“For a while the dean’s office made an exception to the rule about required church. The edict was handed down that a student might attend a religious discussion group instead, and those groups were scheduled to take place before church in order to prevent boys from attending only so they could get a little more sleep on Sunday mornings. For that reason only the most radical dissenters attended, and it was one of those—a lean, freckle-faced senior—who turned to me once, thin-lipped with anger, and said, “So what’s so good about religion anyway?” and I found myself speechless. I felt surely there must be something good about it. Why else was I there? But for the moment I couldn’t for the life of me think what it was. Maybe the truth of it is that religion the way he meant it—a system of belief, a technique of worship, an institution—doesn’t really have all that much about it that is good when you come right down to it, and perhaps my speechlessness in away acknowledged as much. Unless you become like a child, Jesus said, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and maybe part of what that means is that in the long run what is good about religion is playing the way a child plays at being grown up until he finds that being grown up is just another way of playing and thereby starts to grow up himself. Maybe what is good about religion is playing that the Kingdom will come, until—in the joy of your playing, the hope and rhythm and comradeship and poignance and mystery of it—you start to see that the playing is itself the first-fruits of the Kingdom’s coming and of God’s presence within us and among us.” (Buechner, Frederick. Listening to Your Life. HarperOne. Kindle Edition.)

The gift of knowledge…a Word of knowledge – increasing our knowledge should be a lifetime endeavor. Those who have the gift of knowledge have the insight into retaining and understanding all kinds of knowledge. For Christians knowledge would be formed by scripture, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and then G-d’s revelations would inform that knowledge with spiritual insight. We see the bible as the word of truth that G-d has given to all of creation. This then is one source of knowledge for us in our search for the ability to have an in-depth understanding of spiritual issues or situations.

Those with spiritual knowledge have an understanding of G-d’s ways, but only to the point that any one of us might hope to gain such knowledge – for many of the things of G-d remain shrouded in mystery. And knowledge should not be used to gain power over others because knowledge is a powerful thing.

The struggle for the church is to be able to see knowledge as predominantly inspired through the Holy Spirit, and G-d’s Word in scripture. And those with knowledge should be encouraged to teach those who thirst for knowledge.

Pastor Dave