Throughout junior high/some of high school who I wanted to BE was simply..an impressive intellectual. I don't know why, but that is who I desperately wanted inside myself. I tried to read hard books and tried to be interested in certain theories and debates that smart people were interested in, because I just wanted to grow into the persona of intelligence. My sophomore year I started going to a classical, Christian institution. Ambrose was so good for me, and at least for my sophomore year, I was still strongly pursuing the intellectual person inside of me. Junior and senior year, I slowly lost the desire to be this impressive intellectual...it was really hard to be an impressive intellectual at my school, AND, the more you learned, the stupider you felt. So by senior year I had given up on that aspiration.
I didn't really know who I wanted to be anymore. To be an "impressive intellectual" seemed so meaningless now, and I realized how much my ego had been involved before. But I also realized how much Intellectualism was advertised to me in this time. If you were really, really smart, had deep thoughts about things that people didn't normally think about, used big words, and acted like you knew exactly what you thought because obviously you'd read up on all this stuff and you were just "so intellectually cultured"....you were legit. But now it didn't seem like that to me. I encountered too much arrogance along the way to give Intellectualism the same respect that I once did. I was and am, so tired of ego's being in the way of things. This is not to say that I do not sometimes participate in this habit. But all the same..it became/is increasingly obvious to me.
After senior year, a summer of much deliberation and thinking, and then experiencing an ENTIRELY new environment at NNU with completely different people and countless different opinions and personalities during my first semester....I started to realize what was important to me. who did I want to become? What was my goal as a person. My growing concern soon materialized in my head as a concrete idea/question...how was I to truly love the separate people God put in my life. How to get rid of my ego. To be an intellectual didn't strike me as a highly useful way of loving people. Yes it's good to be smart and cultured. But wisdom is more than knowledge. and I believe that wisdom is used in loving people. not purely intellect.
I decided that obviously being smart was a good thing. Dumb love can only get you so far. But I now struggle with the balance of intelligence and love/compassion.
The culture we live in now, seems to me a strong enforcer of unthinking acceptance, which we translate to love. To judge at all is to be cruel. The only way people of this world can love one another is to say
...be happy. I accept your past. I accept who you are. I accept your sins. I accept it all, or at least I say I do because that guarantees peace between all of us, right? And because I accept all this and am the most open-minded person in the world, I am the most loving. Who could love you better than me, someone who doesn't care what you do or what you've done because I AM SANCTUARY.
To me this is dumb love. this is fake love. this is all an illusion of happiness. So, it seems I don't agree with the culture's view of "love." But I also disagree with the idea that the way to love people is pound what we think is truth into their heads [as Christians], and show people what it really means to be a deep thinker, to live the real truth. The intellectual view of love that I had encountered for so many years seemed to say
tell them how it is, no matter who they are, because they're better off knowing the facts and hating you for the way you treat them. It's okay for other people to feel stupid if it gets them thinking at all. LET THEM HAVE IT
now I am stuck. My past view of love is skewed. And the culture's view being pushed on me now, is also skewed. All I really want to do is love people, because I feel such strong connections to people who all feel things and are all created in God's image...just like me. I want to know them all. and I want to love them all. But how do I do it without being a steel wall, or a giant pillow. ...yeah my analogies suck. blah blahhh
I think I am supposed to find the balance between intelligence and love. I do not desire to be merely intelligent. Nor do I wish to love without thinking. I think what I want to do is intelligently love people. to wisely love people. This means that I tell them what I think. It means I am not wishy-washy and am completely honest with people. But it also means you treat all people in a manner that they desire to be treated. kindness is so important. Intellectualism forgets this. The wise friend is hard to tangibly attain as well. But my goodness this is so hard to define.
Are we as Christians allowed to lower our standards to become relatable to people from other backgrounds? To a certain limit? Sometimes I feel the need to do this in order to effectively love others. to REALLY become a tangible resource for them. But obviously this makes me and my morality more vulnerable. I would love to know the answer to this. What truly is the most effective way to love in a culture so disillusioned with far too harsh of love, and far too soft of love.
I want to know. And I think the more I learn and practice how to love who God puts in my life...the smaller my ego would become. i hope. sigh....any insight to this giant rolling discussion with myself would be so appreciated.
