... please fill in the blank. This is a minor rant having just encountered what feels like another example of Christian anti-intellectualism. May not be what was intended, but it is how it felt.
So here's my train of thought... God calls people with good brains to train as ministers... said people recognising this gift find the exercise of it energises their ministry... and as a result are told their passion is not 'x' or 'y' even when they believe it is.
I find myself left in a quandry: in ten years or so of preaching and leading church groups in study and reflection I have never been accused of being incomprehensible, too academic, aloof or detatched. Indeed, to the contrary, I have often had people tell me that when I explained something it became clear for the first time (head swells), that I talk sense, am practical in what I say and so on.
Yet, in contexts where I feel that a desire to think and reflect ought to be valued, I find the opposite to be the case: because clearly Peter et al were unschooled, the Bible says so, it must be better not to read or think. So, I'm feeling annoyed! I'm annoyed because the employment of gifts of music or art or medicine or valued and celebrated whilst the gift of intelligence, it often feels, is required to be denied, dumbed down or restricted to academia. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
I feel better now.
Comments
"God calls people with good brains to train as ministers" can you try to persuade God to send some to NBC?
God did - then she saw what happened after they'd been trained!
Perhaps you should have mentioned the silly sofa that you so frequently occupied.
Maybe I should have - but as my few silly sofa comments were misheard or misunderstood, not sure it'd have made much difference.
I share your frustration! Why is it that the use of God-given intellect in a Christian setting can be construed as being wordly instead of spiritual? Didn't He give us brains to use in all aspects of our lives? And don't even get me started on the joys of being a Christian female with a brain.........!!
My brain hurts.
Jesus made people's brains hurt (especially religious people who thought they knew everything already).
Therefore it's ok for other people to make my brain to hurt about religious things I thought I knew everything about.
My brain hurts too much to tell how many gaps there are in my logic, and it definitely hurts too much to put any of this into intelligible English.
Sadly of course I've already lost the argument by resorting to logic - a non-biblical form of discourse and therefore probably unsound. So I'll have to reframe it in a different genre...
"To what shall I liken the kingdom of heaven? There was once a woman who made her friends' brains hurt..."