Things Hidden from the Learned and Clever

So why is being “intelligent and clever” something that can work against our understanding of the deeper secrets within life and faith?

The fault is not with intelligence and learning, both good things in themselves, but in what they can inadvertently do to us. Intelligence and learning often have the unintended effect of undermining what’s childlike in us, that is, the very strength that they bring into our lives can allow us to unconsciously claim a superiority and have us believe that, given our intelligence, we have both the need and the right to isolate ourselves from others in ways that the natural neediness of children does not permit them to do.

Children are not self-sufficient even though they fiercely want to be. They need others and they know it. Consequently they more naturally reach out and take someone’s hand. They don’t have the luxury of self-sufficiency.

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 instil 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.

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.

By Ron Rolheiser, OMI