puffed up

Whoever said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care,” had it right. Paul put it differently, in 1 Corinthians 8:1: “Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that ‘We all possess knowledge.’ But knowledge puffs up while love builds up.”

It’s easy to let our knowledge puff us up. We like to show off what we know, and we like to be right. Liking to be right, in fact, causes a lot of relationship-damaging behaviors, like arguing and insisting on our own way. We all know that person who drives us crazy because he or she is a know-it-all, but most of us act the same way as soon as the topic is one we know something about.

And sometimes people who know a lot about one thing think that makes them experts on everything. That’s probably why there are so many immigration experts and health care experts and tax experts and military experts vehemently defending their opinions all over social media.

None of that will make a person feel loved. In fact, none of that is prompted by love. Being impressed with myself and wanting others to be too has nothing to do with love, nor does wanting to be proven right. Both of those things diminish other people, even if we are, well, right.

Paul, using the topic of food sacrificed to idols, is about to point out a better tactic: do what builds other people up. That’s love, and, as Paul will say in another chapter, love is the most excellent way.