Reflections on knowledge and love

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. 

Little pearls of wisdom

I am recommending this article 'Don't get emotionally mugged' written by Martha Beck which showed up on Oprah.com on April 28th of this year. It had a lot of interesting things to say to me and I don't hesitate to recommend it! 

http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/04/28/stay.good.mood.o/index.html?iref=obinsite

I also recommend another article by the same writer: 'The Cure for self-consciousness' that also can be found on Oprah.com  http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Martha-Becks-Cure-for-Self-Consciousness/1 and which was originally published in Oprah magazine in July 2007.  

There are a lot of self-help books, magazines, articles, shows, and advice out there. Sifting the wheat from the chaff is a huge job, but well-worth it when you find some quality advice. These two articles ‘speak’ to me because the author seems to be genuinely interested in making life better for her readers, and because you get the feeling that she’s been there, done that and learned from it. And what she learned was valuable enough to share, and since she’s a good writer, she can communicate it well. And anything that can make our lives better or change our attitudes for the better is something I want to share with you.

Enjoy………..

'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels'.......

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing". 

1 Corinthians 13

I was reminded of this passage today while in conversation with a good friend. I thought of it because we are both scientists and we both work in an academic research setting. We were talking about some of the sociopathic behavior we have been witness to or recipients of on different occasions in our workplace, and it struck me that a high degree of intelligence is absolutely no guarantee of good behavior (in the moral sense). Many young people are often told that education is the key to a better life, and while that may be true in the materialistic sense, it does not have to be true in a spiritual sense. A long education, an advanced degree, and a corresponding advanced career do not necessarily make a person a good person; they only make a person qualified for a specific job or career. And that is fine, but I have seen so much morally questionable behavior in my years in the workplace that I have learned that the quest for knowledge is an admirable thing, but not at the expense of your spiritual life or your soul. And that is what the above passage is trying to say to us—that we can have all the knowledge in the world but if we have not learned to love, all that knowledge is useless. It cannot help us.

I continue to be surprised by the poor behavior I see in people whom, as my mother would have said, are intelligent enough to know better. That is the responsibility that knowledge should impart—to use that knowledge carefully and responsibly, to treat others with respect—‘to do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. Well-educated people should know how to behave—should know that cheating, stealing, lying and misusing others are wrong and that it is best to avoid them. They should be actively leading the way toward a good spiritual life. The competitive world of academic science opens the doors to a lot of strange and morally ambiguous/morally wrong behavior. So then I ask, what is the point of all this knowledge if it is not to make the world a better place? If all this knowledge does not make us better people, then perhaps we would be better off without it? Perhaps it would be better to emphasize love and compassion in school instead. To paraphrase the above passage—‘what good does a high-impact factor publication do if I have not love? And though I have the talent for making money and gaining power and prestige and high rank, but have not love, I am nothing’.