Knowledge can be a very dangerous thing when bringing it to the ignorant. Knowledge can blind you of tact, and it can place a strong, thick curtain between what you’re wanting to share and what is getting through.
We sometimes tend to think we know all we need to know to answer questions – but sometimes our humble hearts can help us more than our proud minds. We never really know enough until we recognize that God really knows it all.
Have you ever been in a situation where you have a stance on something, or you’re so sure about something being this way or that way, only to be proved wrong later? Or only to have found out you didn’t know the whole truth in the beginning. As Christians, we are placed in a dangerous situation with what we’ve learned from Christ and what he’s taught us. The fact is that no one is going to heaven without first going through Christ. We realize the subject we’re dealing with is eternal damnation or eternal glorification and everlasting life. Or maybe we’re just dealing with our knowledge of truth on Creation vice the world’s view of how it all began. Either way, we know things that cause passion in the heart, and this passion can be blinding when bringing the knowledge to someone else.
Some people say, quite rightly, that idols have no actual existence, that there’s nothing to them, that there’s no god other than our one God, that no matter how many of these so-called gods are named and worshiped they still don’t add up to anything but a tall story. They say, again (quite rightly), that there is only one God the Father, that everything comes from him, and that he wants us to live for him. Also, they say that there is only one Master, Jesus the Messiah, and that everything is for his sake, including us. It’s true. In strict logic then, nothing happened to the meat when it was offered up to an idol. It’s just like any other meat.
Knowing something is one thing. Sharing something with another is something else. Just because you know the meat isn’t going to anything and that it’s just meat, doesn’t mean you can’t bring truth with tact. Just because you know being gay is a sin doesn’t mean you can’t bring truth with tact. Just because you know sex before marriage is a sin, but bringing that knowledge and truth to others should involve tact and humbleness. Think how it’d be if God brought all the things we’ve learned from him to us in the same manner we bring some things to others. It wouldn’t be an overwhelming message of love . When you take away the message of love in the Gospel, you’re taking away from the perfect thing that it is.
But knowing isn’t everything. If it becomes everything, some people end up as know-it-alls who treat others as know-nothings. Real knowledge isn’t that insensitive. We need to be sensitive to the fact that we’re not all on the same level of understanding in this. | 1 Corinthians 8:1-7
Thinking, without prayer, without the Holy Spirit, without obedience, without love, will puff up and destroy. But thinking under the mighty hand of God, thinking soaked in prayer, thinking carried by the Holy Spirit, thinking tethered to the Bible, thinking in pursuit of more reasons to praise and proclaim the glories of God, thinking in the service of love – such thinking is indispensable in a life of fullest praise to God.
God’s message was love. Don’t be the big-headed person that gets in the way.
