As you may already know, the Life Team here at Our Savior in Hartland, Michigan, (along with some help from “The Body of Christ and the Public Square”) orchestrated a substantial event entitled “An Evening for Life” featuring Seth Gruber. If you know anything about Seth, then you know he’s a caffeinated firehose of valuable information. That’s why it only took a little more than three weeks of promotion to get 206 attendees from all around the state on a cold Thursday evening, some willing to drive a few hours to be with us. However, referring to these visitors as “attendees” seems insufficient. “Active learners” is more appropriate. Craving information, they actually got into their cars and drove to an event.

Conversely, if there’s one thing that bothers me about typical information exchanges, it’s the tendency some folks have toward spoon-feeding. For example, I wrote and shared something on Facebook a few weeks back in which I discussed a somewhat controversial theological topic. Sometime afterward, I received a private message from someone asking me to explain some unfamiliar terms I used in the post. First, the person wasn’t on my friend list, so I elected not to reply. If you know anything about Facebook Messenger, then you know that if you reply to someone outside your network, you are granting him full Messenger access. I try not to do that. Ever. The times I have, I’ve inevitably needed to block the person.

Second, and putting the best construction on things, my guess is that the person asking for the explanations must live in a place without adequate internet time or resources. Perhaps he lives in a Kath Kuni in the Himalayas or a cave in Afghanistan? However, if neither of these describes his actual plight, then I assume he can research the terms for himself. With a few taps at the computer, followed by a click or two with the mouse, he’d be on his way to learning anything and everything he’d ever hoped to know about the terms he’d never heard before. Instead, he wanted me to spend time writing it all out for him.

He wanted to be spoon-fed.

Now, before I go any further, I’ll admit to doing the same thing on occasion. The Thoma family has a family calendar. It’s synced to my phone. Still, rather than looking at the calendar, I’ll ask my wife, Jennifer, “Is there anything on tonight’s schedule that I should know about?” When I do this, I’m demonstrating passive learning. I have access to the information, but rather than doing my own investigating, I make the mistake of expecting her just to tell me. It’s lazy practice. I admit it.

Genuine learning isn’t lazy. It’s an active process. It takes work. Sure, there are things we learn passively, which is to say, we learn them without active engagement. Infants learn many things that way. They’re human sponges. I suppose there’s an element of passive learning for infants relative to language. They learn to speak as language is brought to them. But it doesn’t take long for the infant to become an active learner in the process, eventually engaging in language exploration. They begin making noises and sounding out words. Indeed, any parent will tell you that infants are the epitome of active learning in almost everything. They see something and, no matter what it is, reach out to explore it in every way they can. And none of their five senses is off limits, not even taste. My grandson, Preston, when he discovered his toes, guess where he eventually decided to put them?

Thinkers are active learners. There’s a chance I’m not dealing with an active learner when, let’s say, I post on Facebook, “William Federer will be one of the speakers at our upcoming conference,” and someone replies, “I’ve never heard of him? Who is he?” A reply like this irritates me because it expects me to present a detailed biography. I certainly could have provided a link to one in the post. However, not every hand needs to be held.

This leads me to something else.

Relative to intellectual lethargy, could it be that we’ve arrived at a time in history where it’s no longer possible to actually convince or convert anyone to a position other than the ones they already hold? What I’m saying is that, for virtue’s sake, I get the sense that most people consider themselves open-minded. And yet, are they passively or actively open-minded?

A passively open-minded person listens to whatever is being said but is only willing to consider and embrace those parts that align with what they already believe is true. They don’t want to do any thinking work. They don’t want to get up from their mental couch to answer another perspective’s knocks at the door. An actively open-minded person knows what they believe, and yet, while listening, searches for breakdowns, loopholes, or contradictions in not only the speaker’s argument but also their own belief system relative to the argument. In other words, they get up from the couch, open the door, and let the perspective into the house for a conversation. As they do, they put in the interrogative work. They ask questions. They offer content and counterpoints. They examine the topic from more than just their perspective, giving and taking along the way.

I think active learning also insists on active open-mindedness.

I guess what I’m wondering out loud right now is why so many seem to lean so heavily on passive learning styles, especially at a time in history when having a grasp on what’s going on is not only incredibly important but, at the same time, we have instant access to so much information. A few weeks back, I shared some of these thoughts with the teachers in our congregation’s school during our regular study of the Book of Concord. One teacher supposed part of the problem could be the overwhelming flood of content we encounter daily. With so many things happening at once and so much content to process, it’s easy to choose the spoon-fed route, preferring extracts from trusted sources rather than taking the time to do a deeper dive. Considering the person I mentioned at the beginning of this particular meandering, perhaps he wanted me to feed him the information because he trusts me. If so, I’m flattered. But my gut tells me it’s more likely that because social media is so overrun with memes, news snippets, and soundbites, he’s been trained to skim rather than study. But therein lies part of the problem.

