Knowledge and Love

1 Corinthians 8:1 (NASB)

1 Now concerning things sacrificed to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies.

1 Corinthians 8:1 (Amplified Bible)

1 Now about food offered to idols: of course we know that all of us possess knowledge [concerning these matters. Yet mere] knowledge causes people to be puffed up (to bear themselves loftily and be proud), but love (affection and goodwill and benevolence) edifies and builds up and encourages one to grow [to his full stature].

I am a person who, through a long life, has focused on knowledge rather than love. Knowledge, for me, is easy. I accumulate it quickly, and can think through the implications of what I learn with relative ease.

And I get dismayed that people, even intelligent people, do not think about what they know and believe. They do not understand the sources and implications of their knowledge and beliefs.

I know from my knowledge that about half of that ability is environmental (good parents, socioeconomic status, good schools and colleges) and half is hard-wired genetically (basic intelligence, perseverance, and some other personality traits). And I am grateful for both.

Even science, my chosen profession, is from a Latin word meaning knowledge.

The theory of evolution by natural selection, the basic organizing principle of biology, is like the tower of Babel in the book of Genesis. However, instead of building a tower to heaven, to be like God, biologists (and geologists and cosmologists) use their knowledge, fact by fact, to build a tower. And from the top of the tower, they can see all the way back to the beginning of life. They see the creation but not the Creator. And the pride of that can make arrogant.

Love, both agape and philos, have been a lot harder.

Agape, of course, comes from God. It is both a gift to us and fruit of the Holy Spirit. We were designed by God ("made in His image") to know and live in agape. However, since the Fall, humans have learned to live without it to the point of forgetting our need for it. And, like Paul implies here, we substitute knowledge which we can be proud about for agape which is a gift which we cannot be.

There is a hole in our lives left by our lack of agape. Filling ourselves up with knowledge is part of the "foolish... wisdom of the world" (1 Cor 1:20).

Background study:
1 Timothy 6:20 New American Standard Bible (NASB ©1995)
— O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly [and] empty chatter [and] the opposing arguments of what is falsely called “knowledge”—

1 Timothy 6:20 Original King James Bible (AV 1611)
— O Timothie, keepe that which is committed to thy trust, auoyding prophane [and] vaine bablings, and oppositions of science, fasly so called:

Greek Dictionary (Lexicon-Concordance) for "gnosis" usually translated as knowledge.

1) knowledge - signifies in general intelligence, understanding
    1a) the general knowledge of Christian religion
    etc.