One thing you should know about me: I’m a compulsive Bible buyer. I don’t know what it is. I’ve owned a lot, I’ve given them away. Different translations, different sizes, different notes, etc. Well, Sarah had one that had a button flap on it, and was rather compact. I liked it. I had had one before; I had bought it when I first became a Christian, but it’s since been lost or given away (I can’t remember which…I think I gave it to a friend who now lives in Los Angeles when he was first inquiring into the Faith). So I wanted it again.

I was sitting at the bookstore going through its pages (this one was burgundy, my previous one was black – thought I’d change it up a bit), and one of the first verses I saw was the one from Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth.

“Knowledge,” it said, “puffs up; but love edifies.” Knowledge makes you arrogant, makes you think you know it all. But love builds you up, charges you with the good stuff.

I realized something about the Bible, and about that verse. About the Bible: you’ll spend your whole life in that Book, and never comprehend the whole of what God has revealed through it. About that verse: like all others, you could meditate on it for days, months, years, and still be confounded by the depth of its meaning.

I stood convicted.

I read a lot. I’m a consumer of knowledge. I’ll read four, five books at the same time, all by different authors, all on different subjects: philosophy, theology, politics, history. I read books by Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, atheists, agnostics, deists, historians, postmoderns, etc.

I like knowledge. I love *learning*. It’s something I can almost feel, like a fluid I’m imbibing with every page I turn.

And I don’t think it’s knowledge itself that is the enemy. But it’s the arrogant pursuit of knowledge to almost an idolatrous extent, so much so that it comes in danger of replacing your very faith in the God who created you, that is the real “enemy,” so to speak.

And I’m guilty of that.

Sometimes I care more about gaining knowledge than I do about growing into a more solid faith with God.

In my quest for a larger tally of page numbers conquered, I have overlooked the knowledge of God. I feel like I don’t know God, to some extent.

I know all about the gospels, the letters of Paul, Jewish contexts of biblical situations, the Prophets, the life of Moses and David, the nature of early Christian worship.

But do I know God?

Approaching that question causes fear and trembling. But it’s a question I have to ask. A question I have to pursue.

I’ve put knowledge before character. Knowledge before faith, really.

And this has, in turn, put a lot of bumps in the road, I suppose.

So, needless to say, God had the draw on me. One verse, and I hit the floor.

Is it ever any different, between us and God?

Soli Deo Gloria. No matter what.