TRUTH, KNOWLEDGE, AND WISDOM
The last two days were the hottest days in my memory in Pasadena, California, where we have resided since 1990. My iPhone weather app “screamed” with a reading of 115 and 111 Fahrenheit degrees, respectively on the two days. On top of the mind-numbing heat, we were willing victims of Pasadena’s rolling blackout on one of the evenings. Embracing that as an opportunity to walk Luna, our Husky, who has our maximum empathy in this unbearable weather (I empathize by imagining wearing a down jacket in this heat!), the streets are eerily quiet and pitch dark with stubborn heat rising off the pavement. We run into one of our neighbors whose block was saved from the blackouts. I blurt out, “I guess it (this hot weather) is good for my sanctification.” With a twinkle in his eyes and a faint smile, he tells me, “Yeah, you need it more than I do.” Without denying it, we laugh a good laugh and walk back home. Instinctively, I decided to wet my shirt to cool down, still feeling sorry for Luna.
A balmy 84 degrees this morning. During my silence this morning, I had the thought of cleaning the filter of our only window AC unit. Was that God who reminded me to clean it? Or was that my busy mind-chatter to survive? I don’t know. When I did take out the filter, I was appalled by how filthy it was, and after cleaning it the AC is working better than ever in years! I thanked (?) God for reminding me. J My wife thanks me for cleaning the AC filter, and it promptly makes my day. It is a good day.
Then, I read the story of the daring nun who hid and saved 83 Jewish children during World War 2. You can check it out here if interested (https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-54033792). My heart moves to compassion, and I momentarily find myself thinking about the afflicted and the disenfranchised in our day. No action now, but I tuck that aside as a possible building block into something later. I say to myself, “We'll see.”
I then read a few pages of Thomas Merton’s Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. In the book, I come to the quote by Gandhi, “How can he who thinks he possesses absolute truth be fraternal?” I read it several times. . .
Merton responds to the quote above.
“ Let us be frank about it: the history of Christianity raises this question again and again.
The Problem: God has revealed himself to men in Christ, but He has revealed Himself first of all as love. Absolute truth is then grasped as love: therefore not in such a way that it excludes love in certain limited situations. Only he who loves can be sure that he is still in contact with the truth, which is in fact too absolute to be grasped by his mind. Hence, he who holds to the gospel truth is afraid that he may lose the truth by a failure of love, not by a failure of knowledge…Knowledge expands a man like a balloon, and gives him a precarious wholeness in which he thinks that he holds in himself all the dimensions of a truth the totality of which is denied to others. It then becomes his duty, he thinks, by virtue of his superior knowledge, to punish those who do not share this truth. How can he ‘love’ others, he thinks, except by imposing on them the truth which they would otherwise insult and neglect? This is the temptation. (Merton, CJB p. 37-38)”
I was stuck after reading this section and could not read anymore. . . What Gandhi asked in earnest is the age-old question that has been repeated for centuries upon centuries by those who were repulsed by Christendom but were attracted to Jesus Christ as Gandhi was. History is unfortunately littered with the blind efforts of Christendom to level others to conformity. This was done in the name of Jesus but certainly not by the Spirit of Jesus. The truth is often attacked in the name of truth. The truth can only be revealed as the truth when embraced in love.
Knowledge is bondage, more than we care to admit. I grew up hearing and embracing that knowledge is power. If there is ever a modern worldview, this is the most prominent of them all. I would ask now: what of power then? Power for what? Power for whom? So what? What do we gain? What do we lose? I tell myself that my focus is not to accumulate knowledge and to make sense out of reality and dish out such knowledge, but to live out of wisdom. Alas, this is a hard lesson to live by.
To be sure, knowledge is not same as truth. The absolute truth can only be understood by love as in loving and following Jesus. This truth becomes absolute only in its embodiment of Jesus. This truth is gentle, kind, patient, and full of grace. Above all, this truth is love. Consequently, this truth acted out in love, ultimately on the cross. Without love, this truth morphs into a set of wooden beliefs that forces all others to follow. Without love, this truth becomes a mere knowledge that is onerous and worse, creates warped barriers to Jesus. In short, we proclaim and live like Jesus. We do not proclaim what we think is the absolute truth, apart from love. We “preach” Jesus, not Christianity.
Knowledge can be service if it is channeled out of love and to love. Wisdom is “knowledge deepened by love,” Ilia Delio writes. Wisdom teaches us how to live out of love for God, myself, and others.