For the last several years I have been a monthly chapel speaker at a local Christian school and have served as a judge for their senior thesis projects. I had the privilege of addressing the 2019 graduating class and managed to record the audio of that speech on my phone. I saved the recording but had not done anything with it since, but recently I decided to reformat it in order to post it to my personal YouTube page. The manuscript of my remarks are copied below. Even though it is not a piece of biblical exposition, it is an exhortation to love God with the mind by living an intellectual life. I hope some of you may find it useful and encouraging. --JME
Redeemer Christian School: 2019 Graduation Address
An Invitation to the Intellectual Life
Introduction
It is my privilege to congratulate Redeemer Christian School’s graduating class of 2019. This is a special occasion, not only for you but also for your families, your teachers, your mentors, and those who have loved, supported, encouraged, helped, and prayed for you throughout your childhood and adolescence. You have worked hard to achieve this success, but you have not worked alone. Tonight should not only be a moment to celebrate and praise you; it should also be a moment for each of you to praise and thank those who helped you get here and, above all, to praise and celebrate God for enabling the accomplishment that we gather to acknowledge and confer.
As students at Redeemer Christian School, you have been given the opportunity to learn math, science, history, language, and literature through the lens of a biblical worldview. You have not merely been given facts to recite on an exam. You have been taught ideas, the significance of which extend far beyond your education here. Indeed, many of these ideas will be with you and will continue to inform your thinking, values, and decisions for the rest of your life. You have been taught how to think, how to think critically and carefully about the world in which you live and the ideas you encounter. You have been taught how to read, not merely letters and phonemes, not in English or Latin, but how to read extensively and intensively, thoughtfully and interactively. You may realize this is an advantage to you. Some of you may have other experiences by which to compare your education here. But you cannot really know, not yet, how significant a gift you have been given. You have been given a foundation for an intellectual life, and as you complete high school and prepare to embark on the next phase of your journey, I want to encourage you, no matter what plans you have or where you may go, to pursue the intellectual life.
Defining the Intellectual Life
The intellectual life is not merely for those pursuing academic careers. It is not about formal education, advanced degrees, or being recognized by society or your peers as a scholar. The life of the mind is not limited by the kind of work you do, where you live, how much money you make, or how naturally intelligent you are. The intellectual life is not about what you do in life in terms of your job or career; it is about how you live your life as a rational, intelligent, Image-bearer of God.
You can work in a fast food restaurant, drive a garbage truck, or spend forty years in a job you hate and yet live an intellectual life. You may never attend college or decide to drop-out. You may choose to be a stay-at-home mom, or circumstances beyond your control may preclude the choices you wanted to make. You have completed high school, so you already have a head-start over me. A childhood illness caused me to fall behind in my fifth grade year. A lack of discipline caused me never to catch up. I did not complete my high school education but eventually decided to take my GED instead. But that has not stopped me from living an intellectual life.
The life of the mind is about living when most people are simply existing. It means paying attention to the world around you, thinking when most people are simply reacting to what goes on. The intellectual life is about engaging important ideas: thinking deliberately, carefully, critically. It is about reading good books, learning and growing every day, seeking to develop yourself not merely in an activity but as a person, growing in virtue as well as in skill, becoming competent not only in specific tasks but in wisdom which informs every decision. A person committed to the intellectual life is curious; he or she reads, questions, studies, contemplates, learns, and practices continually. She may be a polymath pursuing competence in many disciplines, or she may find one area of interest and devote her life to it. But whether it is math or music, languages or literature, science or a particular skill, the activity is only the vehicle for the perpetual pursuit of excellence.
The Intellectual Life as a Human Purpose
The life of the mind is only possible because human beings are made in the Image of God. This divine likeness includes the gifts of rationality, an immortal soul, and the capacity to know God and to partake of divine righteousness and holiness. We may share many biological traits with our neighbors in the animal kingdom, but we do not share their being. Homo sapiens, wise man, is distinguished from all other terrestrial life forms by a capacity for language, learning, creativity, and personal development that so far exceeds any other creature as to place man in a category alone.
Sadly, many human beings disregard this great gift, our capacity to learn, know, and grow. They do not value knowledge, wisdom, and virtue but likes, retweets, comfort, and a new Iphone. They faces are stuck in their phones, so how can they gaze at the glory displayed in the sky? They exist from one moment to the next, rising from bed no earlier than they have to in order to make it to work or school, leaving as soon as possible in order to have more free time for themselves, and then wasting that free time with various forms of mind-numbing media that are entertaining but slow cognitive function, reduce attention-span, and gradually turn homo sapiens into homo stultus.
