Intellectual Honesty

My brother-in-law was a true intellectual. Having served as a past dean of the faculty at Cornell University, he was a truly humble man. He was always more interested in what he could learn from others than in telling others how much he knew. This always felt to me like a point of separation between a true intellectual from a pseudo intellectual. You’ve no doubt heard the expression, “Remain quiet and people may think you ignorant, or speak up and remove all doubt.”

My father used to advise me, “Know what you know and know what you think and don’t confuse the two.

My brother-in-law, once asked me, “Why do Christians always try to make people believe as they do?” I replied, “Two things. First, Christians believe in a literal Heaven and Hell. That being the case, if you love someone, you do not want them to spend eternity in a place like Hell. And secondly, many Christians misunderstand Scripture. Scripture records in 1 Corinthians 3:7 ‘So neither who plants, nor who seeds is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.’”

You see the Bible calls us to make disciples, not converts. In our desire to win someone to a heavenly viewpoint, it is possible for us to cross the line from watering and seeding, to attempting to do the actual growing (God’s job).

As a “young in the faith” Christian, I picked up a book, which someone had left in the pew. The title of that book was, “Basic Christianity” by John Stott. I turned the book over and read, “If He is not who He said He was, and if He did not do what He said He had come to do, the whole superstructure of Christianity crumbles in ruins to the ground.” After reading such a bold statement I was compelled to go out and buy that book. I had to know the truth, was Jesus indeed, who he claimed to be.

Having consumed that book, I was led to another by Josh McDowell, “Evidence That Demands a Verdict.” McDowell was a law student when he overheard fellow students discussing Christ in the school cafeteria. Challenging their beliefs, he said he would prepare a legal brief, disproving Christ was who He said he was. His book, which is admittedly a difficult read, is the actual legal brief which he prepared. Rather than disproving Biblical claims, it instead became a convincing “Case for Christ.” Which is indeed the title of still another book by Lee Strobel a former atheist, who followed a similar path to the truth as the one followed by McDowell.

McDowell concludes his book by saying he could go into any court in the land and prove his case. Strobel, a journalist and Yale Law School graduate, concludes his book with the words of CS Lewis, “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him or kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

So for any who truly seek the truth, I would challenge you, as my father once challenged me. Know what you know, and know what you think, and don’t confuse the two.