Love Builds Up

Thistles, Bennington Lake, Oct. 2009Blithely reading along in 1 Corinthians recently during my worship time, I ran across this statement: "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up." (1 Cor. 8:1)

Okay, I know all about the first phrase in that sentence. But it was the last part that stopped me in my tracks: Love builds up.

We all tend to think of ourselves as loving people. We love our families (theoretically), we love our friends (sometimes better than we love our families), we sometimes love our coworkers. But do we really? Are you really a loving individual? Paul says it clearly in this text: if you're a loving person, you build others up.

Love builds up. That means that all our tactics to manipulate those we ostensibly love, all the times we criticize them, all the times we gossip about them, all the times we punish them in some way when they don't do as we wish, all the ways in which we choose to mistrust them, all the ways in which we take their personhood away by trying to change them to please us ... they all prove that we are un-loving.

Love builds up. Leaving the above-mentioned negative tactics behind, look at the positive side. When you encourage someone, you love them. When you give someone a new tool for success, you love them. When you draw someone close and seek the good in them instead of isolating or ignoring them, you love them. When you verbally appreciate someone else's efforts to do well even if they've fallen short of the goal, you love them. When you look past action to intent and recognize the good there, you love them. When you zip the lip on some sarcastic criticism and instead find something positive to point out, you love them. When you do something to show care for the next person, you love them. (Duh.)

Let's face it, some people are odious. Some are objectionable, offensive or downright obnoxious. It's tough to think of anything you would even want to do to build up those kinds of people. But if you carry the name of Christ on your beliefs, you have a mandate to "Love one another." We try to soothe ourselves by thinking we can do this passively, just sitting back and being magnanimous at a distance. But "love builds up," my friends. You have to be active in this one.

You may, like me, sit back and think, "Oh, isn't that nice. I think I can do that. I shall pat myself on the back that I have built up even some of the most obnoxious, offensive, horrible people around me! I'm good at finding the good." Okay. Whatever. You probably deceive yourself.

Now let me switch your roles on you, as the Spirit did to me when I sat and paid attention to this verse. What happens when I'm the obnoxious, offensive, horrible person? In the sight of a holy God, I qualify fully for that description. As I pondered it, I realized that if love builds up, and if "God is love," then everything God allows into my life has the potential of building me up. In fact, it's not even that passive, if He really is Love. Everything that God does to me is expressly meant to build me up.

Choke.

Do I really believe that? Can I see even the most painful, unhappy times in my life as building up this flawed little child of God? And here's where the obnoxious, offensive and horrible part comes in. I suddenly realized that I have long harbored a deep-seated belief that God is not necessarily going to build me up. That I don't trust Him to be good to me. That I have not believed that He would necessarily grant my prayers for wisdom and the ability to live well in every situation. That I will get torn down on a regular basis. Deep breath.

Love builds up. God is love. Therefore God builds me up. In all things. And in all things, He builds you up, which is why in all things you and I can give thanks. Rejoice in the Lord always, and all that stuff. These aren't just words. They are words from God, who wants us to know it down to the innermost molecule of our beings:

Love builds up. I think about that one.