Because the Scripture tells us to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, it is surprising that anti-intellectualism is so enduring among Christians. This distrust of the mind and reason is expressed in several ways. Sometimes it is a faith in having faith. Oddly, many non-Christians will say, “You just gotta have faith!” To their exasperation, I often ask, “In what or whom?” If they are vaguely Christian they may say, “God, of course.” And then I ask, “Why?” Most give no answer.
This rejection of the mind for the heart is supported by the assertion that doctrines separate people and what’s really important is sincerity, a good heart. Sometimes this is anointed with the postmodernist cliché about all people having their own truth or the mantra of tolerance that assures us that there are many paths to God. Increasingly, many who aren’t Christians say, “I believe in prayer.” To their dismay, I often say, “I don’t.” I then explain that I believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and God’s son, Jesus. I believe in the God who answers prayer–not in prayer. All these rejections of rationality assert that sincerity is enough, but fail to consider that being sincerely wrong can have eternal consequences.
A more subtle expression of anti-intellectualism is the reduction of a Christian’s mind to a hard drive onto which God can down load His Word. This approach encourages memorizing Scripture, but not thinking about it. If we think, we may ask questions—questions that the Sunday school teacher or pastor can’t answer. Instead of dynamic truths that require all our heart, soul, mind, and imagination to grasp, interpret, and apply, the Word of God becomes either a set rules or magic words which have power apart from their meaning. Legalism and mysticism can both keep us from loving God with all our mind.
Sometimes Christians let the mind out to play but only within a well-fenced Christian playground. Here in our Christian subculture we are safe from the kinds of questions and challenges we would face in the world and on most university campuses. Although the intentions may be good, the result is often that children on the playground either wrap their fragile faith in the bubble-wrap of ignorance or jump the fence when they grow older.
At a Christian college I was blessed to have a philosophy professor who not only had us read the secular philosophers but challenged us to evaluate them according to biblical truth. We were even encouraged to consider where these philosophers might be right. In another course I took twice, the instructor assigned us a stack of history books written from a variety of secular perspectives: capitalist, Marxist, socialist, conservative, liberal. Through these courses, I was thoroughly introduced to the intellectual debates of the last century. As a result, I rolled into a secular graduate school unafraid. Instead of having a frail faith needing protection, my faith was fearless. And the more I read and the more I listened to my secular colleagues, the more I realized it was their ideas that were weak and tottering. I became unashamed of the gospel and intellectually secure as a believer. I found the joy of loving God with both my heart and my mind.
The truth is, however, that many Christian professors do not approach their discipline from a Christian perspective. For instance, many Christian professors of biology put their faith in one box and their belief in evolution in another. This intellectual schizophrenia is especially common in the humanities and the soft sciences like psychology and sociology. Christian English professors will have students read Shakespeare, but often not challenge to them work out Christian approaches to literary criticism and analysis. The result is often that English majors can do a postmodern deconstruction of literature, a Marxist or Freudian interpretation, but have no clue as to what a Christian approach might be.
The last way we reject reason is through an escapist appeal to the sovereignty and inscrutability of God. Often this is cited when someone asks a hard question—especially about the origin of evil and its persistence in the world. When a child falls into a pool, nearly drowns, and spends the rest of her life in a vegetative state, a parent might ask why a loving and omnipotent God didn’t intervene. When we trust in God, for what exactly do we trust him? To what extent does Satan (“the prince of this world”) influence events and to what extent does God control events? Or is God controlling Satan? If God’s control is complete, his providence meticulous, how can we avoid blaming God for all the evil that happens? Well, you get the idea. Often these questions are only answered with “God’s ways are not our ways”, or “God is infinite and we are finite, so we can’t possible hope to understand how God controls both the good and the evil, but should only be given credit for the good.” All these answers end up telling us one thing: stop thinking, stop asking the hard questions. While it is certainly important to hold onto our faith in the goodness of God, we do not have to hit the off switch of our intellect. We can trust in his goodness while seeking to understand his ways.
The challenge is to bring all we believe to bear upon all we study and to bring all we have studied to bear on what we believe. No fear, no separate boxes. All truth is God’s truth, so the truth of faith and reason are one. It is both/and—not either/or.
