This piece originally appeared in The Christian Century.

I collect expressions of anti-intellectualism. I even consider myself to be a connoisseur of the sorts of things that fall within this genre. But this is no mere hobby. I was raised in a spiritual environment in which the intellectual life was regarded with suspicion, even with overt hostility at times. The anti-intellectual one-liners of my childhood still echo in my heart. “The only school anyone has to go to is the Holy Ghost’s school of the Bible!” “If you have to get educated, be sure to get the victory over it!”

There were times when those warnings hit close to home. Just before I went off to graduate school in philosophy, for example, a dear family friend sent me a letter expressing concern for my soul. He quoted Paul’s warning in Colossians 2 about not being corrupted “through philosophy and vain deceit.” In quoting the verse he spelled the key word “fool-osophy.”

I take time on occasion to remember my spiritual roots, to examine my collection of anti-intellectual expressions, and to meditate on this or that warning against the life of the mind. Testing the state of my soul against the complaints of those who view people like me—people devoted to intellectual pursuits—with suspicion has led me to practice an important personal exercise in spiritual self-examination. To be sure, that takes some discernment. By their very nature, attacks on the intellect display considerable rhetorical overkill, so in most cases I must separate the wheat from the chaff.

Here is one of my favorite overkill examples, quoted by Richard Hofstadter in his classic study, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Peter Cartwright was a 19th-century Methodist circuit rider who observed that he served the cause of the gospel with wonderful results without ever having darkened the door of a theological school. He and his friends, he declared, have “preached the Gospel with more success and had more seals to their ministry” than all of those “sapient, downy D.D.’s in modern times who . . . are seeking presidencies or professorships in colleges, editorships, or any agencies that have a fat salary, and are trying to create newfangled institutions where good livings can be monopolized”—and all of this “while millions of poor, dying sinners are thronging the way to hell without God, without Gospel.”

As someone who occupies both a presidency and a professorship, I take some comfort in knowing that I don’t exactly fit Cartwright’s description of the “sapient, downy” type. But there is enough of me in his account to force me to be sure that I have set my priorities right.

Some of the anti-intellectual statements in my collection force me to probe a little deeper spiritually. A case in point is on the opening page of the great devotional classic The Imitation of Christ, where Thomas à Kempis urges us to forsake the pseudowisdom of “the world” in order to render our lives wholly “conformable to Christ.” He spells out his plea with a couple of choice examples. It doesn’t do us much good, he says, to be able to argue eloquently about the Trinity if we lack the kind of humility that is pleasing to the triune God. What is the merit, he asks, of being able to define compunction if we are not “pricked in heart” by the sins we have committed? And this: “If you knew the whole Bible scientifically, and the words of the Philosophers; what good would it all be, that loveless and graceless knowledge?”

It’s easy to point out here that Thomas is presenting us with some false choices. Of course it is regrettable when a person can set forth all sorts of arguments defending the Trinity but for all of that is living a life that displeases the Trinity, and yes, it is better to experience compunction in your own soul than to offer a learned definition of the word compunction. Graceless knowledge is surely something to be avoided. But isn’t it good to have some people who are able both to speak carefully about trinitarian dogma and also to live in ways that are pleasing to the triune God? Or what about someone who not only has experienced genuine compunction in the soul but also has managed to write a book on the subject? Surely one alternative to pursuing a graceless knowing is the cultivation of gracefull knowledge.

A grace-filled life of the mind will draw on some important virtues, not the least of them being humility and a desire to serve others by showing the kind of love with which we have been loved by God. Simone Weil says somewhere in her writings that the virtues necessary to sustain the intellectual life are pretty much the same as those that are necessary to sustain the spiritual-contemplative life. Thinking carefully, then, can itself be an important exercise of the imitation of Christ. Not a bad reason for at least some of us to take on the task of “fool-osophy.”

This piece originally appeared at purposedriven.com

At a recent gathering of theological educators, I heard a series of three talks on “Money, Sex and Power.” All three presentations were excellent, but it struck me: money is the topic we pay the least attention to in our seminary programs. In the evangelical world where I spend most of my time, we certainly spend a lot of time talking about sex. We argue about it in our denominations and we preach about sexual patterns in our society. We have also become more sensitive to power topics: in recent decades we have become adept at organizing “moral majorities” and “Christian coalitions” to exercise political clout in the public arena.

Money, however, is not a favorite topic. Studies have shown that pastors do not like preaching about financial matters. Nor have they been encouraged to take these issues on by their theological mentors.

There are some obvious reasons for this. Seminary students spend their graduate school years hanging around with people who do not have much money. When they enter ministry they are often still struggling in their own lives to catch up financially, and they do not feel very confident talking about money to their parishioners. And often they come into their ministries after several years in an academic setting where simple-minded comments about “rich capitalists” occur much too frequently.

As a result, preaching about money is often been limited to the periodic sermon about the need to support church programs—so that church members come away with the impression that as long as they make their church pledges they have done their duty as good stewards.

