Are Christians Kind of Stupid?

Controversial hot-take for my Churchy Smart Friends: are Christians kind of stupid?

Hear me out.  I don’t mean “stupid” in terms of intellect, but in terms of curiosity, intellectual rigor, and self-awareness.  A perfectly intelligent person can lack these things—in fact, it happens all the time. 

And many Christians seem to fall into that category.

Looking around at the modern church—at our worship lyrics (COUGH, sorry, I’ve got a lion in my lungs), at the books we make bestsellers, at the leaders we rally around—I fear a distinct and pervasive trend of… well, stupidity.

Not intellectual weakness, but intellectual abdication. 

There are exceptions, of course. 

In fact, I am drawing my concept of stupidity from one of Christianity’s greatest thinkers.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote much about the concept of willful stupidity. 

Pictured: more bravery, wit, and faith than a stadium of Osteens

In a nutshell, Bonhoeffer suggests that stupidity is what happens when one’s faithfulness to an ideology becomes more important than one’s faithfulness to objective truth.

When this happens, all information is put through a filter: does it confirm or undermine my ideology? 

If it confirms my ideology, then the information is, by default, true.

If it undermines my ideology, then the information is, by default, false.

The actual truth of the information is secondary, or completely moot.  This is why people respond the way they do when someone points out the falsehood of something they posted on Facebook.  They aren’t grateful to be spared the embarrassment of posting an untruth.  They are angry that someone has dared to undermine their ideology.

And this happens way, WAY too often in the current American church.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer would be dismayed, to say the least.

It would be parody if it wasn’t reality.

This is less true in some demographics outside the church.

In the “secular” world, there seems to be a renaissance of big-think.  Philosophers, economists, and psychologists write bestselling books and present lectures to sell-out crowds.  Thinkers like Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Malcolm Gladwell, Douglas Murray, and many others attract massive followings.  Their books—dense and challenging to a deliberate degree—are devoured by a growing demographic of people hungry for ideas, for intellectual rigor, for challenging concepts and foundational truths.

But in the church?  We make bestsellers of things like “Heaven is For Real”, which was clearly dubious from the beginning, and turned out to be completely made up. 

We flock in droves to movies like the counter-productively awful “God is Not Dead” (and its cringe-inducing sequels) where atheists are straw-man villains and confirmation bias might as well get an executive producer credit.  

We pump out endless “worship” albums with music so inbred and lyrics so nonsensical that no one outside the church would ever force themselves to listen to it. 

We elevate pap-peddling superstar pastors and carry water for proven abusers, so long as we find their preaching easy on the ears, or sufficiently affirming of our beliefs.

We are, in short, stupid. 

Not unintelligent.  Stupid, according to Bonhoeffer’s definition. 

We have checked our intellect and put on ignorance as a shield from hard ideas, challenging questions, intellectual rigor, and simple curiosity.

Sadly rare is the curiosity that once drove Christians to explore the sciences, that propelled them to philosophize and plumb the depths of the mind, that fueled some of the biggest thinking of the last thousand years.

Pictured: more intellect, curiosity, and rigor than a superdome of Lucados

This is why most of my favorite thinkers today are atheists, agnostics, or just plain irreligious.  And why I find so much Christian media to be empty, unchallenging, simplistic, and frankly, embarrassingly stupid. 

I’ve had well-meaning Christian friends tell me it’s dangerous to engage with content produced by unbelievers.  As if Christianity is a house of cards subject to collapsing at the slightest oppositional breath, rather than a foundational edifice of truth that has withstood the challenges of the greatest minds (and converted many of them) since antiquity.

But an objection arises.  I hear you asking: what about apologetics? 

Yes, many Christians are interested in apologetics—the construction of intellectual arguments in support of our faith.  This is a good thing, I suppose. 

But for most such people, apologetics are merely a form of intellectual cosplay. 

R2 Sproul-too and C. S. Lewpio

Most armchair apologists collect arguments and facts and talking points, but rarely do they seem to fully understand them—much less the ideas they purport to refute.

All too rare is the Christian eager to fully understand—to consider and digest and engage with—any truly honest opposing ideology.  They approach discussions with non-believers (almost exclusively in the performative arena of social media) with a jingling bandolier of rebuttals, firing them off verbatim, without legitimately engaging with the other person.

Most apologists are like geese—they’ve eaten a kernel of truth, and they poop it out exactly as it went in, unchanged and undigested.

The second-to-last thing most Christian armchair apologists will ever utter is: “You make a good point.”  The LAST thing they will ever utter is an honest “I don’t know.”

The problem is: no one can truly think unless they can concede a good point, or understand an opposing argument well enough to comprehend why people believe it, or admit what they don’t know. 

That takes curiosity, and intellectual honesty, and wonder, and humility, and a love of actual, truth.

More, it takes a deep and foundational love of the Truth Giver.

Perhaps, in our put-on stupidity, we’ve made an all-too-basic mistake: we think the Truth Giver needs to be protected from scary, opposing ideas. 

When, in fact, the exact opposite is true.

So.  Am I wrong?

I could be, of course.  Perhaps I am a bit too cynical about the modern American church.  Perhaps I am paying attention to all the wrong things.  What think you?

Is the current church less stupid than I am giving it credit for?

If so, what am I missing?

If not, what can be done about this?  How do we re-awaken to our God-given vibrance of intellectual honesty, curiosity, wonder, and self-awareness?  For our own flourishing, the health of our message, and the glory of God?