Learning To Love, Loving To Learn

“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ.” (Philippians 1:9-10)


I once saw a bumper sticker that said, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” It’s a valid point. However, even the educated elite can miss out on true wisdom. Knowledge and Wisdom are divine twins. Knowledge, as the apostle pens here, leads to insight or wisdom. And let's face it, no one is more ignorant than when they profess, knowingly or innocently, that they "already know it." Even the black commentator Thomas Sowell once quipped that every doctoral student should recite a thousand times at his graduation: “I do not know, I do not know, I do not know.”

No doubt the greatest quality of a fine education is to know doubt and to be comfortable with uncertainty. In fact, in a postmodern culture, skepticism and question are paragon virtues where a “doubting” Thomas becomes a patron saint.

Nevertheless, the Apostle Paul prays that the believer will find “knowledge and depth of insight” through their affection for Christ. Did you notice its “knowledge” and “depth of insight?” True wisdom is more than just accumulated facts, figures and formulas. Furthermore, the greatest wisdom doesn’t even come with diplomas, grade point averages or intellectual pursuits but rather with a sincere love expressed through compassion, empathy, mercy and grace. Wisdom waxes strong when we focus our hearts upon Jesus rather than our heads around human reason.

Ultimately, a lovely wisdom produces the ability to recognize good and evil, to live with integrity and to walk without shame or guilt. Our love for God and others overflows in abundant living when we tap into True Wisdom. It’s a beautiful insight to anyone serious about learning and earning God’s PHD.

Purity. Humility. Discernment.


NOTABLE QUOTABLES ON KNOWLEDGE:

If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is not a barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain. -Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge. -Benjamin Disraeli

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it. -Margaret Fuller

Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it. -Samuel Johnson

Father, like the Apostle Paul, we pray that our love will abound this day with knowledge and deeper insight. We acknowledge that Your Wisdom is not only True but stands for Eternity. May we walk in blameless humility this day to discover this Truth and learn from Your Insight. Amen.