Jeremiah 1:4-10; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
January 31, 2010
It is an age old debate – even if we’re largely settled on the answer, it comes up again and again: Is there such a thing as altruism? Can we ever feel love that is not tainted by our own self interest? Can we ever do something that is purely about the good of others?
There is another, related conundrum when it comes to love. Can we always figure out what the loving thing to do is? Can we know? Even things that seem so obviously loving can be problematic. So often, when we try to do something for another person, we make our own assumptions about what would be good for them, which may or may not be true. And then there is the problem of unintended consequences – what’s good for one person may mean pain for another – and we certainly can’t know that in advance.
Well, Paul never said, “love is perfect.” Actually, that’s not quite true – he talked about perfect love, but only in reference to Christ and what it will be like in the realm of God. He knew, most likely first and foremost from his own experience, that we humans can try all we want, but our love will never be perfect.
I think that’s why Paul embeds in this beautiful passage about love all the talk about knowledge – or rather lack of knowledge. We don’t really pay attention to those verses much, largely because we love the love part. We read it at weddings, and you certainly don’t want to talk about the fact that we know things only in part at weddings. Couples want to feel confident that they know for sure that the person they stand facing at the altar is the right one for them. And they know this for sure because they so clearly love them.
But for Paul, knowledge doesn’t come from feeling love. And we don’t love because we know something for sure. Paul says we love in spite of our lack of knowledge, and that we will lack perfect knowledge no matter how much we try to love. We are left with this uncomfortable reality as we try to love others as best we can – as God commanded. And we’re left wondering, “can we ever trust ourselves to love in the right way with the right motives?”
This famous passage is about what it means to love when we don’t have full knowledge. Loving without knowing. We want to believe our actions grow out of wisdom – and the more wise a decision is, the more loving it is. But Paul knows the pursuit of knowledge will always fall short. But make no mistake about it – we need to love anyway. We need to learn to love while in the end giving up on the need to know what the outcome will be.
I was reading an article this week that was extremely critical of some of the ways people have responded to the suffering Haiti. The author exposed some responses as being more about racism and classism than altruism. He showed how some actions were about the savior complex of the helper and not the true needs of those they try to help. And he was very clear that some are acting out of complete ignorance and so they end up doing far more harm than good. And let me say his criticism is an important, necessary voice in the public debate and private decisions regarding Haiti. But to bring his point home, he writes:
“I don’t think a completely pure love is truly possible on this earth, because love needs knowledge, and pure knowledge is impossible. We try, but we don’t know fully what’s best for the other person, so we make guesses, and our guesses are based on imperfect knowledge. And so exploitation creeps in.”
The purpose of writing this within the context of the larger article was to say that even when we think we are being loving, we are usually imposing our own understandings of right and wrong onto others, and more often than not, our actions that we think are loving are having unintended, destructive consequences. This person was saying we shouldn’t trust love. When he says this, I think the author moves from important critique to outright cynicism.
Paul, on the other hand, was acknowledging the same truths but drawing a completely different conclusion. We have imperfect knowledge…that’s a given, Paul says. Yet we can say something about love that helps rightly love in spite not knowing. Paul knows we must love – that is not optional. But what Paul also knows is love is not only, or even primarily, a feeling. Love is not a subjective emotion, meaning different things to different people. It has criteria – and those criteria help us in making decisions.
When we think we are being loving, we need to evaluate that against what Paul says love is. It is patient, kind, humble, gentle, about others more than about ourselves. This passage does not romanticize love, it offers us a tool for discernment for our actions, helping us to be more loving, even as we will never be perfect. Because Paul refuses cynicism as the logical conclusion to imperfect knowledge, we are assured that there is a way forward and a way to love in this world that is both necessary and good.
His way of talking about love and imperfect knowledge together also helps us avoid two major mistakes we might make in our efforts to act in a loving manner. The first mistake is acting rashly and unwisely because we trust so much in our gut reactions and feelings that we call love that we never subject those feelings to a process of discernment. These actions can sometimes wreak real havoc on others and the world.
