Information and Malformation

Christianity is a religion of belief, and as such, the content of our faith matters. The Spirit is a Spirit of truth, and one test of the Spirit’s presence is whether He leads us to confess true things about Jesus (1 John 4:1-6). We are to grow in the “grace and knowledge” of Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18). Christian morality includes being “transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God” (Romans 12:2).

There is an anti-intellectualism that pervades certain Christian traditions. It argues that knowledge is in a zero-sum tension with piety or being “spirit-lead”; the more you have of the first, the less you have of the others. Scripture does not share this assumption. Ignorance and stupidity don’t make more space for character or charismata; they simply make us ignorant and stupid. The same is true for Christians who contrast knowledge of God with love for Him. Love always includes our minds as well as our other faculties, as any spouse who has repeatedly had their birthday or anniversary forgotten will readily testify.

That said, other Christian traditions (including mine) respond to anti-intellectualism with an obsession over doctrine and information. Christian maturity is measured by the yardstick of knowledge, and the believer who desires to grow is given what amounts to a graduate courseload of content to digest and regurgitate. Because of this tendency, I regularly interact with people—especially men—whose knowledge of certain elements of the faith far outstrips their character or Christlikeness. More worryingly, for some, it seems like their over-full brains can blind them to their moral failings. They think they are Christlike because they are well-informed.

None of which means we should use our minds less, but it does mean there are dangers to how we approach the informational component of the faith. Spiritual information appropriated wrongly actually leads to malformation. Like a bodybuilder who only works one or two muscle groups, it creates distortions that can twist us in unhealthy ways.

What causes this malformation?

First, information can become malformation when we lose a sense of the relative importance of different truths. There is a proper order to the significance of Christian beliefs. Paul alludes to this when he tells the Corinthians that certain beliefs are of first importance, namely Christ’s death for sin and resurrection from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:3-5). Why? Because those truths are essential to the gospel. There are other parts of our theology that likewise share this core importance. Who is God and what is He like? How do we know about Him, and how do we come to know Him for ourselves?

I am not arguing that only those core beliefs matter. Saying some things are of “first importance” doesn’t mean that everything else is of no importance. Scripture speaks to a broad range of issues, and we should seek to study and arrive at conclusions about them. Christians who insist the only doctrines we need are the essential ones unavoidably end up having to make decisions about secondary matters, it’s just that those decisions tend to be uninformed.

However, the most malformed Christians I have known are often those who are obsessed with doctrines that are of relatively little significance to Scripture while having little or no love for those that are of central important. They can pontificate at length about a certain Biblical philosophy of politics, or debatable issues like head-coverings, or theoretical minutia about the ordering of the decrees of God or the return of Christ. But ask them about justification or the trinity or God’s preserving mercy and they seem bored. Such core truths hold no interest for them.

Blutly: if you are more passionate about a theory of the state or the minutia of church polity than you are about the eternal love between Father and Son or the beautiful gift of the Holy Spirit, you have lost the plot. You are the person at the Louvre who would rather stare at the style of outlet covers than the Mona Lisa. We must focus most of our attention and enthusiasm on what matters most to Jesus, and while we should still think about other questions, they should never supplant those first loves.

A second error: information can become malformation when we fail to seek to know our own hearts and lives. Information is never only abstract; we don’t truly know something until it has spoken to and changed us. You don’t understand ethics until you have confronted your personal struggles with sin. You don’t understand politics until you know how to be a decent neighbor. You don’t understand the doctrine of God until your heart sings with the joy of knowing and being known by Him.

One of the reasons we can fail in this area is because we focus our mental energy on only part of what Scripture speaks to. We pursue facts but not wisdom or self-understanding. For instance, I’ve known certain men who have strong convictions about biblical sexual ethics—which is a good thing! They can quote the relevant passages and respond to the cultural pressures. But their personal sexual lives are in shambles.

Why? One reason is that they haven’t thought nearly as deeply about themselves as they have about the abstract debates. When I ask them questions about the rhythms and reasons for their own struggles, they seem lost. They know where sexual sin is discussed in the Bible but have never considered where it arises within their own hearts and have no idea where they need to change their habits to fight temptation. The problem isn’t that they have thought too much about these issues; it is that they haven’t thought enough about them—or about the right parts of them.

In preaching, one of the things I’ve sought to grow in is to think as deeply about the application as I do the exegesis. A sermon fails if it contains great details about the Greek and the historical context but lacks the same level of detail about how we live out what the text says. In my life, I’ve come to recognize I have often had the same failing. I need to be pondering, reading, and studying myself and the contours of my heart, that I might be conformed to the truths I confess.

A third danger: information can become malformation when our sin uses it to justify or explain away evil. Knowledge can become a tool we use to intentionally blind ourselves.

I remember reading about a study that asked people with high school diplomas and those with PhDs to share an opinion and then list pros and cons—reasons they thought they were right, and reasons they thought they might be wrong. What the study discovered was that the more educated people were no better at listing potential flaws in their beliefs—those lists were the same length—but they had several times as many reasons they thought they were correct. I can’t testify to the methodology of that study, but I certainly know the danger it illustrates.

I have heard highly educated Christians concoct justifications for sin that less-informed believers would never dream of. They can explain away every text that seems to say they are in the wrong. Again, this isn’t a problem with knowledge itself. But knowledge without humility and a deep sense of our moral weakness can become a tool the Devil uses to lead us further from the truth.

And one final error: information will become malformation when it is detached from a life of love. As Paul so pithily puts it, “‘knowledge’ puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Corinthians 8:1). The love he is speaking of there is primarily love for God: " If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.” (1 Corinathians 8:2-3)

Love for God, and the love for neighbor that it creates, provides the context and direction for every other part of the Christian life, including the informational part. With such love, everything else we do is made good. Without that love, everything gets distorted. Obedience becomes legalism or self-righteousness. Devotion becomes hollow religiousity. Worship becomes self-serving emotionalism. Fellowship becomes people-pleasing or people-using. And doctrine becomes all of the evils we have discussed above.

We must constantly keep our hearts oriented towards seeking, delighting in, and living out of the presence of God. We must keep our souls close to Jesus, adoring Him and savoring what He has done for us. As we love and are loved, our intellectual pursuits will naturally find their proper place. The right order of things will work itself out, sin will be exposed and begin to wither, and we will begin to truly understand who we are and who the God we love is calling us to be.