This is related to my last post but is different enough and significant enough to warrant its own post.

I spoke last time about too many people being unwilling to submit to the teaching or instruction of one more knowledgeable or qualified than themselves. This post is about people who believe that expertise or education in one area qualifies them to speak authoritatively in any area.

This has come up before; it keeps happening all the time.

People who will fight tooth and nail for the necessity of training in their own discipline act as though other disciplines don’t require the same. Someone with considerable expertise or experience in apologetics, for example, expects (rightly so) that others will defer or at least listen to him when he speaks. When the situation is reversed, however, they seem to believe one of two things.

First, they may believe that the other field of knowledge does not require special training or knowledge. Human nature, psychotropic medications, psychological disorders, neurological factors – these are all things that are self-evident, they seem to believe, and anyone who claims to know more than they is arrogant at best or a fraud at worst. Their own opinion is a valid as someone who has graduate training in that specific field.

Or, second, it could be that the expert in apologetics or theology believes himself to be an authority about whatever he turns his attention to. His stature in his own discipline somehow makes him an expert on all things.

This one concerns me more than a little. I think it is a grievous thing to be wrong about one’s exegesis and unwilling to admit it, but I think it is even worse to pontificate about something one is basically ignorant about or, at best, has only a passing and passive knowledge about. I’ve heard a lot of foolish things said about marriage, medications, depression, and what constitutes real help and treatment coming from people who either don’t know what they’re talking about or are in denial about their own issues.

The problem is that the followers of such people don’t always discern the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Just because someone is an excellent apologist or theologian doesn’t not automatically give them wisdom about life, brain function, or psychological disorders. But the followers, holding these self-proclaimed authorities in high regard, attribute to them a wisdom or expertise that is pretty much nonexistent.

I know what I know; more importantly, I know what I don’t know. That means I know when to speak and when to listen, when to teach and when to learn. Just because I am skilled at counseling or knowledgeable of human nature does not make me an authority on Greek or Hebrew, on apologetics, or on missions. It would be foolish of anyone to listen to me speak about anything I’m ignorant about. And it would be wrong for me to pretend to be something that I’m not.

It’s the difference between hubris and humility. If and when I get to the point that I stop listening, I will be proud and puffed up; if I remain hungry to listen and learn, then there is at least a spark of humility somewhere in me.

I hope the day never comes that I stop learning.


2 Cor 1:13