We find this when people rush to intervene before understanding the situation or thinking about how one’s actions might feel to the recipient of our perceived benevolence. We aren’t carefully scrutinizing our actions and motives to see if they are racist or create relationships that just give us power over someone. We don’t think about unintended consequences. And often we don’t listen to people to find out what’s truly helpful; instead, when we love without discernment, we assume we know what’s best for others.
Paul helps us avoid this by reminding us that love is so much more than feelings and gut reactions. That’s why he gives us the list of what love is – apart from what we might feel as love. While we will only know imperfectly whether we have done the right thing for the right reasons, that doesn’t relieve us of the responsibility to spend time in discernment. Love requires both heart and head – both emotion and rational thought.
On almost the opposite end of the spectrum, we sometimes fall into the trap of complete inaction because we realize we can’t ever know what the right, loving thing is to do in any moment. This is the trap into which the author I mentioned fell when he concluded that imperfect knowledge inevitably leads to exploitation. The ability to see both/all sides of everything, or the awareness that tells us there will always be unintended consequences that we can’t know about ahead of time become barriers to action. We become paralyzed in the face of a complicated and broken world and we feel helpless in light of our imperfect humanness.
I can tell you I struggle more with this end of the spectrum. I’m great at seeing flaws in solutions. I can find both sides of almost anything. A long time ago, I was talking about this with a pastor I knew and trusted. After talking for a while about this struggle that leads to paralysis, I finally asked, “How can you ever do something and be assured you did something good?” In what was a grace filling and faithful response, he shared with me his own way of making peace with this – and it has really stuck with me.
He said, first when you know action is required – when you know that we are never relieved of the obligation to love neighbors and enemies alike – as you try to figure out what the most loving thing to do is, spend time in discernment – deep discernment that includes reading scripture, prayer, talking to others, paying attention to your own emotions and intuitions. The second step is to make your best guess at what the faithful response is in that particular circumstance in light of your discernment. It will always be a guess – not the perfect answer. “At some point,” he said, “you have to come to some sort of conviction and act from that place.” In other words, you have to finally believe as best you can in what you are doing, and then actually do it, but always knowing there is yet one more step: trust in God’s grace and forgiveness.
God’s grace and forgiveness do not let us off the hook for the consequences of our decisions. Paul was big on responsibility. But he also affirms we only see through the glass dimly, we only know in part, we can only feebly predict outcomes and consequences. In that way, Paul frees us from the weight of needing to be perfect. He reminds us that we always act as imperfect human beings. But trust in God’s grace and forgiveness is the way forward through that imperfection.
God calls us to love even though we don’t know what we’re doing and that we will make mistakes. Jeremiah is a great example of this. When he feels the call to live a faithful life in obedience to God, he immediately feels the pain of imperfection. “I don’t know how to speak,” he says. “I don’t know how to do the very thing you are asking me to do. And if I don’t know how to do it, how can I ever be faithful?”
But God’s response to all this is to say….”I know.” And this knowledge of God’s – the divine knowledge – is knowledge that both transcends and permeates our world. “Before you were even conceived,” God says to Jeremiah, “I knew you.” This is divine knowledge, and it’s not like what we think knowledge is. It’s not only knowing people and facts and the future. Instead it is a deep knowledge that is built into the fabric of creation. Creation knows, within itself, how to restore brokenness. And the image of God – the divine knowledge – at work in each of us is always drawing us closer to loving in the right way with the right motives.
If we trust in that – that divine knowledge is built into our own beings and all of creation, we can take steps, and through discernment, we will be more likely than not to tap into that divine knowledge. Our lives will resonate with the pull and direction of creation – and we will move with creation toward wholeness, reconciliation and love. “I don’t know how,” Jeremiah says. “But I do,” the divine one responds. “And my presence, my knowing, existence will be with you as you move through this world.”
And so it is with us as it was with Jeremiah. We don’t know, but divine knowledge exists and is with us if we seek God. And seeking God, seeking this knowledge, means we don’t act rashly – we use Paul’s criteria of love to help evaluate decisions. But it also means we aren’t paralyzed by our imperfections and a complicated world where nothing is ever completely right or completely wrong.
We need to come to a place of conviction and act. Then we can let go of the outcome, which we can only partially predict anyway. We need to love without knowing. Except, as God tells Jeremiah, there is one thing we can know for sure – God goes with us and grace surrounds us. Amen.
