Knowledge Is Overrated
After spending quite a bit of my time (wasting?) reading many many Catholic blogs, I realize so much of it is about who knows more than so and so. I thought I would do a crash course reminder of our Catholic mission.
#1) Our job is to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ. What is the Good News of Jesus? Well, God became man to take our place as the Ultimate Sacrifice before God the Father and therefore Redeemed us from our Debt. Our gratitude towards Christ for His sacrifice SHOULD propel us to tell everyone how blessed we are and to invite them to receive the same gift.
When we look at WHO Jesus chose to be his Apostles they were not the learned of society. They were not philosophers nor theologians. They were fishermen. Were His disciples much better from an intellectual perspective? Not quite. I am sure there was an educated person thrown in there from time to time (like the tax collector or the Roman Centurion) but for the most part the Scriptures show us that what is important from the world’s perspective is NOT what is important to God.
I am going to make a wild guess that most people in the US have never worked in a fishing village. I have. Let me tell you, I came away with a deeper Biblical perspective afterwards. Fishermen are rough and tough and they tend to smell bad because they cannot shower daily if they are out on the water. In a fishing village, they could care less if you have an advanced degree of whatever it is that is “important.” They only want to know if you have the physical strength to share in the heavy duty chores that have to be done.
Am I saying that knowledge is NOT important? Nope. Not all, but I am saying that knowledge can give us false confidence. We think “Oh yes, I KNOW my theology thus I am a BETTER Catholic than so and so” who believes this particular way (which may indeed go against our Faith.) And then God gives us someone in our life who tests NOT our knowledge but our CHARITY. And the truth of WHO we really are comes to the forefront and we have to return to the Sacrament of Confession AGAIN.
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I often get the impression we bloggers would benefit reading the first several chapters of Kempis’ Imitation of Christ (where he addresses “book knowledge”). =)
Great post! That just reminds me of G.K. Chesterton’s description of St. Francis as someone that loved Christ, as opposed to Christianity and men and women as opposed to humanity. I guess I know on some level that it’s a false choice, but I often look at the two “ideal” (idealized?) ways of living our faith as either the extroverted, saintly route, or the quiet, simple fisherman route. As a man with a family and no voice from the sky calling me on a mission, the saintly route doesn’t seem to be my calling, and honestly, the fisherman route seems too passive.
Thanks for the sanity. I read somewhere recently that many of the Saints didn’t spend time reviewing and arguing church documents and teachings, but that they spent more time living the gospel.