When Festus expressed the opinion to the apostle Paul, ''Your great learning is driving you crazy,'' he may have been echoing a sentiment common to men of his time. So far as I know, however, there is neither biblical nor scientific warrant for the theory that excessive learning may lead to insanity. However, ample proof readily could be supplied to support the idea that much learning often leads to dullness, unbelief, abstractness, triviality, irrelevance, and arrogance. That it inevitably does so is false, but that intellectuals are tempted by one or more of these tendencies is certain.
This problem has significance for every Christian because the average layman, in encountering these attitudes, is himself tempted to respond either in awe and deference or in anger and disgust. He often reacts by becoming an intellectual groupie or by assuming an anti-intellectual posture. Neither of these responses is correct.
What brings about the undesirable characteristics we so often discern in the Christian intelligentsia, which in turn provide a temptation to the Christian public to respond in harmful extremes? Of course, at bottom, the problem for both is sin. But from a more proximate vantage point, we can see several wrong purposes in learning.
The pursuit of learning for its own sake, for example, is a deadly and deadening enterprise. Yet many become caught up in the search for more and more facts. There is a certain satisfaction in discovering new information, and the search for facts is an enjoyable process that can become addictive. But to become caught up in study and research merely for the sake of the chase itself is a trap not much different from the pit into which the man falls who spends all of his time fishing or improving his golf game. There is so little to show for all of his time and effort at the end of his life.
Learning to satisfy one's curiosity runs a close second to learning for learning's sake. Here it is not so much the process in which one is caught up (indeed, the process can become a frustrating chore for the one whose curiosity is insatiable), but the illusive great white whale for which he searches becomes his all-consuming obsession. Just as the joys of the learning process in themselves are not wrong, so long as they do not become the goal of learning, so too the desire to satisfy curiosity is perfectly valid as long as it is but an impetus to effort and does not become the ultimate goal of one's quest for knowledge. It is when these by-products, which ought to be "added" to one's pursuit of learning become instead the objects of one's efforts that they assume the character of idols usurping the true object of learning, which ever must be the glory of God.(1)
Another contemptible misuse of learning that leads to arrogance, pride, and many of the other failings we find in so many Christian intellectuals is learning for one's own aggrandizement. Some, doubtless, clearly pursue learning with this objective in view. Others, probably the bulk of Christian intellectuals who become enmeshed in its tentacles, gradually drift into the pattern. The adulation of their peers and of the Christian public can be very enticing But like a very rich dessert, a man can eat up only so much of that before he gets sick. Like the two former colleagues, the intellectual who learns for his own aggrandizement focuses his concerns on a by-product rather than the true biblical end. It is true that great reaming, used properly, often sets a man in prominent places. But that may never be his goal.
The true objective of all learning for the Christian is the glory of God. The fear of the Lord (a phrase that means the walk of a believer that grows out of awe and respect for God) is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom (see Prov. 1). A truly educated man puts God, and what He requires of him, before everything else. When every aspect of the learning process is subordinated to pleasing God by loving Him and one's neighbor according to the Bible, education and learning may become an exciting and profitable enterprise. Apart from that, in many ways it is idolatry.
One who is interested in loving God and his neighbor, for instance, will see that the products of his efforts are not confined to an esoteric few. He will not focus his attention on an elite to the impoverishment of the rest of the church. He will strive to make his teachings and writings as clear as he can to benefit the widest possible range of people. He will avoid jargon and take pains to explain all the technical terms he uses. He will work with others in mind; love (the giving of himself to others) will be the motivating force behind his learning. Therefore, his work will not be done in a comer.
Education and learning are a large part of the Christian life, not only for intellectuals, but for every Christian. But education and learning have often received bad press in the church because of the failings I have mentioned. You are involved in education, Christian, and the temptations I have mentioned are not temptations that exclusively plague the Christian intelligentsia; they are temptations that in some way, at some place, are a problem for you. Take them to heart.
1 The phrase, "the glory of God, " has frequently been used in such a loose and inadequate way that an explanation of what it really means is in order almost any time one uses it. I have endeavored to explain its true meaning in chapter 6 of my book Back to the Blackboard.
Copyright by Jay E. Adams in "Grist from Adams' Mill". All rights reserved.