Europeans often speak of the American ethos as immature, that collectively we behave as a culture like a spoiled child; and in our defense, we are indeed a very young nation compared to other world civilizations, but I think that in many ways the criticism is apt. We only have to look at what passes for entertainment on the airwaves, the incivility of our public discourse, our hyper-consumerism, our obsessive penchant for individualistic competition, most apparent among our children. As a culture I think we fit the archetypal term coined by the Roman poet Ovid: the puer aeternis which means, the eternal boy….the one who never grows to adulthood….Peter Pan is a modern retelling of this myth. It is a myth about the necessity of leaving behind youth and becoming wise.
We know intellectually that one must grow into adulthood…life forever about change and transformation; life forever about acquiring wisdom necessary for the very recreation of the world; a wisdom that must be handed down to the next generation for the next generations maturity, but in our culture and perhaps others, there is resistance to this process… This was a high priority in the Greek Academy, which was a model for learning for centuries in the ancient near east and Mediterranean basin. Learning equaled maturity. We read in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians that we are to grow in wisdom and put away childish things, to stop thinking as a child…We hear from Proverbs from the figure of Wisdom herself, the ancient goddess, who challenges us to learn from her and to lay aside immaturity and live.
In American culture there has always been a swath of an anti-intellectual attitude among some people, a minority I think…but an attitude that resists growth through the rigors of learning and discovery….the “My child beat up your honor student” bumper sticker comes to mind….fundementalism is another example….we see the attitude in extremist movements wherein knowledge of facts, knowledge in general are ignored in deference to an exclusive and narrow agenda. I have been told before, “that I don’t have to read and study to be a Christian.” But the fact of the matter is, yes we do.
The word disciple literally means “learner”, and learning is the way by which we people of faith lay aside immaturity and live into the profundity of the gospels and into the knowledge of ourselves and of God Godself…one lifelong process…It is in our nature to be curious and to develop a learning discipline to grow into the ability to speak and enact the faith with authority….(not authoritative)….but authority to enact and speak of the faith with an acquired knowledge that is credible and real and embodied. I don’t mean for this to be a shameless plug for adult Christian education, for there are many ways to learn…but in conversation and in collaboration is the proven best way….But that we continue to learn is the point.
To be effective disciples, to be disciples at all of this faith of ours we must become consummate learners….we must employ our intuition and intellect and curiosity and doubts and hopes for discovery; because God is on the move offering new knowledge, old knowledge made new, that will allow us to mature into ones useful for God’s vision for a world made new….a world already in renewal if we would but see with the eyes of discipleship….with learned sight…. It is hard work….but even so let us lay aside immaturity and live…and perhaps on the seventh day we’ll rest.
