For some reason, today I remember M., a college acquaintance who years ago talked to me in my dorm room late into the night. You see, M. had just completed a semester at
The Oregon Extension (OE),† a sort of academic retreat in the southern Oregon mountains, where students live in cabins while exploring their Christian beliefs in an open-minded yet academically rigorous community. Upon his return to our New England campus for the spring trimester, M. sought me out, eager to report on his experience in Oregon.
M. was not the first OE alumnus I knew. I had already heard back from several other alumni who found the place all rather magical. OE had provided a truly transformative experience, at least for most folks. However, one of my friends, a man I had known since middle school, was not as taken by the OE curriculum.
But M. was taken, completely. He had sought me out with an almost furious energy; there was an urgency in his tone. And so, as I reclined on my bed, my back against the wall, M. gave me his impassioned report on what he had learned, and what he had learned could be boiled down to two things: He had learned that Christianity is all about grace, and that he knew absolutely nothing.
I recognize that this is hardly news that suggests epiphany. But for M., well, he had been transformed. He waxed on about Karl Barth and presuppositions; he mentioned paradigms. And he could not reiterate often enough that what OE had given him was the liberation that can only come from great insight: He knew nothing at all.
What M. was
not saying was what Socrates may have said, namely, that in order to learn a man must first admit that he does not know what he claims to know. M.'s sort of doubt wasn't even Cartesian, for Descartes at least landed on something relatively familiar: his own self. What M. was really saying was that he had found a new virtue; that not knowing anything, at least anything certain or foundational, was a glorious gift, one wrapped and tied in bows of God's abundant grace. Ignorance was a liberating virtue.
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I recall overhearing a psychology professor at my thoroughly Protestant college tell a colleague that he "love[d] shattering the presuppositions of the undergrads." I am sure this professor's pleasure was rooted in love, or so one
should infer within the context of a Christian institution of higher learning. But what I noticed then, and notice even now, is that many so-called "Christian intellectuals" seem very much interested in the demolition of their students' presuppositions, but have little interest in renovation, which seems a rather limited view of things. After all, it is all very well and good to knock down walls, but if the building is left razed, is this pleasing and wise?
When I told another OE alumnus about the psych prof's pleasure in dismantling, he opined that he felt the prof's words encapsulated what his experience at OE had been: professors delighting in deconstructing without taking to time to help rebuild.º
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So why do I think about M. today? Maybe because, in part, I am thinking of some of the "new virtues" before us: tolerance, multi-cultural empathy, open-mindedness, are forerunners of the new virtues, but they seem almost antique by comparison. No, there are even newer virtues, like "multi-tasking," flippancy, and maintaining a vital Internet avatar, to name a few. But the one virtue that I believe M. and his peers presented far ahead of their time is this necessary and seemingly humble admission that each of us knows nothing; that each of us must admit that we not only
could be wrong, but we
are wrong. To such humble folks, a sophisticated mind is a ceaselessly nuanced one; every answer, if one can be found, must be hopelessly complex, or complicated by the never-ending deferences that such a mind makes in the face of a problem, or in reply to a question. The truly smart person
thinks, without necessarily ever landing on a solid answer; the
inquiry is all that matters, complete with certain prescriptions against appearing too certain, too provincial, too anthropocentric or patriotic or partisan or American or patriarchal. An intelligent person is a cosmopolitan one, where everything bears equal moral and intellectual weight; where no one wants to land on one idea, even if it is demonstrably right, for fear of looking like that immodest man who
decides, who prefers one country or region over all others; that simpleton who prefers Tuscany to Campania.
No, the intellectual is a person who believes in process, in pursuit. Actually landing on an answer, well, that is for those who possess a fearful mind, full of anxiety; an intellectually incurious mind that clings to God and other soothing constructs. The true intellectual is too democratic to have an answer, even a conviction, that is not arrived at by consensus, collaboration or roll call.
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In reading G. K. Chesterton's glorious
Orthodoxy once again, I find that in 1908 Mr. Chesterton was already aware of what would perhaps become the 20th- and 21st-centuries' most pervasive intellectual movement (or mood). And it appears that M.'s insight is really not that new at all, at least to Chesterton:
"At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he could be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. ...Scoffers of old were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced."
The new virtue, this humility and modesty of which M. seemed so enamored, is the result of upending the very meaning of humility:
"Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. ... But what we suffer from to-day is a humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly that part he ought not assert -- himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt -- the Divine Reason. Huxley preached a humility content to learn from nature. But the new sceptic is so humble he doubts he can even learn. Thus we should be wrong if we had said hastily that there is no humility typical of our time. The truth is that there is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it is practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that kept him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether."
Chesterton is quite clearly on to something here, while I am most likely not. Clearly, I am struggling
towards something. I want to know why many of those folks who most often tout the virtue of "thinking for oneself" seem to think for themselves the least; and why what appears to be an intellectual trend toward solipsism, where the self can only know its own claustrophobic self, instead trends towards the fad, the popular, the consensus. Why do those who tell me that I must find my
own truth -- a truth that is binding to no one but me -- always seem to fall back on what everybody else thinks -- what the committee or voters or members or citizens or consensuses or Europeans think?
And why is it that M., who claimed to know nothing but the grace of God, knew enough to tell me that knowing nothing was liberating? And why, in the end, is God always reduced to either His ferocious law (ostensibly by those absurd conservatives) or His judgment-free grace of which M. so passionately spoke?
And I wonder why my more religiously liberal peers believe that there is at least one thing God damns: the self who dares assert that something is absolutely true.
Food for thought, or not.
Peace.
†Please note that I am not interested here in besmirching what others have found so helpful. I am merely using OE as a springboard, though not entirely. Alas, there are some things I must keep to myself.
ºI recognize that the goal of many Christian educators is to knock down false idols, and then cultivate in each student the necessary skills and passion so that he or she might erect a faith and Christian worldview that are self-determined.
©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
I was completely out of the media loop yesterday, having left all the political hoopla aside so I could attend to an important and wonderful domestic event. So by the time I learned of Sen. John McCain's choice of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, the chattering classes were already deep into their analysis. In fact, the only thing I first gleaned from the car radio was that a woman had been picked; being on the road, I called my wife to ask her what she could find out for me. In seconds, she was reading online news accounts: in one ear I had news, in the other, there was fevered reaction.
