Zeal Without Knowledge

It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way.
(Proverbs 19:2 NIV)

Most university students are interested in acquiring knowledge, but they often don't have much zeal for the effort it takes to gain it. Similarly, most professors are concerned about imparting knowledge, but some often lack a certain enthusiasm in fulfilling this calling. My experience here at Handong over the past seven weeks, however, has confronted me with somewhat the opposite dilemma.

Not a lack of enthusiasm on the part of students or professors, but what I can only describe at this point as an over abundance of zeal. There is an intensity about experiential events -- prayer meetings, praise and worship times and chapel services. Emotions run high nearly all the time. There are expressions of great joy and then, on other occasions, deep sorrow.

The zeal demonstrated by so many here is both heart-warming and challenging. There is obviously a great desire to live life to the fullest in every respect. My concern, though, is that the zeal I see in students, and even in some faculty, is a zeal that lacks a balancing pursuit for and value of knowledge.

It is a zeal that is all-consuming yet, it appears, in my limited capacity to perceive, to be not well-founded in truth. Not that I have any better handle on the truth than any other humble seeker who is, like all humans, both finite and fallen. Yet, there is a warning in Solomon's words. It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way.

Just this morning I ran across a note I had made some years ago when reading Merton's autobiography. I think Merton aptly expresses the way our desires, our zeal can impinge upon our pursuit of knowledge and understanding:

I think that if there is one truth that people need to learn, in the world, especially today, it is this: The intellect is only theoretically independent of desire and appetite in ordinary, actual practice. It is constantly being blinded and perverted by the ends and aims of passion, and the evidence it presents to us with such a show of impartiality and objectivity is fraught with interest and propaganda. We have become marvelous at self-delusion; all the more so, because we have gone to such trouble to convince ourselves of our own absolute infallibility.

The desires of the flesh -- and by that I mean not only sinful desires, but even the ordinary, normal appetites for comfort and ease and human respect, are fruitful sources of every kind of error and misjudgment, and because we have these yearnings in us, our intellects (which, if they operated all alone in a vacuum, would indeed, register with pure impartially what they saw) present to us everything distorted and accommodated to the norms of our desire. (Seven Story Mountain, p. 225)

I'm beginning to sense that an important part of my task here is to learn how I might better balance my natural inclination to pursue knowledge with an authentic zeal that is born out of desire cultivated by hope in the promise of the educational endeavor. That promise is that education can and does occur, even though we who seek to teach others are so fraught with failures and misunderstandings.

Education is not the mere acquisition of knowledge and skills to better one's earning power. It is not "learning to earn" a better living. Rather, it is learning to live a better life. Education is the formation of a whole, complete person challenged by a sense of calling, equipped with skills for engaging ideas and focused on serving others. A person whose zeal is tempered by knowledge, but whose knowledge is put to use through love in the service of others.

“Knowledge” [alone] puffs up, but love builds up.
(1 Corinthians 8:1 ESV)