I do not know the names of many flowers. The same holds true for trees, bushes, birds, and a host of other things, both concrete and abstract. My ignorance truly knows no bounds, for I am also uneducated about a lot of concepts, philosophies, and ideas, as well as for the technical aspects of art (I don’t know a Monet from a Marmet), music (read music?), and poetry (iambic penwhatamer?).

I intentionally try to remain as ignorant as possible about such things.

The reason is expressed in a couple of quotes I’ve acquired along the way and a long time ago. The first statement comes from a minor psychologist – I cannot remember who and thus cannot find the exact quote – that said something along the following lines:

When the child learns the genus and species of the bird outside his window, he can no longer hear its song.

Those words, of course, are but an encapsulation of the wonderful poem entitled, “When I Heard the Learned Astronomer”:

When I heard the learned astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wandered off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Looked up in perfect silence at the stars
-Walt Whitman

What Whitman and the unknown psychologist are saying is that our cognitive or cerebral functions tend to get in the way of our emotional or visceral responses. When we would be better served listening carefully with our hearts, we analyze and scrutinize exclusively with our heads. In so doing, we become less and less passionate and tend to re-define love, joy, and the whole of Christian living and experience.

The other side of the problem is too much emotion without discernment. Another quote comes to mind, this one from Emerson:

The fact that you speak of is of no importance, but only the impression that it makes.

We may believe that we are rational and logical beings but (as Damasio, LeDoux, and others have demonstrated), we can’t have a thought without an emotion being attached to it. The question is whether we’re aware of the emotion or not: the more aware we are, the more we can take the affective component into consideration in our response; the less aware, the more likely we will be driven by our emotions even while believing that we are not.

As Schaeffer said, we are separated from ourselves.

Necessarily and unfortunately, I have significant training and experience in a handful of disciplines; the expertise often gets in the way of my genuine experience of various life events. The areas in which I have some knowledge include theology, psychology, and communication theory. Each presents its own unique difficulty.

Take psychology for starters. I am confronted Monday through Friday with human beings who come to my office seeking relief from their strained or shattered relationships and lives. The insurance companies, when I must deal with them, require me to diagnose these people according to the disorders listed in the psychiatric bible, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

The risk in this is that I stop seeing them as whole people, as image-bearers, and instead just see them as a set of symptoms to be subjected to a treatment plan. I am tempted to filter out information that isn’t consistent with the diagnosis and zero in on that which is. If I do, then I fail to treat the whole person and instead treat them as sub-human.

My education in communication and my experience in writing make it difficult to listen and read at times. Sitting in church and listening to a sermon, I am easily distracted by the structure and form of the message rather than allowing myself to be impacted by the content. I re-write the message, running it through both theological and homiletical filters. Locked in my left-brain dominance at these times, God becomes wholly conceptual rather than a holy Person.

The same happens in reading blogs. Having been both a writer and a copy editor for thirteen years or so, I pay attention to style, grammar, punctuation, and spelling. I tend to think about how the article before me could be improved and made either clearer, more compelling, or both. Rarely, though, do I let it affect me. Only when I am confident that the author is an expert in her field and an adequate wordsmith am I able to absorb what is being read or said.

I don’t think I am unique in this struggle. We all have our filters and grids through which we interact with the world and – more importantly – allow the world to touch us. It is a difficult thing to see and hear with the heart while being guided by our minds, but it is absolutely necessary in living the Christian life.

Guided only by the heart, we are prone to be tossed back and forth by whatever evocative message comes along without analyzing it carefully and biblically; dwelling on things with just our minds, we are susceptible to cold rationalism and legalism that are shaped by unrecognized emotions.

How do we avoid these extremes or excesses? In a word, through fellowship. All of us need close friends who know us well enough to recognize our unfettered emotions or unloving cognitions, and who will confront us in love and balance our lives. Having such a friend or friends can be a risk – as can being such a friend – but the risk of not having such corrective fellowship is greater.


2 Cor 1:13