"Do you want to do intellectual work? Begin by creating within you a zone of silence, a habit of recollection, a will to renunciation and detachment which puts you entirely at the disposal of the work; acquire that state of soul unburdened by desire and self-will which is the state of grace of the intellectual worker. Without that you will do nothing, at least nothing worthwhile" (xviii).

This quote is from The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, by A.G. Sertillange, OP (CUA, 1998; originally in French, 1920), a book that I highly recommend, whether or not you consider yourself an "intellectual".

Sertillanges encourages us to be the kind of person who can pursue understanding and truth, teaches us how to study and learn, and how to think.

I heard of this book from the first chapter of James V. Schall's book The Life of the Mind (ISI, 2006), which is [in essence] the foreword that he wrote for CUA's republication of Sertillanges. Schall--from whom I have learned a great deal, and whom I respect most highly--says that Sertillanges is the place to start, and so at a relatively advanced age I endeavour to begin.

I close this mini-review with another quote from Sertillanges:

"How many young people, with the pretension to become workers, miserably waste their days, their strength, the vigor of their intelligence, their ideal! Either they do not work--there is time enough!--or they work badly, capriciously, without knowing what they are nor where they want ot go nor how to get there. Lectures, reading, choice of companions, the proper proportion of work and rest, of solitude and activity, of general culture and specialization, the spirit of study, the art of picking out and utilizing data gained, some provisional output which will give an idea of what the future work is to be, the virtues to to be acquired and developed,--nothing of all that is thought out and no satisfactory fulfillment will follow" (7-8).

A friend just sent me a blurb on Dan Kimball's book, They Like Jesus, but not the Church. Insights from Emerging Generations. It contains this sentence: "Dan Kimball first points out the convicting and humbling truth that the longer one is a Christian, the less likely one is to have significant friendships with those who are not Christian." Probably true.

Here are some other dirty little secrets:

The more people play [golf, tennis, bowling, poker], the less time they spend with non-[golfers , non-tennisians, non-bowlers, non-poker-players].
The longer people work at [Merck], the fewer non-[Merck] friends they have.

Is there a pattern here? Is there a problem?

By nature we seek out and spend time with those with whom we are comfortable, nor did this behaviour begin after the Great Disruption (Gn 3): Adam probably didn't pal around with the slime mold until Eve came along. "Birds of a feather ..." is embedded in creaturely existence, which suggests that implications drawn from statements such the one quoted above is invalid--that which denies the created order [reality] is false by definition.

The next sentence of the review supplies the inference that we cannot "know what the needs of the unchurched are unless they are involved in trusting relationships with them". The implication is that this is why 20- and 30-somethings find churches largely irrelevant, even though they may respect and admire Jesus (as Kimball apparently demonstrates from many interviews). [BTW, they do not find "church" irrelevant, since no one interacts with "church"; they instead find this or that particular church (or maybe even every church that they have "tried") irrelevant, unhelpful, offensive, &c.]

On the contrary, the unchurched need what every human being, Christian or not, needs--they, too, are human, bearing the image of the God who created them, inhabiting this glorious fallen world, leading quietly (or not-so-quietly) desperate lives: they want and need personal meaning and significance and purpose and love (as Josh Groban sings, "Everybody wants to be understood ... Everybody wants to be loved").

And this ought to be the message of every pulpit in--and be incarnate in every activity of--every church that calls itself "Christian": "We want to understand you; we want to love you (whoever you are, whatever you do, whatever you believe), because God understands you and loves you in Jesus."

Nor is it the good news of Christ that encourages them to denounce this church or that as irrelevant; the hardness and rebellion of their hearts, the fundamental aversion to truth, the preference for darkness all come into play on one side of the issue, and must not be ignored. We don't need Dan Kimball, or anyone else, to explain this.

On the other hand, Christians can exhibit the naive smugness that we know the answers before they ask (see Pr 18.13), and that the only answer is "Believe in Jesus!" Faith in Christ is both fundamental and necessary (I hope that I do not need to say that), but this "sharpshooting" approach--which sees every non-believer as a target--is utterly unlike Jesus' ministry, which often began with an outflowing of divine grace and power in healing or helping someone who had not yet (or may have just) believed.

The divine and apostolic teaching that we find in the gospels and book of Acts often begins where the audience "is" (and I do not mean only Paul's sermon on Mars Hill). Now we, of course, are not in the situation of Paul, Barnabbas, Silas, Timothy, et al. They were roaming the world, visiting places for the first time (as far as we know), talking with people whom they had just met, bringing them a new message. Christianity was not "in the air", as it still is in many parts of our culture; it was unknown--there was little or no "baggage" to be discarded (which is the problem that Kimball is largely addressing).

To return to They Like Jesus ..., Dan Kimball raises the v. good question of how people who live in an anti-Christian culture perceive "the Church" (which is, to reiterate, necessarily based on how they percieve individual churches), and why, and what churches can do to lower or destroy those cultural barriers that we--through decades of habituation--have raised between them and a clear hearing of the good news. This is a good question, and one that we need to ponder, and that ought to lead us to listen to those around us--for the sake of hearing and understanding (i.e., of loving), as God intends we should.

Thanks for listening.