knowledge puffs

Yesterday Alexia and I went into town in Puerto Plata and walked around some to get out of the house. We walked into a big clothing store, and immediately after walking in a man approached us and started asking us questions in English. I answered back to him in Spanish, until he asked if I spoke English. He was a Dominican, but had lived in New York (who wanted to impress us with his English knowledge, among other things). His father was the owner of the store, and had a few other stores as well.

He found out that we were Christians and then asked us what we thought of the Holy Spirit. We were a little thrown by him asking such a question just inside the entrance of a clothing store. I responded by saying, “God, part of the Holy Trinity”, and Alexia said the same. This man then went off for several minutes quoting off sections from concordances that he owned which describe the Holy Spirit. I stared at him, pondering why he was informing us of things these. When he was done, I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I said, “Amen.”

Directly after, he proceeded to quote off scripture that talked about the Spirit. When he finished he asked what we thought about his knowledge of this information, and asked how we thought he had done in presenting this information to us. Yes, he really asked us this. As we still stood just inside the entrance, I answered by saying, “I think knowledge puffs up.”

This did not even silence him. He responded by saying, “Oh, you want to take that route,” and then went on to quote off scripture from Proverbs about knowledge. I couldn’t believe it. His only purpose in telling us all these things was for us to be impressed with what he knew. After he finished and informed us where that passage was from, Alexia and I stood without response. The man then told us if we needed help finding anything in the store to ask for him and we went our separate ways.

I was impressed of the knowledge that he did know and the amount of scripture he had memorized, especially compared to the little that I know (it kind of put me to shame). But then I just had to think, how can someone know so much, but still have no depth to his knowledge? Why are we a society that speaks words just so others can hear us say them? Why can we not love with action and truth?

I think over the past year or so, my favorite scripture has become 1 John 3:18, which says, “Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.” Meaning with action we are called to love and not by our words. I don’t know if anyone can ever prefect this, but wouldn’t it be beautiful if we all tried.