I recently had the privilege of meeting a brilliant Christian scholar I deeply admire, but when I shook this amazing man’s hand, I found myself telling him that I sometimes feel hurt when I read his work. Then, I proceeded to do a terrible job of explaining why, which I don’t believe was helpful at all. 

After some reflection, I realize I sometimes feel hurt because I worry his highly intellectual work suggests I don’t belong as a Christian, and I have a desperate need to validate the exceptions which contributed toward my latent discipleship. In that case, what I really wanted was for him to add just a little more heart, grace or compassion to his work to make room for people like me. Without such heart, grace and compassion, we risk approaching our faith in a legalistic way that fails to support our mission in a diverse and complex world.  

While debates against so-called “cheap grace” and intellectual attempts to determine who doesn’t belong to Christ are intelligent, these stances, which I believe are of the brain, come with risks. For me, such stances may fail to acknowledge the invisible side of faith — that which is done by the Spirit, and that which may start out so small that we don’t even know it’s happening. Also, in a quest for certainty, the brain may approach faith as a law, and therefore advocate claims which do not honor mystery and which struggle to accommodate the complexity of God’s Creation. 

When in doubt, I like to look to Christ as our ultimate teacher (no offense to Saint Augustine, John Calvin or any other highly-cited theologian). With great authority, Jesus knew when to rely more on the heart than the brain for the sake of mission. For example, while some first-century Israelites intellectually used their doctrine to justify the stoning of a sinner, Christ’s heart superseded such intellect to show compassion and radical grace for the greater good. 

I therefore ask: Whose approach was more likely to bring a wayward soul closer to God, including repentance, baptism and a lifelong transformation? The intellectuals who knew their doctrine, or Christ who knew His heart? Clearly, Christ’s heart reached the most fallen of us all.  

The brain is indeed necessary. The brain helps us examine our faith and protects the boundaries and values of our various faith traditions. Still, the mission of every Christian, in my opinion, is not to be brilliant and clever. Instead, I believe it is to make disciples of Christ, and such intellectual pursuits do not always achieve this. I celebrate the gifted minds among us who can transfer their religious knowledge into thought-provoking ideas, but I also challenge them to consider if such intellectual arguments celebrate the letter of the law at the expense of its more meaningful spirit. I want us to ask, “are such intellectual feats creating new disciples?” 

Overall, we benefit when our geniuses add heart to their cleverness, because the heart guides the most unlikely people toward discipleship, not the brain. The heart chooses to believe grace matters for grace’s own sake, and it also chooses to believe we all belong to Christ, even when a sinful individual doesn’t know it yet. While the brain may draw a line or boundary based on logic, the heart can defy such logically sound stances when they get in the way of imitating Christ. As was mentioned earlier, it is the heart that will protect, exonerate and provide for a woman who should technically be stoned. 

When our intellect ventures into legalism, validating a problematic argument that doesn’t embody Christ’s love ethic, the heart cuts through the rigid letter of the law to get to the law’s meaningful spirit. For me, that spirit is a mission to love Christ, become more like Christ, serve others and help make more disciples. Thus, if a clever and intellectual argument impedes one of these missions by suggesting grace is ultimately wasted on some, and Christianity does not truly belong to all of humanity, is that brilliant argument worthy of our geniuses? I don’t think so. 

People like me needed cheap grace and to be told we already belonged to get to where we are today. Therefore, the Christians who helped save me didn’t do it with their brains. They did it with their Christlike hearts.