I exchanged emails with my high school English teacher not long ago. I apologized to her.
"You know that time you said, 'Don't you just love LEARNING things? Just to for the sake of learning?' And we said, collectively, 'Uh...what?' Well, I get it now. A bit late, but I get it. I love learning now."
A little late, but there you go. I wish I could take her class again.
Everything is interesting. Knowledge is wonderful. All truth is God's truth, which means we should pursue truth relentlessly in any field we like, dangit. Anti-intellectuals in my past will bristle to find out that Solomon himself didn't just ask for wisdom -- he asked for knowledge, too. And lo, God backed up the truck of knowledge upon him, and people came from far and wide to be freaked out by it, and they did payeth him serious jack for his efforts, and he did surpriseth all by making some right nice cabinets.
That said, it's my thinking now that most Christian believers here -- get this! -- actually know enough. And this feller, Sy Rogers, agrees. (HT: The brilliant Ms. Shakes, who came across this when she was doing translation work.)
Most American Christians, most first-world Christians, most well-educated Christians with bookstores and Christian Bible colleges and resources available do not need more knowledge. If you never, ever heard another sermon and God took you and squeezed you out information-wise all over the deserts of the world, you would probably have enough knowledge in you to serve many people for a generation.
Sy is then quick to say, "I'm not saying you shouldn't study the Bible," and "Don't you walk outta here and say, 'Sy doesn't honor the word and believe in studying..." Likely because he knows people are primed to be en garde against modern liberalism. But he's not a modern liberal, and neither am I.
Yes, there is much to learn, and life is complex. Yes. But you know what? It may be that simplicity isn't the opposite of complexity, it's complexity's ultimate conclusion. It just may be that the most learned people, those who've fought through the deepest theological questions and accrued the most knowledge -- it may just be that they'll be the first ones to say, a la Paul Ricoeur: There is another naivete, a second one, that lies at the far side of complexity.
It may be that, after your theological argument in a Sunday School class, your daughter, fresh from her class, meets you in the hallway with a homemade fridge magnet that's more advanced: "Jesus is Lord."
There is a second naivete, at the far side of complexity.
Karl Barth, perhaps the 20th century's most important theologian, summed up his work famously: "Jesus loves me, this I know."
And "Jesus Loves Me" is not childishness. It's not ignorance. It is beautiful distillation. "Jesus is Lord" is packed with deep meaning, but -- wonderfully -- children and the illiterate grasp it better than many of the learned. It's why a persecuted church in China can thrive, even when it's theologians and pastors are in jail. "Jesus is Lord and Savior."
There's simply no luxury as time to argue about dense theology, and expert-culture cannot be afforded. Now, people can "travel light", as Alan Hirsch puts it, and the message becomes transferable through relationships, not massive and expensive institutions.
Is Christianity complex? Yes, but not necessarily. Jesus said all the commandments could be summed up with two. And speaking of "travelling light": Jesus said his "yoke" -- his rabbinical teachings -- was light.
Maybe, just maybe, we know enough, but "the problem" isn't that we just need to "get fed" again and again and again, by a pastor on Sunday, and during the week by Christian publishers. Maybe we've been fed plenty, but -- you know? -- we don't really love people.
Persecution isn't good, and shouldn't be glamorized. But one of its by-products -- de-complexifying -- can be quite good, indeed. Maybe our expert culture is hurting us. Maybe -- here's where you don the gloves -- we've way over-emphasized teaching in this culture, because -- gulp -- it's working out nicely for professional teachers, and (us) professional learners. Perhaps we're making this far more difficult, far more time-consuming, ludicrously more expensive, than a movement needs to be.
And maybe you've been fed. A lot. And now?
Don't hit me, but...maybe you know enough.
