I want to write a series on Corinthians. But as I picked it up to read it recently, I found myself not praying that God open my eyes to see more deeply, but somehow praying something different. I was asking instead that I wouldn’t be so caught up in the knowledge aspect of my studies. I was immediately drawn to 1 Corinthians 13. I think I need to kick it off there, and not so much with the beginning of the book. To be sure, the long commentary on knowledge and wisdom and the contrast between the human and spiritual aspects are incredibly important. But here in 13, I think we have a far more urgent groundwork.
So I’m going to begin writing some commentary and asking a few questions on the subject of the needs of academics and the need for a deep intellectual rigour. But I’m going to be looking at the 13th chapter first.
1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
How do we speak to others? It’s easy for me to get off on an intellectual tangent and get really into a conversation about the trivial aspects of it, but forget about the love aspect of being with my interlocutor. In verse 1, though, Paul makes it exceptionally clear that such speech just adds to surrounding chatter, it sounds like shapeless, formless, noise. That’s what we get, whether our speech is earth bound or off in the heavens, if we aren’t really caring for one another in it, if we don’t really love the person we’re speaking to, if we aren’t really expressing something more than the mere words, we are only noisy clashes. I can’t read this passage but feel convicted. How often am I really just speaking in noise? I love having deep intellectual conversations, but if there isn’t a precedent quality of deep meaningful love for one another, what good is the speech?
As I think about this, I recall so much of the bombastic writing that I put out for school. Was it really any more than a clanging cymbal? If we are going to start having intellectual conversations in our fatih, we are going to have to love first. We are going to have to address each other not only with dignity and respect, not only with sympathy and concern, but with raw, dangerous love.
Maybe that’s it. Love that is raw and dangerous gets into our lives in ways that we cannot ignore. It gets all up in our academic faces and points its finger at us, makes us ashamed of the times when our love was broken. It makes us really ask why we write what we write, and why we study what we study. And when we come up short against the measure of love, we have to rethink our careers. But love also allows us to really study. Love fuels our studies, love gives us insight into authors, and times, and love lets us know when we are not being charitable toward those we don’t or can’t understand.
But we are not just noise making, we are really nothing at all if we don’t have love. No matter how deep our knowledge goes, no matter how many mysteries we can uncover, no matter how far into the future we can see, we are nothing at all without love. If we want to really be a part of the academy, to make a difference, we must have love. We must love our neighbors, whose beliefs we may not hold. We must love those whose intellectual arguments run contrary to our own, or even undermine them. We must love those whom no one loves. We must love those who are alone, whose studies constantly remove them from friends and family. We must love those who have gone before us. We must love those who go after us.
Every moment of the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom must be a loving moment. We are nothing otherwise. What is nothing? What is the nothing of scholarship that I struggle to cast off? What is the nothing that I encounter in myself when I gush forth on some new intellectual hobbyhorse? Sure I want this conversation to be loving, but often when I search for something to say, I come off cold and empty, wishing I could say something that really mattered to people. How do we bring out the love we have for others when we unfold the profound wonders of the world that we see in our corner of it.
I am thinking of a couple of lovers. The one has seen and lived his life in places the other never has, and vice versa. The lovers want to show each other the most beautiful things they have ever seen. One of them takes the other by the hand, leads her down a hidden path that few know about. The other is caught in suspense, wondering why they have taken this way, but the other is simply welling over with the joy that he might have the opportunity to share something with her. They step over the little rivulets that criss cross the overgrown foot path. She smiles as she sees how her lover lights up, and wonder overtakes her countenance. They step around a line of trees, and there, in the middle of all the crazy world they had lived in is the most beautiful view of a sheltered harbor, a small island off the in the distance. The lover interjects. But what conversation is he interjecting? Precisely the one that all of the world seems to be having with him, precisely the one he wants to share with her. He tells how he spent his time staring off into the distance, wondering what life would bring. He tells how the adventure keeps beckoning him on. He tells how the beach smiles back at him, how gulls in the distance taunt him, how the waves speak a poetry of peace. She listens to him, and to all that she sees. But none of this would be anything other than a cliche walk to the beach, had the two not really loved each other. How nothing it would be!
I think that’s sort of how we have to imagine our academic conversations. We have to love each other enough to share, but love each other enough to know whom to share what with too. I think sometimes I lack that wisdom. I lack the wisdom of two lovers walking on the beach. But that’s what I’m really looking for when I interact with the academy. I want to love like this. I want to love my interlocutors, love them with the love of God, welcoming them into the community of the Body of Christ. There is love like no one has loved before.
I know what you mean. I, too, have been prone to writing bombast.
I also am noting how well this kind of love in academic work makes not only for good action because it is loving and thus can do more than clang, but also for good academics. I think that’s probably true for a lot of things we can do. Doing them in a way that puts love at the center of our decisions makes not only for loving and thus meaningful work but also for better work in the first place (as determined from the usual standards for that work, I mean). I can imagine situations in which that is not always true, of course, but it’s good to remember that work done well and work done lovingly are not always opposed, either.
Not that I think this makes for the good first step. Kind of like a bonus once we start working and doing things with love.