April 18, 2005
Fear of the Mind
In my Capstone II class, one of the topics we've discussed during the semester caught my attention and my interest. The entire course is focused on developing "the Christian mind," emphasizing the rational and intellectual as vital parts of a Christian life. We're working through a book called Love the Lord Your God With All Your Mind: the role of reason in the life of the soul by JP Moreland. Throughout the book, JP Moreland delivers some pretty sharp criticism of the way the modern Western church has devalued the rational and emphasized the emotional in the past few decades (well, hundred years would probably be more accurate). There's no doubt that he's right - the modern Christian church could really use an infusion intellectual vitality. But early in the semester, we were invited to think about the question of why evangelicals tend to be suspicious of the mind and the intellect. It's on that question that I want to muse for a while.
Why is there a strong tendency within the modern evangelical church to view education and intellectual pursuits with a certain unease? I think there are a lot of reasons. One of the chief reasons for the split between the mainline and evangelical churches was a conviction on the part of evangelicals that the Christian faith as practiced by the mainline churches had grown cold and formulaic, catering more to modern political and social currents than to the Bible. In many ways, the evangelical movement was founded in reaction to a faith without "heart" - the head was not a primary focus for the movement. Indeed, it seemed to be a primary focus for their adversaries.
Another reason that the modern evangelical church looks suspiciously at intellectual pursuits is that it perceives the prevailing intellectual culture as being hostile to the faith. In this, they are undoubtedly correct. To a large degree, the orthodox Christian faith has been under attack since the Enlightenment. Of course, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was almost the first time the rising tide of secularism really caught the church's attention. To some degree, the theory of evolution was the first time the rising tide of secularism had really frightened the church. From an evangelical standpoint, few of the intellectual trends of the past 150 years are encouraging.
But, most interesting to me, I think another reason the modern evangelical church tends to shun the intellectual world is out of fear for its children ... to a large degree, out of fear for people like me and many of my friends. And there is good reason - again and again, conservative evangelicals have been their kids troop off into the wide-wide world and come back changed ... newly disillusioned and freshly scornful of their "close-minded" parents and the stuffy, constraining culture they grew up in. Of course, this doesn't happen all the time or even most of the time, but it happens enough that I think it's worked its way as a basic fear into the heart of most evangelicals ... parents in particular.
The secular intelligentsia has enormous power. It's virtually impossible to be exposed to its ideas and remain unchanged (indeed, it's not even wise). Perhaps most powerful is the immense peer pressure of a perceived intellectual peer group that is dramatically hostile to "good old religion." It's a bewildering world out there, where "good" "Christian" kids get exposed to all the power and draw and temptations of the secular mindset and worldview.
For me, I think that the most powerful pressure has been my desire to be well thought of ... I want people to think I'm intelligent, thoughtful, and insightful. And the chief way to be seen as all those things is to compromise. To start to talk like the world outside. To join in the condescending talk about the "redneck" "intolerant" "backward" evangelical culture. The outside world puts a great deal of pressure on people to conform, to agree. And I think that a great part of the evangelical world fears the outside world.
And, I think that sometimes this fear can drive the evangelical culture to overreact - to see any sign of disagreement as incipient disloyalty. To an unhealthy degree, the evangelical culture is so afraid of the outside culture that it doesn't tolerate much dissent.
I think this is true, but I hasten to add that I don't mean to mock these fears, or to say that they're groundless. I'm sympathetic to them ... for they are also in my mind. As some of my friends differ from the established orthodoxy, a great part of me rises up in panic, fearing that we may "lose" them ... lose them to the pull of the secular world. Lose them to the outside world that so often seems to look at us with such disdain. There are few things more painful than having someone you love despise you and all you believe and (for parents) all you taught them to believe. There's a lot of hurt in that.
Acknowledging the fear and mistrust can help us master it, and keep it from ruling us. First and foremost, my thought is this - don't be afraid. Don't be afraid of the secular world and the tremendous power of its ideology. Truth is true, whatever the postmodernists say ... and it remains so, no matter how many degrees the naysayers possess. Truth comes out in the end. My second thought is this - don't let your fear turn you into an enemy of the truth. Too often, we clamp down on our ideology and belief system, refusing to question it, refusing to challenge it. We do not have a corner on the truth. Like it or not, the secular world's ideas have power and merit, and learning to exercise ones mind is absolutely essential. But you can only really exercise your mind if you aren't afraid of losing the truth. Instead of seeing oneself as a defender of truth, perhaps it would be better to see oneself as a seeker of truth. Can't truth defend itself? Have a little faith - if a thing is true, it lasts. It'll survive. No-one should ever fear the truth. The truth should be sought after, longed for, and loved.