Many young people are drawn to radical ideas. They are eager to rage against the machine, even if they do not really know what the machine does, why it is there, or how it operates. But this is living at the level of an animal, and an unintelligent one at that. A dog may tear apart the couch cushions and chew the table leg because he is agitated or bored. Humans ought to know better. I urge you to defy this culture, resist assimilation, and do the most radical thing possible: think. Spend your life reading and thinking, and you may become useful to others. At the very least you will ensure that you remain and become more human. As Socrates said in answer to his critics who eventually silenced him: “the greatest good of man is daily to converse about virtue,… [and] the life which is unexamined is not worth living” (Plato, Apology, 37-38).
The Intellectual Life as a Spiritual Discipline
The intellectual life is not just for people who enjoy books and thinking more than doing. The intellectual life is for followers of Jesus, all of whom, to a greater or lesser extent, are called to exercise their intellect in praise, meditation, and devotion to God.
Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment.” (Matt. 22:35-37 NKJV)
How do we love God with the mind? We love him by engaging our minds in contemplating and adoring God, directing and sanctifying our thoughts to his glory and service. J. P. Moreland notes that “developing a Christian mind is part of the very essence of discipleship unto the Lord Jesus.” This intellectual duty sets the Christian faith apart from all other religions.
“What is perhaps unique about Christianity is that it is a revelation that unabashedly also addresses itself to intellect. It recognizes that everyone, philosopher or not, needs to be properly directed to the highest things, to that to which we are ordered in the very structure of our being.” (James Schall, The Life of the Mind, 87)
We must learn to think Christianly to love God with the mind. As Harry Blamires explains:
“To think secularly is to think within a frame of reference bounded by the limits of our life on earth: it is to keep one’s calculations rooted in this-worldly criteria. To think christianly is to accept all things with the mind as related, directly or indirectly, to man’s eternal destiny as the redeemed and chosen child of God.” (Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind, 44)
Mental engagement in the contemplation of God, study of literature and languages, engagement in music, art, and even seemingly mundane skills become an opportunity to perceive more fully and engage more reverently in life coram Deo, before the face of God.
“Study is itself a divine office, an indirect divine office; it seeks out and honors the traces of the Creator, or His images, according as it investigates nature or humanity.”
We must not neglect the spiritual aspect and orientation of the intellectual life, for as Sertillanges goes on to warn:
“Study carried to such a point that we give up prayer and recollection, that we cease to read Holy Scripture, and the words of the saints and of great souls--study carried to the point of forgetting ourselves entirely, and of concentrating on the objects of study so that we neglect the Divine Dweller within us, is an abuse and a fool’s game. To suppose that it will further our progress and enrich our production is to say that the stream will flow better if its spring is dried up.” (Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life, 29)
The Intellectual Life as a Lifelong Practice
Finally, the intellectual life must be seen as a lifelong practice, not a temporary project. Practice is the proper word here, because that is exactly what the pursuit involves: practice, not perfection, continual refinement by repetition, not completion of tasks for the sake of achievement. The intellectual life is a way of life, a discipline that can accompany you all of your days. If you view graduation as completing your education--or an undergraduate or graduate or terminal degree as a termination point of your intellectual journey--then you are not engaged in the life of the mind, only in an academic project. The life of the mind is not something we do at a particular point in time or for a particular end; it is the way one lives his/her life: reading, thinking, learning, and growing. As one of my favorite authors on this topic expresses it:
“Life is, to be sure, more than reading, but it is still not complete without our being ready to lose ourselves in a book that delights us.” (Schall, Life of the Mind, 110)
What is it the intellectual life pursues if not a diploma or a specific knowledge base or skill set? It is not pleasure that animates one’s reading and thinking and study; it is a passion for truth. As Schall notes, “The life of the mind is ultimately concerned with truth” (Life of the Mind, 144).
“The opposite of thinking is not ‘not to think at all.’ The opposite of thinking rightly is thinking wrongly. While it is true that we praise the being who has the natural capacity to think, what is important about thinking is not the faculty or process of thinking, but what is concluded, what is thought about, the truth that is affirmed.” (Schall, Life of the Mind, 144)
It is not enough to read good books, study new languages, play more music, and write significant thoughts. One must be driven to discover truth and willing to make the necessary distinctions between right and wrong, better and best in order to identify truth, beauty, and goodness.
Conclusion
Let me leave you with two bits of poetry that I think will be familiar to you. I hope they are already precious to you, and if not, I hope they will become so as you cross the threshold of this house and go on your journey. Both are from The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. I hope you will consider them in the context of my remarks tonight, and if Tolkien would not object to my appropriation of his material, take them as analogies for the intellectual life.
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
(Gandalf describing Strider to Frodo in a letter)
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
(“A Walking Song,” sung by Bilbo and Frodo at different times)
Do not chase what glitters. Seek for what is ancient and strong. Dig deep to discover the roots of man’s knowledge, culture, and virtues. And follow the road, with eager feet, and enjoy the journey.
