It’s graduation season. College graduations are over, high
school ceremonies just ahead.
I attended one this year: a lovely, outdoor celebration of
the University of Pennsylvania’s College of Liberal and Professional Studies,
complete with bagpipe processional. It reminded me of my own UPenn
processional, almost thirty years ago, walking down Locust Walk in full
doctoral regalia.
I spent seven years at Penn, studying literature, theory,
the life of the mind in poetry, fiction, essay.
Before that I attended Houghton
College , a Christian liberal arts
college in rural western New York .
I minored in math and double-majored in English and humanities, a
cross-disciplinary study of philosophy, history, literature, and art.
I’m thankful for both institutions, thankful for the chance
to read, learn, study.
Thankful I grew up in a state, New York , that took higher education
seriously, and funded it generously.
Thankful I reached college at a time – the seventies – when
the public will considered education important, and provided ample scholarships
and grants for capable students eager to learn.
And thankful – beyond thankful – for the women along the way
who encouraged my mind, gave me books to read, challenged me to plan for
college, modeled a life of thoughtful engagement.
The churches I attended as a child and teen were not so
encouraging.
While Jesus said, “'Love the Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37-38), the
message I heard, in various forms, was “We’ll tell you what to think.” “Questions
are dangerous.” “Women should be silent.”
I remember coming to a point where it seemed impossible to
be an intelligent female Christian. It appeared to me, in my late teens, that I
had three options: a lobotomy, a sex-change, or a speedy exit from the
Christian faith.
Then, at Houghton, I attended a lecture by a writing
professor, Nancy Barcus, on the topic “God doesn’t think I’m dumb.” She’d
recently written an article on the subject for a Christian publication. I don’t
remember the specifics of her discussion, but I remember listening with relief
to her insistence that God intends us to use the minds he gave us, that no
question is out of bounds, that Christ’s interactions with women demonstrated a
repudiation of the patriarchal diminishment of women’s gifts, intelligence, or
contribution.
Not long after, I found myself in my first history class
with Dr. Katherine Lindley, head of Houghton’s history department, advisor to
its pre-law students, a woman of huge intellect, fierce faith, and ferocious
engagement. She started every class, promptly, with a brief reading from her
own devotional study: a paragraph from Calvin, an excerpt from Brother
Lawrence, an anecdote from Francis of Assisi. Then she’d be off on the subject of
the day, moving fast, asking hard questions, the most purposeful, insightful,
demanding teacher I’d ever had, or would have.
“Ideas have consequences,” was her mantra. All ideas. Any
idea. The universe revolves around man? Trace that out. Watch where it leads. Survival
of the fittest? Follow that across decades – down to our own economic times.
Students weren’t late to Kay Lindley’s classes. They didn’t
doodle or daydream. They sat at attention, scribbling notes, thinking hard.
I took two semesters of Western Civ
from Dr. Lindley, then tried to squeeze in others. She was one of three
professors overseeing my Humanities Senior Seminar, the best class of my life:
six students, three professors, reading and discussing Darwin, Nietzsche, Marx,
Camus, Sartre, Freud.
Dr. Lindley, and other professors at Houghton, talked often
about the integration of faith and learning, and repeated often the idea,
paraphrased from Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin and others, that “all truth is
God’s truth.”
The role of women?
Age of the earth?
Creation / evolution?
Comparative religion?
If you start with a narrow, predetermined framework, those
can be threatening topics.
If you start from a belief that the world is God’s, the
truth is his, and our role is to understand more fully, those topics become
intriguing, richly rewarding, fertile ground for awe, amazement, investigation,
deep humility.
Jesus said:
“'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40)
Books have been written about the strong anti-intellectual
tendencies of contemporary Christians. In 1994, historian Mark Noll wrote about
The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, with a much-quoted assertion: "The
scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical
mind."
Ten years later, reassessing his earlier work,
Noll admitted:
"Some readers have rightly pointed out that what
I described as a singularly evangelical problem is certainly related to the
general intellectual difficulties of an advertisement-driven,
image-preoccupied, television-saturated, frenetically hustling consumer
society, and that the reason evangelicals suffer from intellectual weakness is
that American culture as a whole suffers from intellectual weakness."
But pointing to an intellectually lazy culture
doesn’t excuse intellectually lazy Christians.
Os Guiness, in Fit Bodies, Fat Minds, wrote:
"We evangelicals need to confess individually and collectively that we have betrayed the Great Commandment to love God with our minds. We need to confess that we have given ourselves up to countless forms of unutterable folly. God has given us minds, but many of us have left them underdeveloped or undeveloped.
- God has given us education, beyond that of most people in human history, but we have used it for other ends.
- God has given us great exemplars of thinking in Christian history, but we have ignored them or admired them for other virtues.
- God has given us opportunities, but we have failed to grasp them because we have refused to think them through before him.
That last point hits me hard: what does it mean to be one of the best educated women in
the history of the world, in a culture with instant access to every kind of
information, in a nation whose policies influence poor farmers, hungry
families, frightened citizens in every nation on earth?
What opportunities do I have for influence, engagement,
investment, that demand an active mind?
How can I love God with all my mind, and my neighbor as
myself?
To me, loving God with my mind means reading and reflecting
on his word, rather than expecting someone else to tell me what it says. I’ve
read the Bible straight through on my own, but these days use Scripture Union’sEncounter with God, available in booklet form or online. (Full disclosure: my
husband, Whitney Kuniholm, is president of Scripture Union USA, writes regularly for Encounter
with God, and also blogs about the Bible at The Essential Bible Blog.)
This blog is also part of loving God with my mind – a record
of questions I’m exploring. My "What's Your Platform" series last fall was an attempt to view
political issues through the lens of scripture,and I've also been exploring healing and prayer. Right now I’m thinking about mental
illness, and the role of pharmaceuticals in treatment. Agriculture and food,
and the way federal policy has shaped our diet and undermined small farmers.
Invasive plants, and creative ways to help restore diminished habitat.
But loving God with all my mind, and my neighbor as myself,
suggests a need to help others receive an education like my own. I’ve written
dozens of college recommendations for young people I’ve come to know through
youth ministry and missions. Our family has financially supported a Ugandan
student through medical school; it’s sobering to think that what we spend on
coffee or entertainment could provide an advanced degree in a country where a
year of tuition, fees, and living expenses cost less than one Ivy League course
credit.
I’ve also invested in helping friends go back to school,
watching their kids, offering academic advice, proof-reading papers, talking through
difficult concepts.
I’ve found ways to engage my own mind in loving God and
neighbor, and ways to support neighbors, near and far, in training and using
their minds.
And yes, my own vote is shaped, in part, by a candidate’s
willingness to invest in public education at
every level, and sensitivity to
the needs of low-income students.
But I find myself wondering: what would it look like to be
part of a community that loves God with all our minds, together?
What could Christ’s church accomplish, if we chose to use
the minds God gave us, with humility, grace, wisdom, discipline?
Greg Jao's Your Mind's Mission (an IVP minibook, available as download or in print) might be an interesting place to start - either alone, or with a small group. It's short, practical, and offers interesting application assignments.
And the Hearts & Minds booknotes blog offers resources,
encouragement, occasional discounts on books that could point the way. (Here's a post with more resources on loving God with all our minds, and one on Resurrectionary Reading, with ideas for "resurrectionary reading groups".)
What has helped you most in learning to love God with all
your mind?
Where do you see the church helping to make this happen?
What next steps would you recommend?
Please join this conversation!
