Why Greatness Produces The Highest & Lowest

 

Christians are fascinating in many ways. Here are two examples from my experience that I’ve mentioned before, but haven’t ever fleshed out beyond succinct epigrams. The first is that I think Christians are both some of the best and worst arguments for God’s existence. Some Christians come across so consistently badly – in their conduct, their thinking and their manners – that if they were the only Christians one ever encountered, then Christianity would seem no truer or more virtuous than communism. Other Christians come across so impressively, with such grace and wisdom, that in them one can sense glimpses of Heaven on earth, and get the strongest indication that Christianity is the truth.

This dovetails with the second observation; that the most prodigious minds I’ve ever encountered are Christians, but so are some of the least prodigious. In other words, humans at their most brilliant in terms of depth of mind, profundity, and creative, emotional expansiveness are Christian – individuals like St. Paul, St. John, and St. James, or in other fields, Pascal, Kierkegaard. Yet some woeful Christians frequently sink to depths of mind that are more intellectually hollow and pitiable than many atheists ever seem to reach.

Given that Christianity is true, and Christians have access to the Creator of the universe, and to a depth of relationship and revelation to which atheists are not privy, this might be one of the strangest things in the world. It’s no surprise that in the greatest minds Christianity amplifies the extremes of human conduct and intellect, but one might be justifiably surprised to find that some Christians descend into the lowest rungs of intellectual sophistication, even below some of the shallowest atheists.

If it’s obvious why Christians reach the great heights – and it should at least be obvious to Christians, who know its truth – then it might not be at all obvious why the Christians reaching the lowest depths of the mind do so. I suppose what we are asking is quite a profound question; why is it that the thing that can engender such astounding cognitive expression at its best can also precipitate the most cringeworthy cognitive failings at its worst? It might be partly a sense of relative expectation, like when a village committee would think it worse if their vicar stole a bicycle than an ordinary member of the community. I think that’s a good prima facie case; we just should expect better from Christians, as they know the Lord, and those sunken defects merely seem exacerbated or magnified on that basis. And we must also remember that the Christian faith, in which God invites anyone to know Him on the basis of the free gift of salvation under grace, is going to include both extremes; the saints and, at first, the wretches – which is another key factor.

But I think the full story is even deeper; I think there are near-paradoxes about the very best things in the world that amplify the very worst things too - like how, in Shakespeare’s sonnet, “Lilies that fester smell even worse than weeds”. Because Christianity is both true, and the enabler of the highest potential in humans, it can magnify both glory and failure because of the power of its truths. When lived faithfully, it produces greatness; but when tainted or neglected, it can produce worse distortions than ordinary unbelief. And perhaps that’s what we should expect; for many of the most egregious failures in society are betrayals of qualities which, at their best, produce the greatest good - like how love inspires some of the most wonderful acts, but in betrayal or loss brings about the worst pain; or like how freedom enables the best human flourishing, creativity, and dignity, yet in excess and without discipline it can descend into chaos and harm; or like how great wealth can be a vehicle for some of the greatest acts of good in the world, but when love of money turns it into selfish greed, it brings about avarice, corruption and chronic discontent. 

It's also similar to how those who live their life in the safe, unremarkable middling currents of destiny face none of the great joys or exhilarations, nor any of the worst tragedies or heartbreaks  - they neither rise to grandeur nor sink to catastrophe – just playing it safe every day of their lives, in a way that at some point, with some honest reflection, should leave them sad and regretful that they never seized life with the passionate truthseeking, courage and wonder that brings about a full life.

This is what we are really reflecting back on when we observe that Christianity, in its vast and paradoxical scope, is not tame at its best or worst. It is the forge in which human greatness and human folly alike are tempered; the light that illuminates the loftiest heights of intellect, love, and virtue, yet casts equally deep shadows in the hearts that turn from its truth or taint it through raw human fault. And that is where some Christians can go astray in ways that those who don’t know God won’t in quite the same way. Like how faith-based deference to scriptural authority produces misinterpretations that cause them to reject established empirical facts about the world; or how binary thinking creates spiritual allegiance that oversimplifies the true complexity of God’s plan; or how, despite St. Paul’s warning in Romans, people under Christian grace can exhibit a haughtiness that puts even worldly pride to shame, as if proximity to divine favour heightens the hubris rather than humbles the heart.

Of course, the benefits of being a Christian far outweigh the alternative – in fact, not just outweigh, but illuminate and redeem every shadow of human existence in a way that false rejection cannot. But just as the Christian faith bears witness to the extraordinary potential of the transformed human soul, the taints and distortions become a testament to the magnitude of fallenness, like how fire, when left unchecked or misdirected out of control, soon razes forests and turns human habitats to dusty ash piles.