This post was written by Randy Newman on February 1, 2009
Recently, I mentioned John Piper’s book, The Pleasures of God. The final chapter, The Pleasure of God in Concealing Himself from the Wise and Revealing Himself to Infants, has some pertinent things to say about thinking, the life of the mind, intelligence, and related topics for thoughtful Christians to consider.
I don’t think I need to place this chapter in the larger context of our current evangelical climate. Suffice it to say that Christians vary in their levels of valuing the intellect. Part of the problem flows from a selective reading of the Scriptures. Part comes from recent history.
Piper addresses the issue well and allows the complexity of the problem to shape his depth of response. He recognizes that the Scriptures do not “uniformly portray mental productivity as praiseworthy.” Sometimes “knowledge puffs up” (1 Cor. 8:1). God often condemns the “wise of this world.” (Consider Jer. 9:23, James 3:15, or I Tim. 6:20). On the other hand, Scripture praises wisdom and exhorts us all to pursue it more than jewels. (See Proverbs 8 and many other places).
Piper raises many important questions, examining recent history (quoting Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in America), and lands on “the crucial question,” “How does the Word of God portray the life of the mind?” I won’t recreate his argument here. It deserves a thorough reading and much reflection. I do believe he is exactly right to see that being an “infant,” for both Jesus and Paul, is “not always viewed as praiseworthy.”
He wrestles with the tensions long enough to draw what I believe is an important distinction. “A fundamental difference between divine wisdom and human wisdom is that God’s wisdom exalts what the cross stands for, and human wisdom is offended by what the cross stands for. God’s wisdom has the supremacy of God’s glory as the beginning, middle, and end of it, but man’s wisdom delights in seeing himself as resourceful, self-sufficient, self-determining, and not utterly dependant on God’s free grace.”
If this is correct, then study, research, contemplation, the life of the mind, and other academic endeavors are not to be shunned or ridiculed, but pursued as appropriate responses to a God who reveals himself not only in Scripture, but also in general revelation of nature, other people, art, beauty, and the like.
He concludes, “If the gospel is to be preserved for the good of Christ’s church, and God is to be known for who he truly is, we will need to cultivate the life of the mind that prizes and reserves this kind of rigorous study.”
This chapter may be encouraging to you as you seek to love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. I hope you’ll seek it out.
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