where we know in part, we will then know in full. Our mind and heart will be united, and any discord between the two will vanish in the presence of God. Compared with the depth of that experience, our most impressive tidbit of knowledge will be passé. Scientific laws, psychological theories, and systematic theology will be kindergarten coloring pages. Love Himself will expel our delusions and our pride like a cellar door thrown wide open to the sunshine.

When we see Him face to face, our partial knowledge will become perfect experience. When we see Him, we will know Him even as we are known. When we see Him, we will be made like Him. Knowledge turned to experience is everlasting life.

Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.

So knowledge is good. Yes, knowledge is good, but love is better.

Love is best of all.