The Christian Mind

Some excerpts from The Christian Mind to ponder on... the loneliness of a Christian thinker. ;-p

It is not lonely to disagree with other people. It is not lonely to meet in the same field of discourse with men and women who reach conclusions that contradict your own. But it is desperately lonely to occupy field of discourse which no one else will enter, even if you are surrounded by people who have reached exactly the same conclusions as you yourself.

Idealists are the most tortured people in our midst. … But idealists – those people who insists on logically relating principle to practice, end to means, purpose to process, goal to route – we have no time for them. Literally no time. There is too much to do. Their misgivings would slow us up, prevent us even from making a start. Besides they would set us all at each other’s throats in fierce controversy if once they were allowed a sober hearing. The best thing is to shut them up.

In our culture generally, we are rich in scholar but poor in thinkers. The nature of our modern educational system is such that this happy combination arises ever more rarely (combination of first-rate scholar and first-rate thinker). ... Potential thinkers are being turned into mere scholars by the pressures of conformity so strong both in the educational world and in society at large. The thinker challenges current prejudices. He disturbs the complacent. He obstructs the busy pragmatists. He questions the very foundations of all about him, and in so doing throws doubt upon aims, motives, and purposes which those who are running affairs have neither time nor patience to investigate. The thinker is a nuisance. He is a luxury that modern society cannot afford. It will strive to keep him quite, to restrict his influence, to ignore him. It will try to pretend that he does not exist.