Thinking is Work and Worth the Time

The end of the January interim is a time for students and professor to feel tired and exhausted.  For a month now we have been thinking about religious and theological ideas.  Religious questions are rarely easy.  Enough is enough.  Thinking is work.  We are designed to think but too much thinking strains the brain.  It rebels and demands a break.  I get it.

It is my fortune and honor to teach students to think theologically and religiously, to teach them especially to engage difficult questions, different religions, and particularly Judaism.  The fact that some students resist thinking about religious questions is particularly why I teach, in the hope that I can somehow provoke them into caring about these vital questions. In studying religion the questions are more important than the answers to those questions. I don’t have many answers but I work at asking the right questions. Some of you out there have walked with me, know what I mean and I thank you.

There is an old joke about God and thinking:  “Philosophers look for shadows in the closet, theologians find them.” To me the joke begs the question, are we thinking about something real?  Yes, I think we are.  But it is a mysterious, elusive, hidden strange force or energy with a puzzling methodology.  It is well worth the struggle.  But is not easy.

As someone who spends much of his time thinking about God, religion and meaning, I find, after teaching Religion 110 in January, I am tired and yet oddly pleased at the end of the term; we did some good thinking this past month.  I spoke, they listened, they spoke and I listened and it seems we heard each other as well as we could. It was a fine group of students and I am pleased.

Now comes the percolation. What we have studied will now be added to all else that jumbles around the brain and will be digested over time. The seeds have been planted; the land mines set.  We leave each other and will think some more, unconsciously perhaps, about all we have heard here. 

And soon, after a week, it will start again.  Tired as I may be, I look forward to meeting with students in the second semester and struggling against our inherent reluctance to think. 

The scripture reminds us all again and again, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind.”  We have minds to use our minds, especially when it comes to religion. We will soon again give it all we have until we have to stop.  Such is our struggle and privilege to obtain wisdom.  So it goes from season to season, semester to semester and year to year.  I say to you and to me, thinking is work and worth the time.  I am indeed a lucky man!