I have reflected often on portions of this passage from 1 Corinthians 13:
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.....
Also:
.....Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
We come to the eventual understanding that secular knowledge (not relating to the spiritual world) is infinite, that we will never learn all there is to learn. The pursuit of new and greater knowledge will be the task of each new generation. We have come very far since our early days on earth in terms of the accumulation of secular knowledge. History is full of the stories of vast empires, overwhelming defeats, plagues, holy wars and wars in general, colonization, slavery and renaissance periods that moved humankind forward in great strides. Over the many centuries, humankind has become more civilized. Technological advances just within the past thirty years have changed our lives forever--personal computers, cell phones, the digital age. Accumulated earthly knowledge is at our fingertips for the most part; we need only do online searches to find what we are looking for. That was not the case thirty years ago, a century ago, a millennium ago. We keep up with all the new changes and innovations. We have to, since we belong to this generation.
What I mostly wonder about is the pursuit of secular knowledge. We are told as children that education is very important for getting the right kind of job or career. But education in and of itself is not knowledge. It is the impartment of knowledge, but it is up to each individual to receive and accept that knowledge. A degree in a specific subject does not necessarily imply that the recipient is knowledgeable; it merely states that the recipient has fulfilled the requirements for a particular degree. The person may have cheated or obtained the degree unethically. There is no guarantee that education will produce knowledgeable individuals. But generally speaking, it does to a point. However, that knowledge is limited. There are people with advanced degrees who can tell you everything you'd like to know about a very specialized subject. They have a wealth of limited secular knowledge that they can impart to others if others wish. But they cannot necessarily impart knowledge in other areas, and if they try to do so, they can be criticized for doing so.
However, let us imagine that such people had learned all that it was possible to learn in this life. Do they eventually come to the realization that the accumulation of secular knowledge will never cease? As long as humankind continues to exist, knowledge will change, grow and evolve. Current secular knowledge will pass away in the sense that the possessor of that knowledge passes away, but secular knowledge in and of itself does not cease to exist. Future secular knowledge will build upon it, just that it has yet to be discovered. Secular knowledge is infinite in its scope, even though we cannot imagine what the future will bring. It will always be in front of humankind, an aim, a challenge. It's tiring in some respects to realize this. Perhaps it is at this point that individuals realize that the accumulation of more and more secular knowledge isn't of paramount importance. Letting go of the quest for the incessant accumulation of such knowledge may be the right path for many people who have realized that no matter how much they learn, it will never be enough. Their current knowledge will eventually become passé, it will pass away as will they. We learn as we grow older that we are replaceable and that we will be replaced. Others will be younger, smarter, better equipped for the new world that awaits. That is the way of the world. We don't think about this when we are young. And that is also the way of the world.
We will never have perfect or total secular knowledge as humans; that would be an existence in a realm outside of earth's. Corinthians is not saying that there is something wrong with pursuing secular knowledge, just that we need to be aware of its transience. Spiritual knowledge and learning to love are of equal importance. I don't think secular knowledge and spiritual knowledge are mutually exclusive; they are connected. We need to learn how to love and to recognize the divine, and that requires the impartment of a body of knowledge having to do with both. We will never have perfect human love, just as we will never have perfect secular knowledge. But God's love will always be there, it never fails. It underlies all that we do in our human lives. We learn by doing, by practicing the commandments, but we also learn by reading spiritual literature. We learn by adopting a mindset open to the spiritual. There ought to be more emphasis on imparting this kind of knowledge in the world. There are parents who take on this task; they are spiritual guides or at least they ought to be, but not all parents can open the non-secular world of knowledge for their children because they are not aware of it themselves. It's often left to religious schooling to do that, e.g. Catholic schools. My parents were my first spiritual teachers, and I'm grateful for the knowledge they imparted to me. They did the best they could. I'm also grateful to Catholic grammar school for the same thing.