So it is, that during this desperate time people are asking those of us who represent the church, “Where is your God in all of this? Why are you not telling us more about how we can make it through this economic storm? Isn’t it your job to speak truths about the basic issues of life?”

We need to hear these complaints. Thirty years ago, I heard a pastor preach about Jonah. Here we have a prophet of the God of Israel on a ship that has run into a dangerous storm. The prophet is having an intense religious discussion with the vessel’s crew of pagan sailors. We would expect, the preacher said, that the prophet is speaking the truth to folks who are religiously confused. But in this case, the sailors have the best of the argument. They tell the prophet, correctly, that he is being disobedient to the will of God. The preacher’s punchline: sometimes the world preaches important messages to the church.

I’ve been thinking about that punchline as the economic situation has gone from bad to worse in recent months. It isn’t just that churches are not saying enough about the present economic crisis. We have shied away from posing the basic questions about finances in general. Getting Christians to talk to each other about their spending priorities, the things they buy and sell, their attitudes toward possessions, what the Bible says about “the love of money”—in too many churches these have been the taboo topics.

A young Christian business leader told me recently that he and his friends—Christian and non-Christian—are realizing that they had gotten accustomed to putting their trust in progress and growth. They had learned to love luxury. Now all of this was coming apart, and they are being forced to think about what really gives meaning and purpose to their lives.

Those of us who are theologically trained may not be experts on economic systems and personal financial management, but we do know some important things about the underlying issues. The myth of inevitable progress is just that—a myth, and a dangerous one at that. Economic strength can be a false god; we must not give it our ultimate allegiance. Greed destroys souls. The quest for luxury cannot satisfy the deepest longings of the human spirit.

The Jonah story points to a good outcome for the church today. The prophet admitted that he’d abdicated his prophetic role and led the ship into angry waters. We should confess that we are not as prepared as we should be to offer guidance in the “money” dimension of life.

Our failure to speak at length about these matters during our long, past season of prosperity has contributed to the deep distress triggered by this present crisis. The recognition of our shortcomings, though, can be the occasion for an opportunity to new obedience. When people ask us, “Where is your God in all of this mess?” we are given a precious moment to speak words of comfort and guidance to a world that is looking for a place of true safety in the midst of the storm. We should be ready.

My friend Robert Millet wrote an interesting book two years ago, with the title What Happened to the Cross? Bob is a distinguished Mormon theologian who is extensively involved in interreligious dialogue (including the evangelical-Mormon dialogue which he and I co-chair). This book, published by the Deseret Book Company, is addressed primarily to a Latter Day Saints audience, so it is interesting to be able to listen in on what he says to his fellow Mormons about Christ’s redemptive mission.

The very title suggests that Bob wants Mormonism to pay more attention to the Cross of Christ. That the Cross is not a very visible symbol in the Mormon community Millet attributes to the fact that many early Mormon leaders had Puritan roots, and they shared Puritanism’s worries about too much visible symbolism. As he observes, the same was true for many Baptists, who only started displaying crosses when they moved into the Protestant mainstream in the 19th century.

But there is also a theological issue at stake for Mormons—the Mormon focus on what Millet describes as “the central role of Gethsemane.” Mormonism has insisted, he says, “that our Lord’s suffering there [in the Garden] was not simply an awful anticipation of Calvary but that it was redemptive in nature.”  Millet does argue, though, that the emphasis on Gethsemane should not detract from the acknowledgement that Christ’s atoning work was” consummated” on Calvary. He cites the late Gordon Hinckley in this regard. In 2005 the LDS president put it clearly: it was on the Cross of Calvary that “our Savior, our Redeemer, the Son of God, gave Himself, a vicarious sacrifice for each of us.”

Obviously there is much to discuss here with our Mormon friends. At the very least, though, it should be clear that the “counter-cult” folks have not been fair when they have insisted that for Mormonism, Christ’s redemptive mission was somehow accomplished exclusively in Gethsemane. Ed Decker and Dave Hunt, for example, are bearing false witness when they state bluntly, in The God Makers, that “Mormons have an almost fanatical aversion to the cross and the shed blood of Jesus Christ.” Bob Millet’s book provides overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Actually, there are good reasons why we evangelicals ought ourselves to pay closer attention to Gethsemane as an important stage in Christ’s redemptive mission. For anyone looking for a solid Reformed basis for that claim, here is question and answer 37 of the Heidelberg Catechism, commenting on the “he suffered” phrase in the Apostles Creed:

Q. What do you confess when you say that He suffered?

A. During all the time He lived on earth, but especially at the end, Christ bore in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race. Thus, by His suffering, as the only atoning sacrifice, He has redeemed our body and soul from everlasting damnation, and obtained for us the grace of God, righteousness, and eternal life.

Christ paid the debt for our sin “especially at the end,” but the transaction began much earlier. Carrying the burden of our sins in his own person was not merely a three-hour affair. It began in Bethlehem, and it certainly was experienced in an especially intense way when he sweat drops of blood in the Garden. This means that we have some common themes to build on in our dialogues with Mormons. More importantly, it means that a focus on Gethsemane can be a worthy exercise in our own spiritual formation.