Welcome to the Classic Speaches Podcast presented by BYU Speaches, bringing you treasured talks from 70 years of BYU Devotionals.

Be sure to check out our other podcasts by searching BYU Speaches wherever you get your podcasts, or by visiting

speaches.bYu.edu slash podcasts.

This devotional address entitled On Knowing and Caring was given on July

21st of 1998 by Kevin J. Worthen, then a professor of law in the BYU J. Ruben Clark Law School.

A junior high school student was once having problems learning math.

His teacher struggled with him day after day and assigned him extra work to do each evening.

The student would always return the next morning with the assignment uncompleted.

After this had gone on for some period of time, the teacher vented his frustration by asking the student in an irritated

tone. What is it with you? Are you really ignorant or just apathetic? The student shrugged

his shoulders casually and replied, I don't know, and I don't care. I'm going to talk today

about knowing and caring the relationship between those two concepts

and what that relationship means to us at this university.

My starting point is the scripture from the New Testament, 1 Corinthians chapter 8.

In this portion of his epistle to the members of the church in Corinth, Paul is answering

a series of questions apparently put to him by the

saints in an earlier communication. Chapter 8 specifically addresses the propriety of eating meat

that has been offered as sacrifice to idols. A bit of background concerning this practice

helps us understand both the nature of the Corinthian inquiry and the true significance of Paul's

response.

Sacrifice of animals to the pantheon of Greek and Roman gods was a well-established part of Greco-Roman life long before Paul arrived in Corinth.

At the time Paul was writing, such sacrifices were performed not only for purely religious occasions,

...