Are Smart People Less Happy?
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00:00:04.000 | Ernest Hemingway is reported to have once said that happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
00:00:12.000 | Pastor John, what do you think of this? Is this true? Are the deepest thinkers the most unhappy people?
00:00:19.000 | First of all, I doubt that Ernest Hemingway ever knew an intelligent, red-blooded, unashamed, thoughtful, articulate, happy Christian.
00:00:32.000 | The circles he functioned in and the jaundiced view of life that led him to blow his brains out when he was 61 years old with a shotgun
00:00:41.000 | didn't give him a very good exposure to the possibilities of a kind of happiness that thrives precisely amid the sorrows of knowledge.
00:00:55.000 | But he does put his finger on a truth that is biblical, and it's Ecclesiastes 118.
00:01:05.000 | "In much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow."
00:01:14.000 | That's what he experienced, and that's true. So my answer is yes, it's true, because the Bible says so.
00:01:22.000 | And at the end of the book, it says, "Of making many books, there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh."
00:01:30.000 | That's true. So the intellectual life, the life of the mind, the life of thinking and wrestling with problems and trying to solve them
00:01:38.000 | is a life of increased sorrow and weariness. Yes, it is. Yes, it is.
00:01:43.000 | But notice, it does not say that increased knowledge leads to decreased joy. Increased sorrow? Yes. Decreased joy? No.
00:01:56.000 | What if sorrow and joy increased together, almost in proportion with increased knowledge?
00:02:04.000 | What if the reason all the intellectuals Hemingway knew were unhappy is that they were only increasing in one kind of knowledge and not the kind that brings joy?
00:02:15.000 | Biblically, the case for knowledge, the life of thinking and increasing in understanding is mixed.
00:02:22.000 | It increases sorrow and it increases joy. If you would know God better and know the world better and know yourself better,
00:02:33.000 | there is a price to be paid in sorrow and vexation. It will be costly.
00:02:40.000 | And there is also pleasure to be had, and it is, the Bible says, worth it all.
00:02:47.000 | So let me give the reasons that I can think of why the Bible says that increased knowledge increases sorrow.
00:02:56.000 | One, because the more we know, the more we know we don't know.
00:03:00.000 | It's like paddling your little boat of knowledge farther and farther out into the endless sea of knowledge, which is infinite because God is infinite,
00:03:08.000 | away from the comfortable shores of security and ignorance.
00:03:12.000 | The ignorant people don't know the extent of what they don't know.
00:03:16.000 | Those who pursue knowing get to the top of a ridge, switch the metaphor now from paddling to climbing.
00:03:23.000 | They get to the top of a ridge that they've been climbing for 10 years.
00:03:27.000 | And as they pull their chin up over the top, they see 10,000 mountains to climb.
00:03:32.000 | The person at the bottom who hasn't been climbing, he can't even see over the ridge.
00:03:36.000 | He's lost sight of the person climbing the ridge, and so he's not bothered by those 10,000 mountains yet to be scaled out there.
00:03:44.000 | So that's number one. Number two, knowledge increases sorrow because the more we know, the more we know of suffering.
00:03:52.000 | This is a fallen world. The more you know of it, the more you weep.
00:03:56.000 | It is. It's futility. It's brokenness. It's misery.
00:03:59.000 | The ignorant feel some of it, but those who increase in knowledge of the world outside and the scope of history, it's a conveyor belt of corpses, one historian said, and we weep because of the more we know of this fallen world.
00:04:16.000 | Third reason that knowledge growing increases sorrow is because the more we know, the more we're accountable to live up to.
00:04:24.000 | To whom much is given, much will be required.
00:04:27.000 | Our responsibility increases. Let not many of you become teachers.
00:04:30.000 | There's a burden to carry when God has given you insight.
00:04:34.000 | Yes, Christ gives help with all our burdens, but Paul spoke of an anxiety for all the churches.
00:04:42.000 | He carried so much in himself and he wanted them to know so much, and it was a burden that they learn this and live this.
00:04:50.000 | Fourth, knowledge increases sorrow because we're compelled to change our ideas when we learn some things.
00:04:57.000 | And jumping from that little boat I talked about, the little boat of knowledge that you're sailing on into the sea of what you don't know, sometimes you got to leap out of the boat because it turns out to be wrong.
00:05:09.000 | I'm sailing the wrong theological boat.
00:05:12.000 | And there's just a little raft of truth out there and you got to leap for it.
00:05:15.000 | You get splinters in your hands and your ego, and that's painful to have to change your thoughts.
00:05:21.000 | I mean, I wept my eyes out in the fall of 1968 as my theology was crumbling and needing to be rebuilt.
00:05:28.000 | It's a very painful thing to walk through transformations of what you think you know.
00:05:33.000 | And the last one I thought of was knowledge increases sorrow because the more we know, the more dementia will take away.
00:05:43.000 | A mind full of great truth from God's Word and God's world will feel the sting of senility more keenly than the mind that has less to lose.
00:05:53.000 | So, yes, Hemingway, much wisdom increases vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
00:06:03.000 | But the message of the Bible is that it's worth it.
00:06:06.000 | It's worth the sorrow.
00:06:08.000 | The summons of the Bible everywhere is get knowledge, get understanding.
00:06:14.000 | The Bible never says run away from it.
00:06:16.000 | It warns you of the pain, but it never says turn and run.
00:06:19.000 | My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding, yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.
00:06:41.000 | That's hardly a warning.
00:06:44.000 | That is like as aggressive an invitation as you could possibly make to go for it.
00:06:49.000 | Go for it.
00:06:50.000 | Yes, sorrow, but go for it.
00:06:52.000 | Proverbs 20.
00:06:54.000 | That was Proverbs 2.
00:06:55.000 | Proverbs 20.
00:06:56.000 | There is gold and abundance of costly stones, but the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel.
00:07:03.000 | Jesus, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.
00:07:08.000 | Hosea, my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
00:07:14.000 | Romans 10.
00:07:15.000 | I bear them witness.
00:07:17.000 | They have a zeal for God, but it is not according to knowledge.
00:07:21.000 | Colossians 2.
00:07:23.000 | In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
00:07:27.000 | So, in other words, Mr. Hemingway, increased knowledge does increase vexation and sorrow, but that is only half the story, and oh, that you had known the other half.
00:07:41.000 | In Jesus Christ, this vexing knowledge is a treasure chest of precious jewels.
00:07:49.000 | Yes, and amen.
00:07:51.000 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:07:52.000 | And, in fact, one of the critical things to learn is how to build our intelligence in order to make us more childlike in our dependence on God, not less dependent on him.
00:08:02.000 | This is a very counterintuitive conclusion of a fascinating episode we recorded a while back, episode number 135, which is titled Childlike, Not Childish, episode number 135.
00:08:14.000 | Be sure to find that and almost 500 other episodes in the Ask Pastor John app for the Apple and Android devices.
00:08:21.000 | The app is free, and there you can browse and search on all the episodes.
00:08:26.000 | We will be back tomorrow with an important theological question from a missionary on his way to Zambia.
00:08:32.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
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