Obsessed with Knowing

I love the work of Real Live Preacher. Real Live Preacher is a blog that was started almost five years ago by a Texas pastor who began to blog anonymously with the goal of “writing honestly and well” the feelings, thoughts and doubts that he was afraid to share with his small American Baptist congregation. In 2004, he finally revealed his identity as Gordon Atkinson, a husband, father and pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in San Antonio, TX. Atkinson's heartfelt essays have consistently challenged me and moved me. In his words, I often find my own thoughts and suspicions being articulated. That is an awesome feeling. It assures you that you are not alone.

He recently wrote an essay for The Christian Century Magazine that broke my heart…in a healthy way. In his essay, “Letting Go of the Need to Know,” Atkinson addresses the compulsion that many of us "everlasting students" have: the restless pursuit of knowledge. When I first saw the title of his essay I got scared and avoided reading it until yesterday because I was sure that it contained a convicting message that I wouldn’t be ready to accept. I was right.

Here is a portion of the essay:

“You can be a specialist or you can be a generalist. There's not enough time to be both. If you are a generalist, there will be things you will not see no matter how much you travel. If you are a specialist, there will be tiny secrets and truths that will elude you, no matter how carefully you look. That means that no matter how you approach life, you are going to have to relax and let some things go… This is why the search for knowledge cannot bear the full weight of human desire, which includes the search for wisdom, serenity and meaning in life. These spiritual pursuits call us to slow down and let go, to accept the limits of our humanity with grace and dignity. The search and desire for anything can become an unhealthy obsession unless, somewhere along the way, you learn this.”

This is a relevant message for me as tonight I will return to seminary to begin my first day of class for the fall semester. As much as I appreciate my own unique way of thinking and understanding things, I appreciate his stinging reminder that I can never know all the things I would want to know. I can easily become obsessed with a need to have all the answers. I’m 28 years old and over the past six years I have searched restlessly (like a madman) through hundreds of texts, scriptures, videos, books, blogs, papers, podcasts, audio-books, essays and encyclopedias in pursuit of a conclusive understanding of truth and reality. But the pursuit of knowledge will always and can only be an ongoing process. And even if I could take all of it in I couldn’t retain all of it.

I’m often reminded of my limited humanity when I walk into a library. Yeah, I’d love to read the entire catalogs of certain authors and to listen to the catalogues of certain musicians. But I have to make a decision and choose those few things I feel drawn to read and listen to at this moment in time (And sometimes the choice is to simply sit still without reading or listening to anything). Atkinson’s essay reminded me that it takes wisdom to know what to focus on and what to leave behind.

The point that I came away with is this: It’s OK for us to investigate, question and pursue answers to our questions, but we also need to slow down enough to live meaningful lives in the meantime.

Please take time to read his full essay.