Because the apostles were not renowned for scholarship, oratory, or theological education, their transformation speaks to the power of God rather than their own abilities. Jesus used “crooked lines” (the “uneducated,” fishermen, sinners) to start the church; God continues to work through imperfect, ordinary, and even dysfunctional people today.
When we are “learned and the clever,” we can more easily forget that we need others and consequently don’t as naturally reach for another’s hand as does a child. It’s easier for us to isolate ourselves. When we are less aware of our contingency, we more easily lose sight of the things to which God and life are inviting us.
The very strength that intelligence and learning bring into our lives can instill in us a false sense of self-sufficiency that can make us want to separate ourselves in unhealthy ways from others and understand ourselves as superior In some way. And superiority never enters a room alone, but always brings along a number of her children: arrogance, disdain, boredom, cynicism. All of these are occupational hazards for the “learned and the clever” and none of these helps unlock any of life’s deep secrets.
But we must be careful not to misread the lesson. Faith does not ask us to not stretch our minds. Neither ignorance nor naiveté serve faith. Faith not only doesn’t fear the hard questions it invites us to ask them. The depths of infinity are never threatened by finite intelligence. And so it’s never a bad thing to become learned and sophisticated; it’s only a bad thing is we remain there. The task is to become post-sophisticated, that is, to remain full of intelligence and learning even as we put on again to the mindset of a child. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Things Hidden from the Learned and the Clever,” July 2011]