Dependency on others to think for you—to distill complex ideas into more easily digestible pieces—robs a person of genuine growth.

Most often, controversial or challenging topics are not easily digestible. They take a little extra work, especially if the intent is to understand the argument and then formulate a barrier of truth relative to it. Sure, you can have a sense that transgenderism is weird. You can even know that the Bible stands against it as a perversion. But do you know where the Bible says this, and can you provide a convincing argument for why the Bible might speak this way? Do you know the topic’s relation to natural law, essential societal structures, the nature of male and female, terms like Imago Dei, or the fertile imagery of the mystery of Christ, the Groom, and the Church, His bride? There’s a lot more to the discussion than saying, “I think it’s weird, and I’m against it.”

I know my writings are longer than most you’d find on the internet. But regardless of the “less is more” inclination, I prefer a thorough wrestling with most topics. Snippets are fun, but they rarely close the loopholes.

Again, passivity in learning can be problematic. It’s happy enough to pursue the “tell me what to think” approach rather than investigating and thinking through something for oneself. The first results in echo chambers that never go anywhere. The second is intent on locating truth while buffeted with a firmer grasp on what makes it true.

The distinction between these two approaches has a blast radius that ripples out into the broader cultural landscape. I’m sure, like me, you’ve experienced those conversations with people that have devolved into name-calling, mainly because the debaters couldn’t get any deeper than their emotions. For example, as soon as I mentioned that James Lindsay would be a speaker at this year’s conference, I had someone essentially calling me a rotten pastor for “platforming” someone he deemed an enemy of Christ. But James isn’t an enemy of Christ. Of course, snippets won’t teach this. A deeper dive will. Even better, an interrogative conversation with the man reveals his person. That said, I’ve eaten meals and consumed whisky with the man in my own home. We’ve talked about lots of things, many of which were faith-related. If anything, he’s more open to an introduction to Christ than most. Passive learning is self-centered, and it won’t learn this about James Lindsay.

By contrast, it seems to me that active learning is born from a sense of humility. It approaches others from the perspective, “I’m not perfect, and I don’t know everything. What can I learn from you?” It begins with knowing that objective truth is real, but to truly discover it means admitting oneself is flawed. From there, it’s willing to hear from others. In James’ case, formerly atheistic but now more so agnostic, he’s willing to sit at a clergy friend’s bar in his basement and entertain things of God, while simultaneously, that same friend is willing to hear from his expertise relative to various topics of interest. I’ve learned a lot from James Lindsay about how mainstream Christianity got to a condition in which rock shows are considered worship and lesbian bishops are ordained. If I’d written him off as merely an enemy of Christ, I’d never have learned these things, and my theological prowess would be far lesser.

Of course, as with most things, Christians always have the upper hand on humble learning. We know by faith that objective truth exists. We understand that every human being is terminally flawed in sin, and as a result, objective truth will never be discovered from within. From there, we can say that active learning is fundamental to the Christian life. It’s not like the Bible rarely encourages believers to seek wisdom and understanding. It does so throughout its pages. For example, a ready text is Proverbs 2:2-5. Here, Solomon actually emphasizes active learning, urging us to incline our ears to wisdom and seek it as one searches for hidden treasure. Treasure hunting requires effort. It requires digging deep into the strata. Relative to God’s Word, when we dig deeply, we are not only better equipped to defend the faith (1 Peter 3:15), but there’s something else that happens. Speaking only for myself, the more I dig into the Word of God, the more I sense my mind is attuned to the mind of Christ that Saint Paul talks about in Philippians 2:5.

Circling back to where I started, you need to know the Bible warns against intellectual laziness and the dangers of relying solely on others for understanding. Another prime example is found in Saint Paul’s commendation of the Bereans in Acts 17:11. He praises them for examining and measuring the Scriptures against everything they’ve been taught. By doing so, they were successful in verifying what was true and avoiding what was false. This is a demonstration of active learning, which is in sharp contrast with the passive learners who risk falling into deception or shallow thinking (Ephesians 4:14).

Don’t be a passive learner. Instead, with diligence, embrace your responsibility to think deeply, both for the sake of personal growth and, more importantly, for carrying the Gospel to the world around you in thoughtful, persuasive, and respectful ways, just as the Bible portrays the Apostles and Evangelists before us (1 Peter 3:15-16, 2 Timothy 2:24-25, Colossians 4:5-6, Acts 17:2-3, Jude 1:22-23, Proverbs 16:21, and so many more).