“It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes.” You can acquire a much deeper knowledge of God Himself from a sufferer in a wheelchair, than a scholar in an armchair. The latter may know doctrine, but the former knows Deity. The first is meant to lead us to the second. But sad to say, many intellects come short, falling in love with the lesser, and never following on to experience the greater, true love.
A healthy child studying geography may be able to tell you more about the five continents; but the little crippled brother, carried constantly by his parent, knows more about his father. An intellectual knowledge does not guarantee Spiritual intimacy. As J.I. Packer says, “John Owen and John Calvin knew more theology than John Bunyan or Billy Bray, but who would deny that the latter pair knew their God every bit as well as the former?”
God does not condemn intellect, nor does He condone ignorance, but He does highly commend those who know Him out of both these categories. Writing on the subject of scholarship C.S. Lewis pens, “The intellectual life is not the only road to God, nor the safest, but we find it to be a road, and it may be the appointed road for us. Of course it will be so only so long as we keep the impulse pure and disinterested. That is the great difficulty.”
The best combination is an intellectual mind condescending into a devoted heart.
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