Jenny
P.S. When are you guys going on tour again, and if you are, do you plan on coming to southern Virginia? I
would really love to see you guys.
Dear Greg:
Thanks for passing jenny's note to me. I identify very much with what she wrote. I have been discouraged
lately with many of my students who in some ways sound like the kids she knows. They are good with
outward piety; they know the Jesus lingo. But their "faith" seems to make no practical difference in their
lives. Perhaps by making them smug, it makes them worse people than they might be otherwise.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with
all your strength.Mark 12:30Jesus said that people should love God with their minds as well as their souls. I think he said that
because he knows how few people-of any persuasion-really want to use their minds. So he says that
people honor God by using the brains God gave them. Most of the genuinely intelligent and thoughtful
people I know are Christians. But Jenny is right to suggest that many Christians act and speak brainlessly.
I don't think it's because they're Christians; it's because they're people. But it's a disgrace when Christians
are "average" in this way.
Before returning to university teaching, I taught for three years at a Christian prep school-one of the
oldfashioned kinds that teaches Latin and occasionally Greek, along with other great stuff. I think Jenny
would be amazed at the intellectual horsepower at that Christian school.
St. James says that people who presume to be teachers among Christians are taking on a very serious
task.
Not many of you should presume to be teachers ... because you know that we who teach will be judged
more strictly.
James 3:1
It sounds to me like the guy who shot off his mouth about Jesus, physics and wine blew it. Does he have
inside information? And anyway, while a literal, unimaginative reading of that story is fine, if that's as far
as it goes, a lot of potentially interesting questions are left unanswered. Why did Jesus perform his first
miracle at a party? Why does it seem that Jesus is playing mind games with his mom? Why doesn't his
mom do what he asksnamely, to quit bugging him? But mediocre minds don't like contemplation, so they
concoct pseudointellectual trash. I know exactly the kind of meeting Jenny has described. I hated them by
the time I was 16, and I don't go to them now. I guess I always had the advantage of being individualistic.
I think that the answer jenny's mom gave to her"You just have to have faith"-is partly true and partly
false. First, I would say that her mom is probably doing the best she can with what she has, so an amount
of genuine tolerance (as opposed to the cheap PC kind) may be in order.
But much in life does depend on faith. I have faith, for example, that these symbols I'm putting together