"The pull of (and lust for) intellectual respectability is fatal to many. My advice to you: if you go back to school for a doctorate, go with your eyes wide open to the dangers and don't trust that you are strong enough to resist its power. Any intelligent person can succeed intellectually and academically, but only those who are becoming "pure of heart" can survive spiritually."
I made a new friend named Jack. I wrote to him one day out of desperation, when it seemed that I was the lone person in the entire world who cared about Søren Kierkegaard and other vital elements of life. (I realize that implies that S.K. is essential. Like air. And food. And water. He is.)
Anyway, Jack or Dr. John Crabtree gave a talk as part of a series called "Kierkegaard's Coffee House." I found the talk on iTunes U and decided to think of him as a normal person like you or me, and I wrote to him.
I need to qualify this act of courage. Last year I emailed a professor at Stanford because I had a question. I figured that it would be okay, but I was told in no uncertain terms that I was never to contact him again as I was not accurately representing his work, and further, that my audacity in contacting him was shocking.
So, I braced myself when I received his first response.
[Regarding Kierkegaard], I am likely not the best person to be asking. While all of my formal professional training is in philosophy, I do not consider myself a professional philosopher. It has never been that interesting to me. My passion has always been the Bible and that is the world I live in. And even there, I am in a world of my own. I am neither a professional pastor nor a professional Bible scholar. I am an old-fashioned philosopher in the spirit of Socrates seeking to better understand what it is that God has revealed to us about why we are here and what we're supposed to do about it. I am fascinated by Jesus and what he came to teach us. I am not so fascinated by Christian culture and its various institutions. So, all that is to say, I am not very well-connected nor well-informed about either the academic world or the Christian world.
Cool! (to say the least)
I responded, first about philosophy, and then about Christianity in all of its dimensions.
I think that I am drawn to philosophy because, for me, the probing works and treatises are religious texts. They beg the question of God in every sentence, and I have to go to Him for answers. They lead me to God, whereas the bible, the church, and spiritual disciplines as I have known them, have lead me to Christianity, to guilt and frustration at my “judgment and criticism” because I am confused and discontent in my spirit and rational understanding about Christian tradition.
I have a committed desire to pursue Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit endlessly for the rest of my life. Embedded in this commitment is pursuing the purpose/meaning of human existence on earth, and specifically my existence on earth in relation to the reality of God and the story that He has written. And everything in me cries out to use every moment of my life and every bit of my capacity to honor Him. Up to this point, I have found this most completely when I study and research and write about philosophy.And here is why I am really sharing this, his most recent response, which stopped me in my pursuit and froze words in my mouth:
My story is rather ironic really. I became an adult during the counter-culture of the 1960's and I began to come alive spiritually as a follower of Jesus right on the cusp of the "Jesus movement." I had just graduated from Stanford University, Phi Beta Kappa etc., so—I had a foot in the door of academia and I think I could have succeeded down that road (graduate school at Princeton, professorships, papers, etc.)—but everything I was learning about and from Jesus drew a rather sharp line between love of the Father and love of the world. And academia clearly has both feet planted in the world. So, two factors determined the direction of my life: as a counter-cultural hippy-type-freak in the 60's and early 70's, it seemed plausible that the establishment would collapse and we really would see alternative institutions take their place, and, as a young, didn't-know-much disciple of Jesus, I understood that a true disciple would never really fit in the world (that is, the "establishment"). So, it seemed clear to me to take a different track from academia; and I did. It seems ironic to me now—and yet I understand that it was a wonderful gift from God—that the counter-culture and all of its power and momentum quickly got mainstreamed into the establishment and disappeared. All of us "age of Aquarius" types (I am only partly serious) were left with no graduate degrees, no credentials, no money, no nothing. America, taken over by the establishment, had gone on without us. It was the ex-hippies that had thrown in their lot with the establishment (against all their vaunted principles) that had the jobs and positions that the world has to offer. I realize that this probably makes me sound bitter. Honestly, I am not. I have had a wonderful life and I would not trade it for anything. The reason I am telling you this story is to suggest two things: (1) On the one hand, there is a tremendous advantage to be had by NOT going into the academy (formally), jumping through all the hoops, and being subjected to all its formative powers. My time spent in the academy (much later—when my bullshit meter was much-better calibrated— I went back to grad school and got my Ph.D.) has made me keenly aware of the dangerous and treacherous temptations that lurk there. The pull of (and lust for) intellectual respectability is fatal to many. My advice to you: if you go back to school for a doctorate, go with your eyes wide open to the dangers and don't trust that you are strong enough to resist its power. Any intelligent person can succeed intellectually and academically, but only those who are becoming "pure of heart" can survive spiritually. (2) On the other hand, there is a tremendous advantage to going the route of formal, established academic institutions. Just because that was not my path does not mean that it is an invalid one. It is a dangerous one (see point 1), but it can nonetheless be exactly the path that God wants one to take. I told you my story in order to suggest that my path was a relatively unique one. I needed to go that way to learn what God wanted me to learn. I think God wanted to burn into my heart and mind the nature of discipleship as an utterly individual and ferociously independent task. I think God wanted to show me and persuade me that one could arrive at a place of confident understanding that did not depend on the approval of experts and gatekeepers. To give me the gift that God wanted to give me, it was appropriate that I proceed by way of alternative and culturally "insignificant" endeavors—ones that did not automatically give me any credentials. But that may not be the path he has for you. I would have nothing but the utmost respect for someone who went into the academy and brightly upheld the light of Jesus' gospel in the midst of that darkness and who loved the members of the academy with a Christ-like love. It makes all the sense in the world that God might call someone to that task.
My only other comment concerns my own relationship to philosophy. Intellectually, I love philosophy for the intellectual challenge of it, for the intellectual stimulation of it, and for some of the grand vistas afforded by other worldviews. But I have never found Truth in philosophy. Indeed, if I look to philosophy for truth, I find it quite empty. The older I get and the more I know, the more I understand that it is Jesus who has the words of eternal Life. (This needs to be qualified. I have been helped greatly by the insights of various philosophers, both Christians and non-Christians. Philosophy has done much to help me understand the teaching of Jesus better. My point, however, is that I do not find Truth in the worldviews, systems, and methodologies of any of the Philosophers—except, of course, the rare philosopher who is simply seeking to translate Jesus' teaching.) There is a simple and easy mistake that I think people like me (who came out of a significantly anti-intellectual Christian culture and background) make: They go to a secular university that promotes an active life of the mind and think that, in that, they have found Life itself. They have found life, it is true. They have been liberated to be the intelligent, thinking, creative, thinkers that God created them to be. They experience a resurrection of sorts. They (at the encouragement, or insistence, of Christian culture) had buried their minds as dead; and their minds have come back to life. But such a "life" is only a worldly life. It is the "life" of a creature; but it is not the Life of a child of God. And the Life of a child of God is hidden in, and found in, Jesus and his teaching; not in philosophy.
If you find yourself enamored and seduced by intellect and the life that seems to spring from it, think hard about your motivation and the source of this life.
Lastly, a plug for Gutenberg college. Nearly every lecture is available online or through iTunes, and I have rarely heard wisdom and insight so counter to the world, even the truth professed in the Christian world that is as sharp as biblical truth is intended to be.
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