Can you be an intellectual and be a real person?
I have lived in a university environment for a long time now. In fact it is going on 10 years. Honestly I love the intellectual energy and stimulation of university life and if it were up to me, I will always live close to a university. Now my wife has me beat. Her record for living amongst the “intellectuals” is closer to…, well let’s just say her whole life.
While living here, I have discovered or encountered rather, many different types of people. Personalities ranging from the intellectual hermit (who never strays into the real world) to the intellectually deprived “Frisbee Guy” (that never reads, never studies and by second semester very one is asking “hey where is that one guy, you know the one with the Frisbee).”
But forget Mr. Frisbee for a moment. I would like to pose a question. Can an intellectual be a real person? My fear is that in some way as I soak in the world where ideas are thought, that I will some how loose touch with reality. I am afraid that as I learn and grow the knowledge I gain will never make its way into the world that truly exists or at least that it would have no right or claim to reside there in. What if when I am away from my study and I visit Wal-Mart I will or have begun to forget how to love, care, and focus on the people in the real world (the ones who all my study was for in the first place).
I am afraid of becoming the intellectual who strays into the real world and does not realize he has nothing in common with it.
But that doesn’t happen, does it?
Oh yes. After living so long in this setting I have seen this happen over and over. Yester day I was reading the blog of someone who was an acquaintance of mine while I was an under graduate student. He is wrapping up his masters and doctoral work while I am still in the planning stages of mine and wrapping up my kids in their diapers. As I read his logs I found myself disheartened and some what jealous that I have not been able to continue in my schooling at this point and yet I noticed a since of frustration and disconnect building in me as I read. Was it good writing? Absolutely! Were the thoughts consistent and mature? Beyond a doubt! But what I noticed was that this individual had separated himself from the practical, measurable, average, and seemingly mundane “real world”. I found myself saying “great thoughts, but where are you?” “What do your ideas mean to the Hindu, existentialist, or the agnostic” of the real world?
I believe that this is were many “intellectuals” end up. Whether it is good or bad I can not say. But I can ask, what is the goal behind what we do? What is the purpose? Is it possible that we get so caught up in attaining the knowledge that somewhere along the way we forget what our focus is and begin focusing on the knowledge itself? I assert that knowledge for the purpose of knowledge is useless, knowledge for the purpose of others is wisdom, and knowledge for the purposes of God is worship.
Follow up questions:
Is it the base personality that drives some one to become an intellectual hermit or is it the intellectual study itself?
Is it possible to avoided the disconnect between the real world and the intellectual world? Is there a possible merging of the two?
5 comments:
So - you lead an "edgy" worship service? I'd like to hear about that... I'm an associate pastor at my church and I lead the "alternative" worship service - which is occasionally edgy. Mostly, it's worship with modern (pop/rock) music & video. Sometimes we do some neat interactive stuff, though... But, I'm always looking for ideas - especially ways to get people more involved in the service. Do you do all the planning/putting together/etc. yourself or do you have a team? We have a praise team (band/vocalists) and one tech guy (runs the computer and a little sound) and I'm trying to get our instrumental sub guy (he plays everything but there's no place in the band for him full time right now) to take sound duties... I'd LOVE to have somebody besides me put together the graphics, video pieces, etc...but I don't have anybody...
oh - if you're interested, here's the blod url for our worship service:
http://www.breakthroughworship.blogspot.com/
Grace and Peace,
Bill Beatty
Hi Jim,
This post reminds me of some guys in my dorm when I was at IWU. I can remember walking into the lobby of Williams Hall on several occasions -- sometimes pretty close to curfew when I'd been out with some friends -- and seeing this group of guys sitting around on the musty, overstuffed couches debating some fine point of Christian philosophy or doctrine.
It seems like they were mostly Christian Ministries majors (not that all CM majors are like this, of course) -- and I remember that more than once the debates got pretty heated.
One night I had a pretty strong reaction, though I kept it to myself. I wanted to yell, "Who cares?!?" Because honestly, whether your beliefs are pre-trib, mid-trib, or post-trib -- what does that have to do with daily life? With the *real* world?
Perhaps the contrast was all that much stronger because I was just coming into the building from outdoors (from the real world, if you will), and they'd been cloistered in the dorm for hours on end.
I think these guys were Christian intellectuals (or at least fancied that they were) and were getting caught up in the headiness of their ideas and debate. But were they in touch with the lives around them? Hard to say.
Granted, college is a time where our minds are expanding, and it's natural to get a little drunk on the many ideas in the air, or on the sudden freedoms that are available. But, like you, I think it's easy sometimes to lose touch with real life.
I hope that many of those guys from the dorm lobby outgrew those discussions. But I wonder today if any of them -- or our other contemporaries -- are still caught up in conversations and pastimes that don't add up to much.
Thanks for the entry, and for making me think.
Joel -
Yes I remember those discussions in college. One particularly pointless conversation revolved around the question, “can God make a rock that is so big that even he can not lift it?” I remember finding my self I a paradox, pondering all night if it were possible for an infinite God to do something meaningless just to see if he could do something that the could not do.
What you end up with if you attempt to answer the question above is a limited God, whether you say yes or no. Also I think that this question is thinking strictly specially. It takes into consideration no concept to transcendence or a triune God.
Maybe the better question is to ask is: “Can God do something that is meaning less?” This would at least lead into a discussion on meaning, and value (rather than trying to prove something or ask a question that we cannot possibly understand or comprehend).
Anyway Joel thanks for the interaction, I love your mind. You have always been an insightful and perceptive friend.
Interesting question: Can God do something that is meaningless?
The poet in me wants to say that anything God does is an expression of God, which makes it inherently meaningful, if only as another facet of God.
I'm no God, but perhaps that applies to humans as well: everything I do is an expression of myself, and inherently meaningful in the same way -- even just as another side of me?
Fun to think about, that's for sure. Too bad Bill Hall isn't still around. We could hit the couches and give the 20-somethings a run for their money!
O.K., there was this verse I was going to quote you, but I've spent half an hour on BibleGateway.com and I can't find it. (The paper concordance wasn't any help either.) So, hang in there - God will grant you the desires of your heart. And you'll never regret being there for your kids when they were small.
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