I just finished watching the second episode of the BBC’s Sherlock. Oh, man. Oh, man oh man. I love me some Sherlock Holmes.
If you haven’t seen this modernized version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic stories, I advise you to haul it on over to Netflix, now, and make an evening of it. It is SO much better than the Robert Downey, Jr. flick that came out last year, and I’d loved that.
Y’all, I even have a t-shirt (thanks to the amazing Sarah Jenkins) that says “Sherlock is my Holmes Boy.”
Tonight, as I was watching this episode, I was struck by just how many things Holmes has to know about in order to solve his mysteries. Math, science, language, geography, and on and on. There’s an awful lot to understand about this world, and sometimes, to understand small things, we have to know a lot about a lot of things that are related.
This weekend, at the intensive cohort I wrote about a few days ago, I had the realization that we must seek to understand the world in order to understand the Bible, in order to understand the world. Augustine of Hippo wrote that in order to understand fully this sacred text, we must understand science, music, art, and more. There are signs and stories wrapped up in Biblical text that we’ll never “get” until we’ve pursued an understanding of these other things. And these signs and stories help convey an even bigger message about our world. I. Love. This. What a hugely important argument against anti-intellectualism in the church. What a tremendous argument for the pursuit of interdisciplinary scholarship.
Some people tend to fear that learning more about the world promotes an intellectualism that replaces faith. I just don’t think that’s true. Pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake may have that effect, but pursuit of knowledge with humility, one that suggests that “I am not God, and there is more to know,”* is another thing entirely.
As a teenager, I loved a song lyric that said “When were we taught the lie that learning to think meant leaving our faith behind? Truth looks us in the eye, and watches us blink as we hope it passes by.”** I, for one, am grateful that faith and knowledge do not have to be incompatible. And that is “elementary, my dear Watson.”
Love this (and not just because you reference my shirt, which was pretty baller…) and I think you could develop it into something for RELEVANT mag. Just sayin’.
“in order to understand fully this sacred text, we must understand science, music, art, and more” Good stuff. I hadn’t really thought of this before. But recently this man of faith/scientist dude that I have been in conversation with has been making me think. At first I thought he was such an anomaly as far as guys in the church go (and maybe he is), but I am looking forward to learning from him. And talking more with you.
Thanks, friends. SJ, I’ll do some serious thinkin’ about how I could re-work this into an article. All this bloggin’ has inspired several writing projects in me. Now, to find the motivation to actually write them…
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