It was just two months after my 17th birthday that I began college. Our college did not require freshmen to declare their major area of study, but did ask that we indicate academic interests for the assignment of advisors. I chose Philosophy and Christian Thought and plunged into my academic career. I found the world of books and ideas to be stimulating and engaging. I enjoyed reading classic ideas, critical thinking, and the long conversations that were not focused on producing agreement, but rather advancement of thought.

Looking back, I realize that I was emotionally immature. At the time, I thought that being an adult was primarily a matter of intellectual development. I thought that mastering the ability to think academically was what it meant to be an adult.

At the same time of my life, I was dating the woman who became my wife. She was a brilliant student and very successful academically. I imitated her study skills and our relationship was based, in a large part, on the world of ideas. Both her parents and mine were readers and our homes were filled with books. We had lots of support from our families for our educations.

During my college summers, I worked at jobs that did not require college educations. I assembled and delivered farm machinery. I drove truck. I spent most of one summer tipping garbage cans into the back of the garbage truck. I worked in a large production bakery loading semi trailers with bread to be delivered throughout the region. In those jobs, I quickly discovered that I didn’t fit into the culture of the other workers. I didn’t smoke, and the conversations during coffee breaks rarely focused on the books I was reading or the ideas I was struggling to understand.

I wrongly assumed that people who were not college educated were somehow less mature than those who had college degrees. I thought that adulthood was more like the world of college than the world of work.

I went straight to graduate theological education from college and I enrolled in a hybrid degree program that allowed me to simultaneously work on my masters and doctorate, completing both programs in four years. My focus on the world of ideas and intellect continued.

The transition from the faith I knew as a child to the study of theology was easy for me. I embraced the idea of God as readily as I had embraced God as a child. I now know that there is a big difference between falling in love with God and falling in love with the idea of God, but at the time embracing God intellectually was a sincere act of faith for me. The Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) says, “Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. Blessed be the Name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all our soul and with all your might . . .” But when it is quoted in the Gospel of Luke, there is a wonderful twist. There it says, “Love the Lord your Gold with all your heart and with all our soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.” I read Luke and immediately was drawn to the concept of loving God “with all your mind.”

Thinking about God and pursuing the intellectual concept of God were, for me, expressions of faith. There was, and continues to be no disconnect between academic learning and religious faith in my experience.

As a reader, I tended to think that one had to read the book to the end in order to understand the whole idea. I wasn’t too taken with people who could quote a few verses and based their faith on small snippets of the Bible. But I was also making the mistake of placing more “weight” on things that came later in the book. So it was natural for me to read Jesus’ declaration in Matthew, “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven,” (Mt. 18:3) as only part of the story. After all, if you to continue to 1 Corinthians, you find, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me” (1 Corinthians 13:11).

I continued to think of religious maturity and intellectual maturity as going hand in hand.

So, when I graduated from seminary and became a pastor in rural North Dakota, I still had much growing up to do. Early in my career as a pastor I discovered that skills I had learned other jobs were of great value to my work. My ability to drive a truck and a tractor and run a swather or a combine in the field was noted by my congregation. The fact that I knew how to talk the prices of grain and cattle helped me connect with my congregation more than my ability to discuss the nuances of the history of the philosophy of God. There are people in Reeder who don’t remember much at all about the sermons I delivered, but they would tell you that I can back up a trailer.

I still am in love with the idea of God. I like to think and talk about God. I love to read books about God. I enjoy analyzing different perspectives and descriptions and concepts. I take seriously that bit about loving God will all your mind.

But, as Jesus reminded us, there is also that important and equal commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leveticus 19:18, quoted in Luke 10:27). That commandment requires that I lay aside my academic elitism. It demands that I understand that those with the most education or the most complex ideas are no less loved and honored than those whose faith is less intellectual and more emotional.

Now, more than 40 years after entering college, I think I am beginning to understand a little bit of what it means to have a mature faith. It involves clear thinking and challenging ideas. It also involves childlike acceptance.

Perhaps for me becoming mature involves becoming more like a little child.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.