ON LEARNING HOW TO THINK
Why Coming Face to Face
with Being Human Is to Begin
the Dangerous Road to Truth

Christian Early

Good education trains students to reflect critically on their religious convictions. It does this by giving students a safe environment in which to consider the possibility that their deeply held convictions may need revision. Good education is a dangerous activity because students often respond in very human patterns of fight, flight, or freeze.

The reason for this is quite simply that our set of convictions is who we are; if they need revision, it means that we will change. Convictions are different from mere beliefs at exactly that point. Having a conviction is not a matter of merely accepting this or that to be true about the world; it is a matter of identity. This places educational institutions in a very delicate position because what goes on in the classroom is the formation of a student’s character. At the very least, it takes a tremendous amount of courage to be a student.

Consider this example. Biblical scholars have discovered that the canonical text not only tells a story; it also has a story. This discovery suggests that the Bible is perhaps not so much a monological dictation from God as it is a dialogical conversation among the people of God about what God is like. We take that discussion to be inspired. Scripture is, in short, very human.

This suggestion may lead some to conclude (I believe wrongly) that the Bible can no longer be trusted to tell us anything true about God. The Bible becomes a human construction—poetic fiction. Why is this conclusion not necessary? Because it is possible that to recognize our humanity is at the same time to take the very first step on the road to seeing God. Said differently, the narrative of education can take on the pattern of the narrative of Jesus such that to be a student is to be a disciple.

It may be helpful here to consider the testimony of the great Christian poet Dante Alighieri. Dante (1265-1321) didn’t much care for the reigning sacred versus secular dualisms of his day. For him, of course, it was the right of poetry—even romantic poetry—to tell truth. The judgment of the church at that time was that poetry was at best harmless fantasy and at worst a gate to all things depraved.

Against this, Dante presents a vision of poetry within theology. His great work, the Comedy, is thus a model for those of us who want to be real and honest about our feelings and thoughts. That is, it teaches us how to be poetic and to have that human authenticity and honesty be integral to our journey to the vision of God. And so he has Virgil, a secular poet, and lovely Beatrice, a well-known character in romantic poetry (we might even call her sexy), guide him to God.

Dante starts his Comedy this way: "Midway through the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark wood, for I had strayed from the straight pathway to this tangled ground." In this place of being at once lost and afraid, he sees Virgil, who having heard Dante’s desire to flee the woods, promises to guide him on to sacred paradise. But the road will force Dante to face dangers greater even than those of the woods. Going through hell, Dante will have to face the dangers that lie in his own self.

As they reach the gates of hell—above which is a cheerful sign saying "Abandon hope all you who enter"—Dante, seized by doubt, asks Virgil to "weigh whether I am fit for what lies in wait before you entrust me to the path ahead." Virgil calms Dante’s fears and in a moment of trust, Dante enters hell, embarking on a journey of self-dis-
covery as he comes face to face with those who are being punished.

They go through days of literal and figurative journeying, and at some point it dawns on those of us reading the story that we too, by the very fact of reading this story, are journeying with them. We too must follow the voice of poetry and face the dangers of our own selves if we are to ascend, as Dante does, to paradise to see God.

Dante presents a vision of intellectual and emotional mentoring as a journey to God. I am tempted to call it "therapy as worship," in that coming to terms with our human reasoning and feeling is a step toward true worship of God. But it is not an independent journey; it is a guided journey in which we accept the role of the disciple.

Dante reminds us there may come a time when we find ourselves lost in the dark woods of our lives and that to see God requires us to trust others. In this way, the pattern of the story of Jesus of Nazareth, at once human and divine, is the pattern of education. True human education finds its point and purpose in theology. Dante would be more blunt: We cannot truly come to know God without human formation.

What does this mean for Christian education today? Facing our humanity will uncover at least two areas of inadequacy. Genetics and neuroscience yield evidence that the genetic make-up of human beings has a pervasive influence on character and that the brain seems to be doing the work traditionally attributed to the soul. As our understanding of human function increases, it will become urgent to revise the traditional account of people as composed of body and soul to account for the scientific data.

There is also growing awareness of the religious diversity present in the world. Students who go on mission trips overseas or take world religion classes have begun to wonder why Christianity is assumed true and other religions assumed false. They ask questions about the justice of eternal punishment for having been born in a culture that is not predominately Christian. They ask questions about truth and the reality of religious experience within other religions that the traditional exclusivist account cannot satisfactorily answer.

There are limits to revisions we can explore and remain faithful to the Christian tradition. In particular, it won’t work to adopt a materialism that makes impossible meaningful talk about morality. Nor will it work to adopt a religious relativism that makes impossible meaningful talk about truth.

The fact that some revisions cannot work is precisely the feature necessary for Christians to claim they have discovered that their convictions are true. Those intellectual boundaries provide grounds for maintaining that the God of the Christian story is the God of the world. But to say this is to accept the dangers involved in revising our current convictions. Dante, in short, is right.

I am proposing that facing the inescapable reality of our human nature and nurture will highlight areas of inadequacy in traditional Christian understandings of the human being—the rightness of our way of life and the truth of our religious convictions—and that this awareness transports us into Dante’s poetic world. In the plotline of the Comedy, we can locate ourselves somewhere between feeling lost in the woods and wondering if we have the courage to enter hell. Christian education asks students to set out on a self-revealing journey because it is the way to see God amid the strong urge to fight, flee, or freeze. Those urges are real, but so are the rewards for those with the courage to embark on the dangerous road to truth.
—Christian Early, Harrisonburg, Virginia, is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Theology, Eastern Mennonite University.