Winning Arguments is so yesterday
So many of our conversations today have one goal: to win, to be right, and prove the other person wrong. My data is more accurate, my reasoning is more solid and logical, I’m right, and you’re so f*d up. I’m right, I know it!
I’d be good with that except … that the greatest exposition on love ever written (1 Corinthians 13) also has a lot to say about the limitations of our knowledge.
Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless. When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever — faith, hope, and love — and the greatest of these is love.” I Corinthians 13:8–13
Please note:
“special knowledge will become useless’
“knowledge is partial and incomplete”
“even.. prophecy reveals only part of the picture”
“we see things imperfectly”
“all that I know now is partial and incomplete”
Paul, the guy who wrote this stuff, in the same breath says this:
“love will last forever”
“three things will last forever — faith, hope, and love — and the greatest of these is love”
This kind of sucks for me. I’m more comfortable showing off how smart I am as I smith words into a sword to rip out the entrails of my fundamentalist, Trump loving Facebook “friend”. I need to demonstrate that I’m right and he’s sooooooo NOT right, but Paul clearly says that what I think I know may not be line with reality at all and what really matters is LOVE. In my arguments about God I’m the equivalent of a flat earther arguing with a guy who thinks the sun orbits the earth. Both of us are seriously challenged in the knowledge department, so maybe I should put on some humility and treat my Facebook friend with love.
