[donnmi2]

The professor sat. He was older. His hair was grey. His eyes were calm. The young man sat across from him. He held a blue book. His knuckles were white.
“I don’t know if I can believe any of it,” the young man said. His voice was tight. “The history… it’s not what they said. It’s messy. It’s human. I’ve studied it. I have *knowledge*. And Paul said knowledge would pass away.”
The professor nodded slowly. He did not reach for a book. He did not argue the history.
He did say that,” the professor acknowledged. “First Corinthians. Chapter 13. A letter written to a people arguing over spiritual gifts, over knowledge, over who had the superior truth.
The young man looked up, surprised the professor wasn’t dismissing him.
“Paul’s argument is devastating,” the professor continued. “He takes their greatest treasures — prophecy, tongues, knowledge — and says they are temporary. They are scaffolding. They are for the imperfect day we are in now. They will become obsolete.”
“So what’s left?” the young man asked, a challenge in his voice. “If even knowledge passes away, what’s the point of any of this?”
The professor leaned forward, his voice dropping to a near whisper. “What’s left is the one thing he says *never* fails. The one thing that is eternal. *Love*.”
He let the word hang in the air between them
He let the word hang in the air between them
You are looking at the scaffolding, son. The temporary structure of history and doctrine and human weakness. And you are right. It is imperfect. It is flawed. It will, as Paul promised, pass away. It is meant to.”
The professor gestured to the blue book. “The question is not whether the scaffolding is perfect. The question is what it was built to hold. Does it point toward the thing that remains? Does it, in its clumsy, human way, teach you to love God and your neighbor? Does it, despite everything, try to build a community of charity?”
The young man was silent. The fight had gone out of him.
“The evidence you must weigh is not just the evidence *against* the scaffolding,” the professor said. “You must also weigh the evidence *for* the thing it holds up. Has this faith, for all its human error, produced love in your life? In your grandmother’s life? Has it taught you to hope? To endure?”
He tapped a finger gently on the desk. “Paul’s warning is a mercy. It frees us from idolizing our own understanding. It tells us that in the end, God will not ask how perfect our knowledge was, but how deep our love was.”
The young man looked down at the book in his hands, no longer a weapon, but just a thing. A piece of scaffolding.
I ignored that part,” he whispered
“We all do,” the professor said. “It is the hardest thing to believe. That love is the final measure. Not orthodoxy. Not historical purity. Love.”
The young man stood. He placed the blue book back in his bag, his movements slower now, thoughtful. He nodded. It was not a nod of agreement, but of a new question being received.
He walked out. The door closed softly.
The professor sat alone at his desk, looking at the empty chair. He hadn’t asked the boy to believe in the Church. He had asked him to believe in the terrifying, wonderful priority of love. And he hoped, for the boy’s sake, that he would.

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