More notes from a chapel message from the fourth Sunday after the Epiphany. For the first part, see “People are real.”

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Here’s the next principle that Paul offers: Knowledge puffs up while love builds up.

Paul’s not talking about a debate between truth and love.

He’s saying that sometimes we think we know more than we know. And in those moments, we can be obnoxious about how we express what we think we know.

There are lots of church leaders who have crashed in recent years. People who were on pedestals. People who have ended up in ruins. And what seems to be true of them is that they were viewed as experts. They were the people who were full of knowledge, about everything.

And as a result, they were puffed up. There was pride.

In contrast, Paul says, love builds others up. In part because love is a humble thing.

As Paul writes later in this letter,

Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant. It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered, it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; it keeps every confidence, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Which takes us to the next thought.

Be careful that the exercise of your rights doesn’t become a stumbling block to the weak.

The burden of protection of others is my burden, not theirs.

Ben is our grandson. I’ve not mentioned him til now today, but he’s been on my mind this whole time. Because Ben is weak. Not for two, of course. As a two-year-old, he’s doing great.

But there are very many things that Ben cannot do yet, though he tries.

He tries to lift the tadpole at the mall that’s fastened to the floor.
He turns every knob he can turn, he flips every switch he can flip.
He climbs and he grabs and he repeats.

It’s what he’s built to do, to learn all the time.

Because of that curiosity and learning, we have to limit what we do.

We don’t play with fire.
We stay on the sidewalk.
When he was younger, we didn’t even have milk or cheese and then kiss him, because he was allergic to milk.

We have every right, as adults, to do all kinds of things.

But because we care about and for Ben, because we don’t want to do anything that would jeopardize his life, his growth.

We don’t want him to die.

And we don’t get angry at him for not being an adult. We don’t assume that he should know better.

We love him so much that we value his long-term wellbeing more than our short-term inconvenience.

There may be rights. But exercise of my rights takes second place to exercise of my love for others.